At 08:01 PM 9/22/2002 -0500 Robert Seeberger wrote: >I think the point is that people who make minimum wage should be *able* to >afford housing but are not able too.
I disagree with this. There is no reason why a high school teenager flipping burgers at McDonald's *should* be paid enough to afford a two-bedroom apartment. And, I should note, the very definition of a minimum wage job is what you pay the lowest-rung worker, which would be a high-schooler flipping burgers. Intents, Shminets, the definition of "minumum wage" is the minimum. Secondly, these "statistics" almost certainly arrive at their result by making use of "averages" for a Metropolitan Area. Yet, a minimum wage worker, by definition, is probably demanding *minimum* housing, not *average* housing. For example, I pay $605/month for a very spacious one-bedroom apartment in a neighborhood dominated by immigrants. Many of my colleagues from work who live in some of the neighborhoods around here dominated by white 20-somethings pay as much as $900-$1000 for a studio apartment. Thirdly, the idea that poor workers cannot afford housing is easily disproven by simply *meeting* immigrants to this country. For example, there are "regulars" at my Church that represent 105 different national heritages. Just this weekend, I met three immigrants from Cameroon and four others from Coite d'Ivoire for the first time. As you might imagine, a great many of them are arriving here without much in the way of skills. As you also might imagine, not all of them are living on the streets. Fourthly, our perspective on the "poor" in this country needs to be tempered by the fact that the many social statistics in this country are dragged down by the presence of immigrants. For example, if a family of four from El Salvador arrives in this country with few skills and lives in a one-bedroom apartment with clean water, sanitary plumbing, and central heating - has this country failed this family or succeeded for it? JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
