Apparently in many parts of the country, the minimum wage is below the poverty line, so in essence you can be employed, working over 40 hours a week, and still be unable to provide a for a family of three. I found this fact perplexing, so I thought I needed the careful logic of Abbott and Costello.
Lou: I am below the poverty line, things are desperate.
Bud: Then you need a job... go to work, Lou.
Lou: I have a job!
Bud: Then all is well.
Lou: But I can't afford to live and support my family.
Bud: I thought you said you had a job.
Lou: I do.
Bud: Then why'd you say you can't support your family?
Lou: Because I can't!
Bud: But you just said you had a job.
Lou: I know.
Bud: Do you have a job or are you living below the poverty line?
Lou: I'm living below the poverty line. A lot of us are.
Bud: Then you don't have a job?
Lou: I do have a job. A minimum-wage job that I can't even support my family on.
Bud: Are you working illegally?
Lou: It's a legal job, Bud!
Bud: A legal job and you're living below the poverty line?
Lou: Precisely.
Bud: Oh, I get it. You're working part-time?
Lou: It's full-time. Forty hours a week! They need to raise the minimum wage.
Bud: But if they raise the minimum wage, it will put people out of work.
Lou: Who?
Bud:The people who are living below the poverty line.
Lou: I'm living below the poverty line!
Bud: Exactly. Isn't it better to be working and living below the poverty line, than not working and living below the poverty line? That way you have a sense of pride.
Lou: But I need more money to get by.
Bud: Do you want to put people out of work? Do you want to be responsible for them losing their jobs?
Lou: No.
Bud: That's the spirit. You all share in getting less.
Lou: Why can't we all share in getting more?
Bud: That's socialism.
Lou: Then what's sharing and getting less?
Bud: That's capitalism!
Lou: Why is getting a little more socialism?
Bud: Because if you all get a little more, someone is going to get less.
Lou: Who?
Bud: The person who used to get more. The job makers.
Lou: Why can't they make a little less?
Bud: Well, that's un-American! This is the free market... Do you want to destroy
American capitalism?
Lou: Of course not.
Bud: Do you want to stifle the American economy. Suffocate ingenuity?
Lou: No.
Bud: That's the spirit.
Lou: But I can't support my family. Bud, I work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, no vacations, and I still can't support my family.
Bud: Criticize. Criticize. Be thankful you have a minimum wage. There was a time you could have been paid less than minimum.
Lou: There was less than minimum?
Bud: Yes! Be thankful that these are the good times.