TEST, HOW MUCH MUST YOU MAKE, TO HAVE DISPOSABLE INCOME?

by Ben B.Boothe, Sr. | ‎Saturday, May 3, 2014, 2:48 PM (CDT)

How Much Do You Need to Live On?

How Much is Your Nut?

BootheGlobalPerspectives is taking a survey and providing a checklist test, to help you see how much you must make, to have disposable income. Our affiliate, Boothe and Associates Appraisers reports that the higher disposable income in an area, the higher appraised values are for real estate and companies.  

We would love to hear back from you, so please write us at: ben@benboothe.com (see www.benboothe.com) as to your occupation, industry and city. Just what does it cost to live in your industry and in your area? If you wish, we will not publish your name, if you so request. 

TYPICAL EXPENSES THAT MUST BE PAID BEFORE DISPOSABLE INCOME 

Recently, I spoke to a good friend who is an attorney and he said, "My nut is $40,000 per month, by the time I pay all of my bills and payments, only then can I pay myself." I asked a real estate broker and he said: "My nut is $22,000 per month before I pay myself anything." A school teacher told me. "I have to pay $3,000 per month in bills before I have anything for myself."

A clerk at WalMart told me: "My expenses, house and car payment, gas, utilities, food, clothing, doctor bills and medicines run $2,700 per month.  I make $1,400 per month and have to borrow from my parents every month to live."One man told me that "Minimum wage is so low, that I can do better on welfare than to get a job."   

It would seem that we are forcing people into poverty and onto welfare, because we are not paying livable wages. Indeed our minimum wage puts people automatically on the poverty rolls. 

So, like the squirrel, at the top of this article, who has to crack open the nut before he can eat anything, "What is your nut?"

Here is a brief test, and you calculate how much you have to make to survive, before you have any "disposable income".  

MONTHLY: 

Now HOW MUCH IS YOUR NUT? $________, on a monthly basis.

Calculate it and let us know.  How much money do you have to make (after withholding)

The minimum wage was passed in the United States with the concept that no American should live in poverty, that every American, willing to work, should be able earn enough to pay basic living expenses.  The law represented a compassion and a safety net, because America was supposedly a "good" nation and blessed by God with riches because it was good.

Any nation, went the idea, which could afford to carry on wars, and send foreign aid throughout the world, could provide a fair wage for Americans here at home who wanted to work.  So the idea went. We have elected a different breed of people, who seem to believe that anyone not blessed to be in the country club, is sub-human and entitled to sub-wages.

Apparently, no a better word is obviously, our elected Senators in the Republican party don't seem to have that central idea of compassion and security for Americans anymore.  They have forgotten that a minimum wage is not welfare. It is protection to assure that people get paid fairly for the work they do. Not a hand out. More like a hand up. 

So, if you are making this minimum wage, of $7.25 per hour and work a 40 hour week, you will make a gross income (before withholding) of $290.00 per week.  Or $1,160. per month.  Take out, say $180 in withholdings, and it is about $980, take home.  How far does that go, to pay your "nut" or your basic expenses before you have anything.  For some reason, the minimum wage has not been increased to match inflation, in decades, because some politicians don't believe that Americans should have a livable wage, or perhaps some politicians believe that American businessmen should not have to pay a fair livable wage.

Can you imagine how difficult, even impossible, for a person to live, have a spouse,take care of children, on $290 per week?  This is how our elected Senators seem to represent Americans by limiting those who need it most with this kind of income?  Is this how the richest nation on earth provides opportunity for our citizens who want to work?  In this land, where the richer have a higher and higher control of all of the wealth in America, now that they have achieved their goals to control much of the income of the nation, is this an example of their wisdom, compassion, fairness, in compensation the millions of people who they pay? The very same people who helped them to get to the top, by sacrificing their income, for the benefit of the biggest and richest of our nation? 

Yesterday in Washington, D.C. Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked a bill — cosponsored by Bernie Sanders and other Senators— that would boost the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from today’s $7.25 starvation wage. Now a raise to $10.10 per hour for a 40 hour week would only have increased the "livable wage" to $400 per week or $1,616 per month (before withholdings).  Only one Republican voted to even consider the measure.

