Gov Ted Strickland lives on minimum wage

[mominatrix]

I Tried to Live on Minimum Wage for a Week

By GOV. TED STRICKLAND July 27, 2014



For all of last week, I worked hard to live on the budget of a minimum wage worker. That meant I had $77 to spend on food, transportation, activities and other personal expenses for the week. I didn’t make it.


Most mornings started with eggs and toast, bought last Sunday during a grocery trip costing more than $15. Lunches were normally leftovers, macaroni and cheese or McDonald’s. There were no big dinners or coffee stops on a whim. But the challenges were beyond food.


Wednesday morning, I had a meeting about a mile from my apartment, but in the opposite direction of my office. I would normally take a cab, but this time, I took off my jacket and walked the mile in 90-degree heat, then walked back almost 2 miles to my office. Walking made me late to my meeting, but a minimum wage budget doesn’t allow for extra transportation costs, making it my only option.


And early in the week when I actually caught a cold, I felt lucky to already have medicine at home that would help with the symptoms.

Medicine, along with any other unexpected or additional expenses, often prevents the budget from stretching as far as it needs to stretch. That was a lesson I learned when my budget ran out on Thursday evening.



These are just some of the small realities I have learned about life on the minimum wage.


Washington is in a bubble that keeps our representatives away from the experiences of those they actually represent. We need to understand the challenges faced by Americans who are being left behind in our economy. That’s why I joined members of Congress and dozens of organizations in taking the Live the Wage challenge (www.LivetheWage.com), and asking those in Congress to actually try living on the minimum wage for a week before opposing an increase that would help millions of Americans who currently live in poverty.


For the week, I walked as much as I possibly could to avoid paying for transportation, skipped meals to save money — and I ate much smaller and less healthful meals when I did eat. Because fresh fruits and vegetables are hard to find at a price within a minimum wage budget, I turned to bread, peanut butter, bananas and bologna more than anything else. That was what I could find when I took this budget to the grocery story last Sunday. And that’s why I ate lunch from the McDonald’s dollar menu.



Thankfully, I did this by myself. For millions of Americans, a minimum wage salary has to cover an entire family. Right now, in America, a minimum wage worker is spending her workday worrying about a decision she is going to have to make when she finally makes it home. Will it be electricity or diapers this week? Medicine or gas?


It has been five years since the federal minimum wage was raised to $7.25. While some cities and states have acted to raise their own minimum wages, many have stood still, content to let their workers effectively make less and less each year. When the federal minimum wage was increased in July 2009, gas averaged $2.45 per gallon. Today, it is $3.55, meaning filling a car with a 12-gallon tank would cost an extra $13.20. That might not sound like much, but it is close to two hours of work on a minimum wage salary. The same can be said for even more basic needs, like a gallon of milk, which is nearly 75 cents more per gallon than it was in July 2009.


Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 will increase the average annual salary of a minimum wage worker to $19,777, hardly a living wage, but a major step forward for the 30 million hardworking Americans who live in poverty while earning the minimum wage.


I have an apartment here in Washington and a good job. I know I’ll never be able to truly walk in the shoes of a minimum wage worker, but experiencing just some of the decisions this income requires on a daily basis is enough to understand that we need to do better for these hardworking families. It’s un-American that you can work and work and work and not get out of poverty. The promise of America is that working hard and playing by the rules will help you get ahead, but right now, we’re breaking that promise. It’s time to give America a raise.





Former Gov. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio) is president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund and counselor to the Center for American Progress.





Read more: www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/07/a-mile-in-shoes-of-the-minimum-wage-worker-109418_Page2.html#ixzz38n0QKMi3

[bkseller13]

I agree that they should all have to live on that wage for a week to get a bit of an idea of what it's like. Pull off those blinders.

[Deleted]

Good for him to have some empathy and try to understand what people really go through.

[ESF]

While I think it's great he tried this experiment, I think the focus on the minimum wage is a distraction. I do have sympathy for people earning that little, and think it should be raised, but the problem with focusing on it is that it takes away from the fact that a humongous portion of our population is barely getting by and many of these people aren't eligible for social services.

That's not to say that minimum wage earners are less sympathetic or not deserving of political attention.

Rather, it's that there is a tendency, particularly amongst the political class, to treat minimum wage as if it's a problem that can be solved by raising the minimum wage. But it's not simply a problem - the low minimum wage is a symptom of a much more serious and widespread economic inequality problem.

