‘Real disconnect’ between cost of living and workers’ paychecks | Meet the Press Reports

Kanika Williams is a single mother of four children and lives in Cleveland, Ohio. She works three part-time jobs cleaning houses, delivering food to doors and sorting mail for UPS. She actively participates in her children's schools. She prepares dinner for them every night and remains present in her lives. my kids that's like number one so my kids motivate me I want us to have things I want us to do things Kanika organizes her life like sections of a quilt taking care of her kids making money spending time with friends each piece is sewn intentionally when I have a roof over my head over my head, I know when my necessary little bills are paid, i.e. lights, water, gas, insurance, rent, I'm not talking about Netflix or any of those desired things, once I have those things taken care of, I have freedom.

Kanika has a medical technician degree and the rise of informal work has given people like Kanika a certain level of autonomy, but she remembers how things used to be for previous generations. Her mother, Brenda, just retired from her decades-long job as a custodian at an elementary school. I went to that school when I was in first grade and that's where she's retiring from, so those 30-year jobs, those 40-year jobs are gone to the US unless we start right now between our work temp at twenty dollars an hour and her job at UPS at 16.50 an hour, both above Ohio's minimum wage, she says she brings home approximately fifteen hundred dollars a month, what is your definition of a

living

wage? to be able to pay your bills, your monthly bills, to be able to allocate part of it to savings and I believe.

For me at home, if I earned 3,500 a month, what would that extra money be? clouds the debate over how much

workers

should be paid in the United States has a controversial history it took decades of debates over strikes and a Great De

press

ion for Congress to pass a law in 1938 establishing a federal minimum wage the federal minimum wage was It last rose to 7.25 per hour in 2009 and wage growth has not kept pace with labor productivity, so

workers

are more efficient but have less to show for it. Anyone who works for a

living

deserves to be pay you a salary that respects the value of the work you do and covers the

cost

of living.

Michael Shields is a political affairs researcher at Ohio, a liberal nonprofit Economic Policy Institute for several years. For decades there has been a

real

disconnect

between the amount of wealth workers produce and what is reflected in their wages. I think it's under power. More of all the wealth produced in our economy is being consolidated by the very rich and by corporations. Furthermore, workers are having less success than in the past in negotiating their share of the wealth they made possible abroad in New York. At first we were just friends. In fact, I told my friend I was working with that the guy he trained.

I was

real

ly cute but too short for me and then we made plans to hang out on a Saturday and everyone we were working with was like, Is it a day? It's a date? I think we got home around one after two in the morning. a good date, so you got over the hype When Taylor and Maggie Mendes started a new life in Florida, things were bumpy. Maggie worked nights in Duncan earning 11 an hour, which at the time was a dollar above the state minimum wage. Taylor was working in a factory. work and both behind closed doors, we went through difficult times, but it just strengthens character and made us much stronger than we were before, so Taylor got a job as a teller at TD Bank in Melbourne, Florida, a group called Family Promise the helped with emergency shelter and meals and taught them how to budget.

Taylor's new boss helped and found me housing once I got into banking. She knew the sky was the limit from there, but between her job, Maggie's night shift and taking care of her two little ones they never saw each other. Then her daughter started a new school but there is no bus so Maggie quit her job. to take care of the kids and take your daughter to and from school every day you have a good day honey, you should always try to appreciate what you have, you know, the prices of everything, cars, food and housing, They have risen a lot and income has not increased one bit.

I'm earning a decent salary for what I earn and there are a lot of people earning. much less than me and I have no idea how they are doing it. Stunning new inflation figures are released today, while high inflation has been in the headlines since 2021, certainly not the first time in our country's history. Public enemy number one, inflation in 1974. Inflation has risen steadily since 2005, reaching a 40-year high in 2022. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says that at the same time, real wages inflation-adjusted rates have only risen slightly, leading to a growing call to raise the minimum wage from 725 to 15. an hour Congress has debated the issue with its advocates arguing that it will lift people out of poverty, no one should work like millions do today 40 hours a week at a job and still live below the poverty line and critics say it will

cost

jobs if there is not too much increase too quickly they will be forced to reduce their workforce 30 states and four territories have already raised the minimum wage above federal law New York is one of those states, and lawmakers have gone a step further by tying future increases to inflation Howard Potter is the owner of p Master Images, a photography company design and printing in Utica, New York.

He did not have an easy upbringing, he was raised by a single mother, bounced from house to house until he became a ward of the state as a person who lived in poverty at certain times. knows what it's like to go to food pantries growing up in group homes I didn't have anyone hold my hand to tell me how to do something for myself after college he says he was making a lot of money in a factory but he had a job secondary. and a dream, so when he was 25 he cashed in his 401k and with hard work and courage he built his printing

press

from scratch with his wife.

He's in America, we lose focus on what hard work really is, we think 40 hours a week. is all we should have to contribute and then when you look back at the early 1900s and even after that, most people worked 60, 70, 80 hours a week to be broke. Howard likes to say that his employees are family, he finishes, he finishes four days. works the week and pays them a dollar above the current state minimum wage of 1420 an hour, but when the state raised the minimum wage he spoke out against it, he is leaving small business owners no choice when the state imposes those mandates because They have to assume costs, so they have to innovate and stay at the forefront;

Otherwise, the only option is to keep raising prices and hope your customers keep coming through the door. Why does increasing employees' salaries automatically mean that the product has to be more expensive? It doesn't always necessarily guarantee that, but in most cases, if they have high turnover or things of that nature, you have to pay to promote the job, get the next person and all those costs increase, why when a government impose a salary? increase that contributes to inflation, but when other companies do it, forcing you to increase your wages, that doesn't contribute well to inflation when you, it's a very good question because when you do it as a business, you do it on a schedule where you can afford to do it so it's controlled costs when the government does it it's forced it's not controlled Kanika puts together different sources of income to keep food on the table I'm running on beans you know, I don't have rice you know, but how do I do it? we make it work, you give back what you put out, you have to give it back once we get out, we make it happen.

I find that we found a way. Taylor works 30 to 40 hours a week at the bank at 20 50 an hour this equates to approximately 2500 a month Kanika Taylor and Maggie receive some form of government assistance such as food stamps, Medicaid and rental assistance. The fact that neither family can make ends

meet

without help raises the question of what constitutes a living wage. MIT has a Living Wage Calculator that analyzes the cost of eight basic needs in each county in the US, according to which Taylor would need to earn $37.97 per hour to support her family, almost double her current salary .

I mean, it's amazing, but sadly not, to live in Cuyahoga. Kanika County, earning less than twenty dollars an hour, would need to earn forty dollars and 44 cents an hour or approximately eighty-four thousand dollars a year. He says he's afraid of losing his benefits if he makes too much money. Do you think the problem? is that if you earn a certain amount you will no longer be able to qualify for those benefits, but that extra amount does not replace the help you are receiving, it is exactly like that, they will probably accept Medicaid or food stamps, so now when you take my food stamps, it that I'm trying to build is gone, you're not allowing me to do what the program is meant to do and the program is meant to get people back to stabilization despite their constant financial struggles Kanika Taylor and Maggie.

They are doing what families do all the time making the most of what they have Kanika is not immune to worry, but she doesn't let it rule her life, just because you live on minimum wage doesn't mean you have to act like you're poor or you have to be depressed all the time, find the light in the darkness and keep going because you can't stop. Thank you for watching our YouTube channel. Follow today's top stories and breaking news by downloading NBC News. application