Or put the other way, every Republican in this process,  except one, voted against it, something Bernie Sanders called "disappointing but not surprising." But there’s still hope. Bernie met last weekend in Charlotte, N.C., with fast-food restaurant employees who are part of a growing grassroots movement for a minimum wage increase. “What you are doing is extraordinarily important and brave,” he told the young workers who are demanding that billion dollar companies, which make massive profits such as McDonalds, agree to pay a minimum of $15.00 per hour. “You are saying that you are tired of being exploited.” said Senator Sanders.   We at Global Perspectives, would like those Senators who voted against minimum wage increases:

1. To let us know how much you have to earn, to pay all of your bills, to "crack your expenses", before you have any disposable income.

2. We would be interested in knowing, how much expenses you generate at taxpayer expense, to run your Senate office.  

I doubt that any Senator  (once called the "Millionaires Club" of Congress) has the courage to tell us that, in light of their votes, but challenge you, as citizens and voters,  tell us, we would like to know. If you have something positive to share, we will consider publishing it, but first tell us what you have to earn just to pay all of your bills by the schedule in this article. Tell us how much we taxpayers pay of your operating expense. Tell us how much salary you make at taxpayer expense.

To our thousands of readers around the world, I predict that these Senators will not respond, because it would be too embarrassing for them, but let's see. 

Note the following chart. It shows that across most of the nation, that the minimum wage does not pay enough to even pay basic expenses. 

What can we say as responsible American citizens? When I look at my lifestyle, I see that my travel expenses alone, are almost double, what a typical person making minimum wage earns.  Do we blame this on them for lack of initiative, skill or work ethic?  Or do we see to it that our system, gives good people who are willing to work a hand up, a fair shake, and an opportunity to achieve some part of the American dream?

Every person I have hired in business makes much than the minimum wage, because it is fair and the right thing to do. 

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO "RIGHT AND FAIR" TO WORKERS?

In my early work years, one summer, while I was a high school student, I got a job at the U.S. Post Office. At the time, I could make a fair wage working as a clerk in my dad's retail store or slightly more, working at the Post Office. I learned that I could make another 50 cents an hour, working for 6 Flags Over Texas.  But all of these wages, had a foundation of  "pay the minimum wage, that or better" was the motto of good managers in business.   It was a blessing for me.

I had purchased a Mustang, for $2,800 and I made good headway paying for that car, with what I earned.  But then, minimum wage was high enough that I could save a little and buy a new car.  These workers on minimum today cannot even afford to put gas in a car, much less buy a new one. 

That was many years ago.  Today, as the chart shows, political pressure has paralyzed and frozen minimum wage so that it will not even allow a person to pay essential living expenses.  

Shame on our business managers, who seem to have lost an ethic that made America great, that ethic of: "A fair wage for a fair day's work". 

Yet, more money is being made at upper levels (people who make more than $400,000 per year) than ever, at the cost of the people on minimum wage that work their hearts out, to  make those wealthy company profits possible. 

The USA has dropped in economic progress, so that many nations now have lower levels of people on welfare, and higher minimum wages than our nation does.  We have lost leadership as the wealthiest nation on earth.  We have become a nation, that shows huge wealth and profits, by less than 5% of our population, with concentrated wealth and earnings at the top, with the other 95% and particularly those at the lowest levels, making less, and yet paying higher tax rates than those at the top.  It is a violation of our ethic as a nation, a violation of our ethic as a nation of Christian values, and violates our notion that people who work, have a right to be paid a fair wage for a fair days work.

We repeat: Shame on our political leaders who sit up front in their churches and have no social ethic for helping people, or remembering it was the Christ who said: "A laborer is worth his hire." 

If you can live on minimum wage, bless you! We particularly would like to hear from you, as we would like to know how you do it. But for all of the rest of our readers, tell me how much is "your nut"? How much to you have to make, to pay all of your bills, and have any left over, to save or pay yourself.  

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