Yes, but you aren't including licensing, safety stuff, cleaning supplies, first aid training and each state has different regulations on different numbers of children. For example, if you take an infant in it drastically reduces your ability to take in more children. I believe in our state the max number of infants is two or three if you don't have other children. I can see how it would be tempting to just not accept infants. I just read an article that there simply isn't enough providers in our state. Parents are on wait lists for months. Sometimes they get calls years later saying an opening is finally available. Usually by then they hopefully found someone else but yes, there is a disconnect between what parents can or are willing to pay and the actual value of the job. Sorry but you would have to pay me a lot to take care of kids all day. I can also see how parents can only afford so much especially if you are a single parent.

Arcadia- I grew up with family owned businesses. Though some are big enough and want to continue to help their employees my father has decided it is simpler to just run the business on his own with help from my mother so they down sized. Even though small businesses hire fewer in employees individually they do add up because there are so many small businesses. He of course, will be fine and can run a business either way but a person who can't start or run their own business now has a few less job opportunities. Tanaqui- Krueger and Card is the most touted one that claims there is no effect on employment and it is so pushed because it is one of a tiny sample that came to that conclusion. They did a study specifically on New Jersey and Pennsylvania while the more robust studies looked at states in varying levels of economic conditions. Here is a little article so I don't have to hash out the whole thing. http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2015/december/effects-of-minimum-wage-on-employment/ since it is now well past midnight. It's a start at least. Also, when the studies are done they are done on very small increases. Yes, percentages are big when you are talking 4.25 to 5.05 (the wage change that the Krueger and Card research was based off of) but really 5.05 wasn't a living wage and that wasn't going to get anyone out of poverty. When people talk about a living wage they are talking big leaps to $15 or even $20 an hour (currently). It is hard to imagine businesses, especially small businesses, surviving that. Do you think that it will have no affect at all even with large changes? If it doesn't than it would make sense to make it an upper middle class wage. I know the teens that work for minimum wage will benefit but I do wonder how the calculations will work out for the adults living in poverty. Do they lose any benefits? I know each state has different calculations and it would be complicated to figure out each one but if they are losing benefits while their co-workers are losing jobs than I can't count that as a win. It is much easier to move to a higher paying job when you already have recommendations and are working than when you have no work experience at all. So making it harder to get your foot in the door is not all that helpful. A business is not a feudalistic Lord. It is an exchange of labor for money. To make a business completely responsible for people they have no control over (unlike feudal lords) is absurd. A subsidy is a payment that encourages something to produce more of it. If you got rid of all welfare, food stamps, low income housing, medicaid, and what not it wouldn't make a difference on whether it was worth while for some business to hire someone for $7.25. Either they need it done for that price or they don't. Taking away all those benefits will not make the business worse off. You will make people who need the benefits worse off. It is better to let prices do their job and to support other programs or benefits to help the poor.

Duplicate post

I was just relating the reality of why it is. I didn't say it was right or wrong. The average American cannot pay someone as much as they make per hour. How would that work? My husband and I found a way around it by working opposing shifts. He worked days and I worked nights but I also understand not everyone can do that.

It may not seem fair but if you think about it a housecleaner can clean many people's homes. Individual households can afford to pay someone $20 an hour when they only show up once a week or twice a month. Compare that to households trying to pay for care that is 40+ hours a week. Added to that fact is that many of them have multiple children and any individual childcare worker can only watch so many children. With infants the number is usually 2-3 max per state law. It is in interesting twist of this thread considering the OP was saying their was a drastic difference in the amount of work of being a SAHM versus a SAHW.

You do realize that Walmart stores pay differently in different locations right? They are competing for employees in some places, minimum wage is different throughout the states, taxes and dealing with zoning is different in different locales. Any store that loses money rather than makes money is going to be shut down after awhile. I mean taking a few years of losses is different than realizing a particular store just isn't going to make money. This oversimplified math of the author of this article makes me think he knows nothing about business.