By focusing only on minimum wage, when the bill passes (because it's a when, not an if), I fear it's going to be an "LOOK WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED! Let's check that problem off the list for a few years, and go back to cutting taxes."

There needs to be a serious discussion about economic inequality because while it sucks to be living on minimum wage, there's many, many more people raising families on $30k a year, who have not had a raise in 5 years but whose health insurance and fuel costs have skyrocketed in that time, who are not eligible for many forms of public assistance, and who simply cannot get ahead. Raising minimum wage isn't going to do shit for them, and too many politicians have reduced economic justice to the minimum wage debate alone.

[illgetthere]

I know this isn't the point, but I'm confused why he only had $77. Are they figuring the rest is used up on housing expenses?

[katfco]

I knew I shouldn't have shared this on Facebook. According to an old friend of mine, anyone who ends up on minimum wage for several years doesn't deserve any more because they're not trying to advance themselves.

[msmerymac]

Jul 28, 2014 14:41:28 GMT -5 illgetthere said:

I know this isn't the point, but I'm confused why he only had $77. Are they figuring the rest is used up on housing expenses?

Yes, on the LivetheWage website, they say that's what's leftover after the average cost of housing and the average amount of taxes. 

[ECB]

Jul 28, 2014 15:21:33 GMT -5 katfco said:

I knew I shouldn't have shared this on Facebook. According to an old friend of mine, anyone who ends up on minimum wage for several years doesn't deserve any more because they're not trying to advance themselves.

^o)

[katfco]

Jul 28, 2014 15:32:06 GMT -5 ECB said:

Jul 28, 2014 15:21:33 GMT -5 katfco said:

I knew I shouldn't have shared this on Facebook. According to an old friend of mine, anyone who ends up on minimum wage for several years doesn't deserve any more because they're not trying to advance themselves.

Yeah. It's the same old, "I did it; everyone else can too." 

She also started with the "minumum wage wasn't intended to be a living wage, but I shot that down with an FDR quote.

edited because it posted before I was done. 

[5thofjuly]

Kasich is the current governor of Ohio, right? I think Stickland was the last one. I've seen him in documentaries in the past (plural) because he's a big advocate for helping pull families out of poverty. I seem to recall him saying his own family didn't get running water until he was in high school and that they often had trouble putting food on the table. As much as I love the fact that he's always seemed willing to put himself out there to advocate for those in need, it seems like he's not the kind of politician that needs to try this experiment. He already gets it.

[katfco]

Jul 28, 2014 15:42:17 GMT -5 5thofjuly said:

Kasich is the current governor of Ohio, right? I think Stickland was the last one. I've seen him in documentaries in the past (plural) because he's a big advocate for helping pull families out of poverty. I seem to recall him saying his own family didn't get running water until he was in high school and that they often had trouble putting food on the table. As much as I love the fact that he's always seemed willing to put himself out there to advocate for those in need, it seems like he's not the kind of politician that needs to try this experiment. He already gets it.

Sadly, yes. Unfortunately, the people who need to get it are the ones unwilling to do it. 

[UMaineTeach]

the $19,777/year (that wages would go to @ 10.10) actually doesn't sound that bad, especially for most parts of Maine. 2 people earning that would be almost at the state avg. household income.

But the big monkey wrench is, how many people can get full time min. wage work?

[FloFTW]

Jul 28, 2014 15:42:17 GMT -5 5thofjuly said:

Kasich is the current governor of Ohio, right? I think Stickland was the last one. I've seen him in documentaries in the past (plural) because he's a big advocate for helping pull families out of poverty. I seem to recall him saying his own family didn't get running water until he was in high school and that they often had trouble putting food on the table. As much as I love the fact that he's always seemed willing to put himself out there to advocate for those in need, it seems like he's not the kind of politician that needs to try this experiment. He already gets it.

Yes, it's Kasich and I really don't like him. Strickland and a couple other (current) politicians did this. Tim Ryan's updated have been interesting.

[Deleted]

I don't like Kasich, either. I should have trusted my instincts and voted for Strickland last time. At least I get a chance in a few months to remedy my mistake by voting for Fitzgerald.

This article was interesting. I hadn't heard about it.

(sidenote----did you know that Kate Mulgrew from Orange is the New Black is married to Tim Hagan, the Ohio politician?)