Should you be able to support a family of 4 working 34 hours a week as a Walmart cashier?
Recently saw an article decrying the fact that nationally, the average Walmart front end employee works 34 hours per week at $14.46 per hour which amounts to ~$25k tc, and is below the poverty line for a family of 4. This made me reflect. Should working 34 hrs per week as a cashier be enough to support a family of 4? Is that a reasonable expectation? If not, is it reasonable to expect people to move their career beyond that level prior to starting a family? What is our societal expectation? TC $280k
IMO, a person's salary should reflect the value they contribute to the company's bottom line. This is an easy job with no educational barriers that can be learned in a day. This just doesn't justify a high salary, no matter how badly I feel for their personal situation. Cashiering (is that a word?) is a simple task that's easy to automate, and businesses will always go with the cheaper option. If we legislate that they be paid a living wage, we'll likely see more of them put out of work by machines. (Works with me, because I don't need a person judging me when I buy 8 candy bars).
Yes. Expecting people to not have kids until they have enough money simply doesn’t work in practice. It never will. So there has to be a way to guarantee anyone can support their family with minimum wage. You are doing a massive disservice to the kids (our future) if not.
I didn’t have a child until I was 35 years old. It’s called birth control. The shit works. Either use condoms or have your partner use the pill. As for working. I would rather education be subsidized in some way. Provide them with a liveable wage as long as they work 20 hours a week and go to school the rest and maintain good grades in a degree that offers value and has a probability of getting them a decent livable tc. I was homeless trying to go to school. I slept in my car in Washington. Made it through a year and ended up just skipping all that self teaching and getting into the engineering life. I don’t have some high tc. I only make 92k a year. But it’s enough to support myself and my kid.
92k easily puts you in top 15% of individual income. While that may seem low relative to the numbers you see here, it's quite high relative to the rest of the country. It's almost 4x as much as the OP's example.
Albertsons please chime in
Wow, bunch of people here who never worked shit jobs. 1. 34 hour jobs are not the choice of employees; it is either s shift/staffing decision (if I want to be generous and assume neutral intent) or a way to prevent employees from qualifying for certain benefits. 2. Cashiers work harder than people making lots of money. Low-paid jobs are de-skilled in order to be replaceable, they are not “easy”. These jobs can be hard and you get 0 slack for any regular human things like snacking or going to the bathroom or having a cold. Think about this the next time you work from home, chat with coworker casually, use your phone to message friends, or take a piss without having to beg your manager or endanger your employment in order to do so. 3. Most importantly, jobs are not rewards for your skills or merit or talent... they only exist to make money for investors and whatnot. It’s idiotic self-flattery for well-paid workers and a social myth that jobs are some kind of reflection of inherent qualities. Maybe the question should be: is it reasonable for the Waltons to become the richest family in the world by making the lives of thousands and thousands of people in the US and China austere and miserable?
Job are not reward for merit, skills or talent? How exactly does credit karma hand out jobs? Which exact point are you trying to make with your rhetoric question about the wealth of the Walton family?
Most jobs at CK are based on business needs... like at almost all companies (excluding edge cases of favoritism or whatnot by higher-ups.) It’s like you are arguing that the point of a carrot on a stick is to feed a donkey, not make him go where you want him to go.
You are asking the wrong people. They will never understand because people here are full of themselves.
The amount of shitty coders who think they are Einstein is astonishing
The amount of _people_ who thinks they are Einstein is also astonishing. Coders are no exception.
Coders are more prone to it, let’s be real.
The real answer here is that childcare should be nationally subsidized so that both parents can work. Almost every other first world country does this. It leads to better outcomes for both the parents and the children. And better outcomes means better workers and better workers mean more $$$ for everyone.
Two solutions to this problem : 1. National health care which removes the burden of health insurance costs from employers allowing them to pay you more 2. Subsidized or national child care
What's the alternative? Have both parents working and pay nanny with your minimum wage job?
The alternative would be to wait until you're past the min wage level to start a family. Our social expectation would then be that if you're working a job that a high schooler can do on their summer break, you're probably not in a financial position to support an family of 4.
That's one alternative, but not the only one. There is significant value to society in people having more kids and having them earlier so another solution is generous tax funded child support. That at least doesn't make companies pay for what amounts to a national priority. I probably voted the same as you in the poll but reached a different solution. I don't think Walmart should be made to overpay for jobs. I think society as a whole does face an existential threat if we don't get the birth rate back up.