I've never managed to find a Zoo where a carnivore isn't pacing. Not one.

A) It is irrelevant what you believe CEO's should make. What matters is how a minimum wage law would create unemployment among those who are low skilled or trying to get their foot in the door. The vast majority of studies show this would be the case. It also agrees with the basic supply/demand model. There are some papers that do say there is wiggle room to push wages up while not greatly affecting unemployment. There are dramatically less of them and they seem to be stretching things. B) It is obvious to me that businesses who hire low skilled labor are doing an exchange for the service done not buying someone. Those of you who think so have some strange feudalist mindset. Do you really want businesses to own you? At some point that service isn't worth it. It is obvious that these businesses are subsidizing tax payers. Tax payers could be fully supporting these people and at this rate will be fully supporting more and more as people are priced out of the wage market. C) Employees can be involved in profit sharing if they own shares in a business. Often employees get bonuses when businesses do well. If all employees must always share in the windfall than why do they not share in the loss. An owner can go years without pay, can go bankrupt and lose everything, and can take huge losses because an employee did something wrong. Think of that. The employee screws something up, gets sued, destroys a machine more expensive than his house and who pays for it? The owner. Really, I'm very glad my husband decided to be a safe employee. We had discussed going into business but the employee position is so much easier.

I do hope this new regulation actually works in your favor. Every company will have to figure out how to adapt and I'm sure they will have to take different routes depending on circumstances. Edited because I remembered it was way off topic and OP had a serious concern about her own situation.

This. There isn't enough money for the Office of Child Services to spread them even thinner keeping track of homeschool parents. In our state you can independently homeschool with no regulations and homeschool through a correspondence or charter school program and get free money. I usually hang with homeschoolers that are independent and these are people I wish could school my children rather than me :p and I'm working my fanny off. The case I spoke of above where I stepped in and helped though was actually children in a correspondence program. The teacher contact they had every month, the ILP's, the standardized tests, didn't help clue the state in at all. One had an established LD but the other didn't. They were both waaaayyyy behind but there are hundreds of homeschoolers behind and to think talking with a parent once a month is going to establish the "why" when it could be any number of things is asking an awful lot from a teacher. Through this particular circumstance I met other homeschoolers that really were what most of you call negligent with their children's education and they were all in the programs because they could get money. A lot of stuff doesn't help you though if you don't consistently use it. Anyway, laws requiring testing and all that really just make people feel better about homeschoolers but don't really change how any particular child is being schooled, at least in my experience.

I will say the biggest savings will vary locally. I pay pretty much 0-2 dollars per pound for salmon due to the fact we get it direct from the river or ocean. The only reason I say up to $2 is because there is a little gas and equipment involved. Most of the recipes in the websites and that SNAP program recipe book that was posted would be way more expensive than the estimated cost since anything with fresh fruits or veggies is expensive where I live. Try a three dollar avocado versus a road side stand in California where I bought 25 avocados for $5. We went nuts over the fruit and veggies when we went camping down there.

:grouphug: I am sorry. That is tough! :grouphug:

Thanks for sharing! It is great to hear from someone ahead of you that it is doable and it is working. It is very encouraging!

Maybe meat is more filling?

Well, I have seen this situation and I just stepped in to help. I was working nights and had my own littles during the day but I ended up teaching these children quite a bit until they went back to public school. Things went even more down hill at that point but I hope the got something from the experience.

I want to like Rosie's comment but there is no like button on her post. There is on every other post. Strange.

I'm blessed to happen to have a man who really wants me happy. I want to have him happy too. We discuss things. I don't know how we always come to agreement. I think we just convince each other? We are pretty laid back so maybe that makes it easier to not have a boss?

I must confess I must take her at her word that she was exposed to a certain very small group that drives me nuts and understandably derail the conversation into an emotional hoopla of what people deserve. But it is also very hard for me not to see evidence that she sounds like a person who is greatly failing a self imposed Ideological Turing Test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test

Tsuga, I'm sorry but I was so completely baffled by your statement but I should have just questioned it. I will take you at your word that you are actually trying to figure things out but really you don't come across that way. You come across as someone who is very much trying to convince us of something and nobody was convinced.

