Live in low wage
As we all know, the government of the United States sets a minimum wage for every business to pay their workers. It is the ideal to ensure that workers can get the minimum amount of money from the kind of job they are doing. However, how much a person really needs to live in their life is not set by law. There are many people who work as a full time and get the minimum wage. Many of them are living a terrible life.
From my understanding, I believe that in order to make the wage “fair” we have to consider people’s need. Employers always want to make more profit. Therefore, they will try hard to pay less and keep their employees at work. Sometimes, even with the wage that employers think is enough, it is really not enough. Everything costs people money, rent, utility bills, transportation and food supplies. If there is an accident occurred, it just not enough money left to support them. Especially for people with families to feed, it can make their lives harder.
In the film Wal-Mart: The high cost of a low price it shows us how employees of Wal-Mart live under the low wage. “Most of our associates are working as full time” said the CEO of Wal-Mart. It is true that most of Wal-Mart’s associates are working as full time. However, many of them are not making enough money from their jobs to support them. There is a statistic that shows most of Wal-Mart’s associates only have 25 hours a week of full time schedule(40 hours is considering the normal full time schedule). With the minimum wage, they make less income than the government’s low income standard of $17900.
In the book Nickel and Dimed by Ehrenreich it has mention “nearly one fifth of all homeless people (in twenty nine cities across the nation) are employed in full or part time jobs.”(p26) Joan works in the same restaurant with Ehrenreich. She is actually live in a van due to the fact that she doesn’t make enough money. No one is meant to become a homeless. The problem is they don’t have the ability to afford the rent.
Based on the evidence from Wal-Mart and Nickel and Dimed, I think we need to make the wage “fair” to all the hard working men and women. What they have done is what they should get. Employers should decide what is fair. When they use the business ethic, they should apply for the personal ethic as well. To make the right decision that will benefit the business and worker as a whole.
