When we go hunting for, say an ipod, we say to ourselves "BS, I ain't payin' more than X dollars for that item". We automatically assign a "maximum worth" to that item. We WANT the item…but simply refuse to pay more than X dollars for it.

A predetermined percentage of that purchase price eventually filters down to the "janitor" or the "electronic assembler". In other words, the "minimum wage worker".

Those percentages is FIXED. Thus the workers wages are REALLY controlled by how much we as consumers are willing to pay for all of our toys.

When we demand "lower prices", we AUTOMATICALLY low-ball wages.

End of story.

"E-mail addresses will be used by our staff to contact you…" Can you answer my question? I need some kind of closure, or at least guidance to what I am looking for!

Too many people are juggling multiple jobs, working more hours than they can count, and still not making enough to pay their bills. And as the number of working poor grows, so — as unfair as it sounds — does the number of millionaires ? now 10 million.

The top 1% of households take home 21.8% of all income – more than double the 8.9% rate of thirty years ago. This is the highest concentration of income in the hands of the wealthiest one percent since 1928, a year before the great stock market crash.

At no time in our history has the disparity in personal income been so wide and in no other industrialized country today does the disparity even come close. Record-high CEO compensation is more than 400 times the take-home pay of an average American worker.

For an industrialized country like ours, there is no parallel to this growing income divide between the highest- and lowest-paid workers. Corporate executives in England, for instance, make half as much as American business leaders while the lowest-paid workers there earn a higher wage than their American counterparts.

Pegging the minimum wage to a percentage of median income would raise it and then keep the lowest paid workers on pace with future increases of the rest of the workforce. Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit for low wage workers ? a budget cost that would easily be offset by raising taxes on the very wealthy or closing tax loopholes for large corporations ? would also help low-income families teetering on the brink of poverty.

Government programs alone will fall short of the mark. Enabling workers to more easily join unions could make an immediate and wide scale impact in that union workers make more than their non-union counterparts. In Maryland, for example, low wage union workers make 15 percent more in wages than their non-union counterparts and are 25 percent more likely to get employer-paid health care and a pension.

Unless these and other steps are employed to address the growing income imbalance in our economy, we could wake up one day and find ourselves in a country of the very rich and the working poor.

I can totally relate to minimum wage earners and how hard it is to support a family. We are a one-income household because I cannot afford to work part time and put two young children in daycare.

However, I understand that my earnings were based on the decisions I made. I worked hard to better my situation, so it is hard for me to understand how someone my age could be permanently doomed to only minimum wage positions. In fact, I made a mistake very early on in my career. I was offered a supervisor positon at both McDonalds and my second job if I stayed until I was 18. At the time, I didn't have the foresight to see how beneficial that experience could have been for me. So I know from experience that if you work hard enough you won't need a mandated wage increase. You'll be promoted before any increase even takes effect.

I want to be informed, so please enlighten me as to what specific jobs pay only the minimum. It's been my experience that most positions pay more.

When will we realize that businesses never suffer from minimum wage hikes or tax hikes–these added costs show up as increased unemployment and/or at the retail level.

Things aren't broken and as for the people complaining that they don't have enough. Obviously you have a PC with an internet connection. Than do you have a place to live, a refrigerator, a telephone, food to eat, electricity, and running water? Stop saying that the rest of the world is doing so much better than us when 95% of it can't answer yes to even 2 of those items above.

I myself have been on SS disability for over 20 years and receive $952.00 per month, and am sure with inflation it will increase by $20.00 per month next year.

Good luck to all of the non greedy min. wage earners out there…who can't even afford Food and Rent.