Can you give me a quote of my own words anywhere that says I don't believe the Bible says to love one another. Of course, Christians should love one another but I really have no clue what that has to do with a couple deciding the wife should stay home. I didn't just say, "Husbands love your wives". I said they had a specific duty (both spouses do) to take care of each other. A duty, a pledge, a first commitment. The government can't be your family Tsuga. It won't work. They will never replace them. I can pray you have a great church family who would talk this out with you or bring you a meal when you are sick or run your kids to school if your car breaks down. They can't be your husband but my church is definitely my family. I had to leave and take care of a grandmother last month and they brought over meals and offered rides for my children when I was gone. People do need to stick together and help each other out. I don't know why you would assume otherwise because I say spouses have a duty to one another. One does not preclude the other. The whole other thing you are talking about. The pull yourself up the bootstraps people I mentioned earlier are often xenophobic and might say something really really stupid about people from other countries. It drives me nuts. But no one here is arguing that. Only you. You are taking their side. Why?

Tsuga, society didn't pledge me a living. Society didn't promise to take care of me in sickness and health. My husband did. If something happened to him injury, brain damage, whatever and I had to get a job then that is what I would do and I would never ever say he wasn't pulling his weight. I've watched spouses take care of each other through Alzheimers and others through being bed ridden. My husband and I have pledged to take care of one another. It isn't a trade agreement. We are one entity according to taxes, according to property ownership, according to census data we report "household income" not individual income. You shouldn't be angry at strangers for not being there for you but I could completely understand if you were angry at those who should have been there for you and weren't. Your father, your husband, and perhaps others I don't know about. If we lived in the same town I'd offer to bring you a home cooked meal just because I want you to once in a while come home and relax and know what it is to have someone else care. And you absolutely didn't steal from anyone growing up. We as a society know that children can't fend for themselves and we choose to try to offer free education and meals and such to children. You don't have to feel judged for any of that, especially on this thread. Everyone wants you to know that. You are valuable.

When I was a DINK I cleaned the entire house, including dusting, vacuuming, etc before noon on Saturday and had the rest of the weekend to relax. Really when no one is home not much happens to it. When someone is home doing extra cooking or decorating or whatever then there is more to it. Our vehicles were spotless, our paperwork organized, and I had lots of free time. Now everything feels impossible because there are people constantly doing stuff here and piled on top of each other. That isn't ten minutes but it certainly isn't anything like now.

Yes, basically no matter what you say now days someone will be offended. Unless a person seems to be trying to purposely insult me I just take things in stride and assume they are just trying to be friendly. Someone who just met you won't know your pet peeves and obviously with our mobile society you are going to run into all sorts from a variety of backgrounds who have different pet peeves. The other alternative is to just say nothing at all to any stranger. That is not the society I want to live in though.

Don't let outsiders place a value on your life Tsuga. Your husband may have left but you are worth a billion to your children, I'm sure. So they can't pay you. Who cares? They love and need you. There are many people walking around hurting and they need to step on someone else to feel a little higher. Don't let them. Move on with your own life, doing for those you love and don't join them. Life is not fair but it sure is easier when people are kind to each other not stepping on one another so don't be tempted to join in. Wages aren't for valuing people. They are the value of a task. If I was paying someone to mow my lawn and it became too expensive I would do it myself or not have that money for other things. That says nothing absolutely nothing about how much I value the actual person who mows the lawn. In fact my children work cheaper than anyone else and trust me, they are very valuable to me. So don't confuse wages or jobs with people's values even if you've heard someone do that. Money values are for things and for tasks. It stinks that sometimes we don't have enough to trade. The trick is recognizing that those values don't apply to us as people but the things we are selling, specific skills or tasks.