Trent at TheSimpleDollar.com advises a reader currently earning the minimum wage on how to plan his financial future. Not surprisingly, one of his recommendations is to get a higher-paying job:
If you’re working minimum wage and have a good work record, you can probably move up from where you’re at. Make yourself presentable and look at local stores with a more upscale image; these places often pay significantly more than a minimum wage. For example, my aunt has never worked a day in her life, but she cleaned herself up, walked into Home Depot at age fifty five, and walked out with a $10 an hour job. When you start this job, maintain a good work record and show that you’re capable of handling responsibility every chance you get.Advocates of raising the minimum wage often overlook the fact that the minimum wage is not meant to be the highest wage someone will ever earn in his or her career. It's a starting point, a floor, not a ceiling. If you're not satisfied earning the minimum wage, well, you're not supposed to be. Grab the want ads and start looking.
No one works minimum wage because they aren't aware that higher paying jobs are available.
And I wonder where GB comes up with the idea that minimum wage advocates "often overlook" the fact that not all wages are the same. I have a feeling he just made that one up. Either that, or he's offering an argument against claims made by stone cold idiots.
Indeed. We should all either manage hedge funds, or shut up about money!
By the way, I'm opposed to minimum wages myself, but I don't feel the need to be petty and moronically moralizing about it. I think the simple, demonstrable economic arguments suffice.
I clicked on the link and read through as much as I could stand. Trent claims to provide his minimum-wage supplicant "Ted" with a "financial plan" to secure his economic future.
The advice gets no less hilariously condenscending and simplistic--what a combo--than the tidbit GB recycles above. Other brilliant enrichment strategems by Trent include:
1. Spend as little as possible. "Get creative about food acquisition" Disclosure: I didn't click on that particular link, as I was afraid it would be about road kill, government cheese or dumpster diving.
2. Save money.
3. Work hard.
4. Attend community college.
Does this simpleton go around claiming to be a "financial planner"?
Guiding working people out of poverty is extremely difficult work that calls for rare talent and specialized knowledge. If it was easy, there wouldn't be so very many poor people. I have a lot of respect for the people who actually do pull people out of poverty.
Unfortunately, far too many people on the left and the right look at poor people as soapboxes to stand on and preach.
Trent also had advice about how not to "scare people away" from a blog. Can't imagine how stupid that was...
The food link you didn't click on describes how he managed to get enough food when he didn't have enough money to buy regular meals. (And it explicitly excludes dumpster diving, by the way.)It is easy to describe how to climb out of poverty: Earn more, spend less. But no one said it's easy to do. It's hard to do, and unpleasant.
But it's a long stretch from something not being easy, to something being impossible without the help of a kindly outsider possessed of "rare talent and specialized knowledge."
For example, everyone knows how to lose weight. It's easy to explain: Eat less, exercise more. But it's hard to do, and so we still have plenty of fat people around. And yet it remains possible for them to lose weight without hiring every last one of them a personal trainer and nutritionist.
At the end of the day, a person who wants to improve his financial situation has to earn more and spend less. No one can do that for him.
Not exactly. It's easy to describe in uselessly vague terms how to climb out of poverty. But to describe how in useful, specific terms based on individual aptitudes and situations is very difficult work.
I bet Trent's got answers to a lot of thorny social, economic and political problems:
Global warming:
Move away from low-lying coastal areas. These will flood first and disaster insurance is already unavailable or prohibitively expensive in those zones. Alternatively, construct a series of dikes, ditches and dams to ensure the encroaching body of water is diverted elsewhere. Consider a houseboat. Cut investments in ski resorts. Farmers: find out which crops will no longer grow well in your region as it warms and stop planting them! Avoid areas affected by hurricanes and other severe weather.
The Palestinian/Israeli conflict:
All parties should agree to solve their disagreements through compromimse and diplomacy, not violence. Focus on the positives.
Bad breath
Exercise good oral hygiene, e.g. brush frequently. Avoid garlic, onions, cigars.
Nuclear waste hazards
Dispose of all such wastes safely in a place distant from population centers. Transport it there safely. Develop new technologies to reduce the amount of radioactive waste generated in the nuclear power process.
Dating woes
For men: look good; women tend to prefer physically attractive men. Obtain the highest-paying, most prestigious job you can; women go for men who have money and/or status. For women: stay in shape. Men usually like slender women. Be generous with compliments. Men like to be flattered. Pay close attention to grooming. Consider plastic surgery; South Africa, Thailand and some other emerging countries offer better prices for patients willing to travel and take on the increased medical risk.
Giving advice is so much fun! I should give Trent's "simpledollar.com" blog a run for its money.
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