>Not necessarily. I think that people who work hard should be able to earn enough money to house, feed, clothe and otherwise care for their families, put something away for the future or for a rainy day, and have a little something left for some fun.
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>So, let's suppose we have a family of 4 and both parents work really hard. Neither parent has a high school diploma because they were really irresponsible in high school and she got pregnant with their first child. Neither parent had the drive or amition to try to get a GEDor otherwise further their education, so they are both working at fast food restaurants.
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>Instead of stopping at the first child, they decide to have a second even though they know that they cannot afford the one they have.
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>So, my question to you is this: how do you propose that they earn enough money to do all the things that you cite above?

This one has been nagging at me since you posted it, and I finally decided to respond more comprehensively.

First, let's acknowledge that your family described above is fictitious. But even so, I do think that two adults willing to work hard and live right (not wasting money on cigarettes, drugs, or other frivolities) should be able to have two kids and not struggle. Tell me they have 6, 8, 10 kids on that kind of wages and yeah, I'll see bad judgment, but two seems quite reasonable.

More importantly, there are a whole lot of jobs we need people to do, including collecting the trash, cleaning offices and hospitals and schools, picking fruit, and yeah, working at McDonald's. If we're not willing to pay a living wage for those jobs, why should we expect anyone to be willing to do them?

Tamar