They’re a diverse range of people: single parents, couples with and without children, young women with graduate degrees, business owners, seniors and everyone in between. Their financial situations, however, show many similarities. Jobs generally provide them with the means to barely scrape by, treading paycheck-to-paycheck, earning just enough to keep from going under, swallowing their pride sometimes to take food stamps or visit food banks. Others are entirely out of work, tirelessly seeking employment and relying on other means to survive.
Through their words, we see what it’s really like to be “working poor” in America — and just how much more it looks like rock bottom than most would imagine.
Being working poor means toiling through “pure hell” for next to nothing.
Earlier this year, 55-year-old Glenn Johnson was making about $14,000 a year — or $7.93 an hour — at a Miami-area Burger King. He’d been in and out of the fast food industry for more than 30 years. Recently he watched as his employer reported a 37 percent increase in its quarterly profit, while continuing to resist a minimum wage increase that workers like Johnson have been fighting for."
http://millermps.wordpress.com/category/poverty/
Swiss have a much better understanding of why better wages can be used as a tool to actually remove the taxpayer from subsidizing lower wage paying corporations.
"The Swiss initiative comes at a time when the minimum wage debate is raging in many countries. For the first time in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has agreed to set a minimum wage of $11.50 an hour, while British Prime Minister David Cameron has raised it to nearly $11 an hour. President Barack Obama is also pushing for a significant increase from $7.25 to 10.10 an hour."
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2014/0516/A-25-an-hour-minimum-wage-It-may-happen-in-Switzerland
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