"After all, most minimum wage workers aren't poor"

[Kelvin Mace]

This quote is attributed to Robert Reich, and quoted extensively by the Right. Yet I can't find the original quote to read the context.

Anybody have any idea where it came from?

[BlackVelvet04]

1. Cinderella?

or some other equally vapid fairy tale.

[China_cat]

2. Only if they're living in Darfur

and drawing American minimum wage.

[Hosnon]

3. That's what came to my mind as well. "But, but, but, but...if you compare

our poor to the poor in ancient Egypt, our poor have it much better!"

[Orangepeel]

4. He did say that 46% are in the bottom earnings quintile

I'm guessing some idiot at the Heritage Foundation or its equivalent spun that into "he said 54% weren't poor".



That evidence allows us to dismiss, for example, the myth that the typical minimum wage worker is a middle-class high school student. Only one in 14 workers earning between $4.25 and $5.15 per hour is a teenaged student from a family with above-average earnings. Fully 46 percent of workers who would be affected by the President's proposal are in the bottom earnings quintile of working families. The average worker who would be affected by the President's proposal brings home half of his or her family's earnings; 38 percent of those affected are the sole worker in their family. An increase in the minimum wage of 90 cents would mean a $1,800 raise for a full-time, year-round minimum-wage worker. This is not an insignificant sum for low-income families struggling to make ends meet on the minimum wage. Indeed, it is as much as the average family spends on groceries in seven months.

http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/reich/congress/022295rr.htm

[shadowknows69]

5. We make above minimum wage

and....poor.

[Warpy]

8. HAW HAW HAW!!!

What a total pinhead!

How can 20% of people have 46% of the people in their group?

Doesn't he know that 46% is BIGGER than 20% (which is what bottom quintile means)???

We've got to get all these loons far away from anyone they can hurt and keep them there.

[Gormy Cuss]

16. I think you misinterpreted that stat.

Reich is one of our guys, not a right wing loon. He wrote that 46% of minimum wage worker families were in the lowest quintile, but there are others, principally those living on nonwage income like unemployment, who are part of the bottom quintile.

[Warpy]

18. Wouldn't be the first time

I realize it was probably misstated, but I just couldn't resist.

No money guy is really one of our guys, although some are less damaging than others are.

That stat for poverty claims that a large percentage of low wage households include 2 adults who combine income and therefore are not poor, while ignoring the fact that 2 adults still have to be housed, clothed, fed, transported, and cared for when they get sick on wages that are too parsimonious to support one of them adequately. Plus, there are also likely to be children in that household, which makes them desperately poor.

[Orangepeel]

17. 46% of minimum wage earners

I thought that was implied in the paraphrase I pulled, but I guess that's because I already knew what I was talking about. :-)

Reich said (in 1995, by the way) that if the entire population of the US was divided into quintiles based on their household incomes, 46% of people making minimum wage would fall into the lowest group. Presumably, most of the rest of minimum wage earners would fall into the 2nd lowest quintile. A few (Reich says 1 in 14) fit the right wing stereotype of the kid working a part time job.

Reich is arguing for an increase in the minimum wage here. He is saying that 90 cents an hour (Clinton's proposal) would make a big difference in the lives of millions of people.

I have no idea what the current numbers are, but I wouldn't be surprised if many people working minimum wage jobs have household incomes that are greater than the federal poverty level (whether it is half or not, I don't know). First, the federal poverty level is too low. Second, some minimum wage earners do live in households with more than one income (because it is (at best) nearly impossible to survive on minimum wage).

But I don't think that's the issue. The issue isn't whether more than 1/2 or less than 1/2 of minimum wage workers live in households with incomes below poverty level. The issue is whether people are commodities subject to free market fluctuations or whether human labor is inherently worth an amount at least equal to what a person working full time would need to live on (i.e., a living wage). Because we, as a society, decided long ago that slavery was illegal, the commodities option is out.

[SoCalDem]

11. That 1800 after taxes works out to around $30 a week.. whoopeee

Now Mom can pay the electric bill on time.. that';s about it..

[Missy M]

13. Right, she can pay the electric bill on time but not the....

gas bill or buy food when the pantry is bare, no less buy clothes and shoes for her children or herself. She can't afford a computer so her children can have the same advantage as children with that advantage. She has to worry every day if the heat will be turned off or the rent is behind and she will be evicted. Then she may read where the outgoing CEO received a 100 million dollar package.

[Gormy Cuss]

14. I'd say that's a good guess.

He does imply that 54% of minimum wage workers aren't in families in the bottom quintile of earners, so technically a majority aren't poor, assuming that all those families above the bottom quintile earn too much to meet the Federal poverty definition. I don't have time to run down the numbers but I suspect that since it's household income under discussion, rather than individual, that some families in the second quintile have earnings within the poverty guidelines for Federal programs.

[PDJane]

6. No........

But I almost guarantee that it wasn't meant in the way it was quoted.......

[sandnsea]

7. There's the poverty level

and then there's working poor. I think using the poverty line doesn't give the complete picture on poor. If minimum wage families didn't have housing, energy, food stamps, school lunches - we'd see a very different kind of minimum wage poverty in this country.

[SoCalDem]

9. Define poor.

Poor compared to Bangladesh-poor, maybe not, but when you can't take a sick kid to the doctor because you have no money, or you have to go without because you cannot afford the necessities.

Kids with no glasses who do poorly at school, kids with toothaches, kids without warm coats, kid without nutritious food.. what will they grow up to be?

[zbdent]

10. Challenge them to provide a reference ...

wonder if they really would be able to ...

[Wiley50]

12. You Might Check His Blog

robertreich.blogspot.com

check my spelling on that

[zanne]

15. 101 Fairytales for Children? nt

[Hidden Stillness]

19. Too Poor to Live Anywhere

Robert Reich was a member of Clinton Administration, Inc., which I do not consider to be "one of us." Most people at or near the minimum wage--and poor--are women, black women and white women. My favorite stat on this issue, because it is so stark, was an official Census statistic given about 10 years ago by Molly Ivins and just about no one else, and still true: 25%, or one-fourth, of all full-time, 40-hour-a-week minimum wage workers, are homeless.