Author Topic: lowest-paid nurse in America gripes about minimum wage  (Read 2335 times)

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Offline franksolich

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lowest-paid nurse in America gripes about minimum wage
« on: February 05, 2008, 04:17:39 AM »
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2818473

Oh my.

Ms. Ed, the unappellated eohippus:

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Horse with no Name  (1000+ posts)       Mon Feb-04-08 09:51 PM
Original message
 
I graduated from High School in 1981

Minimum wage was $3.35/hr

27 years later it is only $5.85.

THAT is what is wrong in America.

The story behind the headline is that last week, the unappellated eohippus complained that the $500-per-month Blue Cross-Blue Shield plan she has at work is 25% of her monthly income.

Ms. Ed either lied about the size of her premium, or grossly understated her income as a registered nurse.

No registered nurse in America makes anything like only $24,000 per year.

Or perhaps the unappellated eohippus is a keyboardist in a hospital or clinic, rather than a nurse, but wishes to be seen by other primitives as a nurse.

Anyway, like a row of dominos, when a primitive lies once, the lies start tumbling out, and one is reasonably sure Ms. Ed is going to continue feeding both the primitives and decent civilized people some real whoppers.

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devilgrrl  (1000+ posts)      Mon Feb-04-08 09:53 PM
Original message
 
I also graduated in 1981 and most of my classmates are right-wing assholes.

How did our generation get so conservative?

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tekisui  (1000+ posts)      Mon Feb-04-08 09:53 PM
Response to Original message

1. When I started working in 1996, it was $5.15.

12 years later....$5.85

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htuttle  (1000+ posts)      Mon Feb-04-08 09:54 PM
Response to Original message
 
2. Same here

And I don't think $5.85 buys anywhere near what $3.35 bought back then.

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leftofthedial (1000+ posts)      Mon Feb-04-08 09:56 PM
Response to Original message

3. there should be a MAXIMUM WAGE/INCOME and it should be indexed to the minimum wage

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Lydia Leftcoast  (1000+ posts)      Mon Feb-04-08 11:02 PM
Response to Reply #5

25. I don't remember 1981 prices very well, except that my housemates and I paid $270 a month total plus utilities for a three-bedroom apartment on the top floor of triple-decker house. As a graduate student, I lived on about $500 a month. When one housemate got a teaching job that paid $18,000 a year, her first words upon seeing the offer were, "$18,000? What am I going to do with all that money?"

However, I do remember prices from 1968, when the minimum wage was $1.25:

A pair of jeans was $7 for Levi's, $5 for Penney's store brand

Shirts were between $3 and $5. That year, my mom got me an embroidered blouse and told me to be careful with it and wear it only for special occasions, because it cost $13.

A quarter's tuition at the University of Minnesota was $125 for commuters

Tuition, room, and board at my private college alma mater was $2200

You could get a meal at a mom-and-pop restaurant for less than a dollar

Paperback books were 99 cents

Apartments were $50-100 per bedroom

New cars started at $1500

Canned food was less than 50 cents per can, sometimes as cheap as 10 cents

The most expensive meat at the grocery store was $2.98 a pound

If someone built a $50,000 house, you knew they were rich

When moving out of her house, my mom found a postcard I had written from New York in 1973, informing her that I had paid the "outrageous" price of $2.85 for breakfast.

However, some things were more expensive in real terms:

All electronics were more expensive. A component stereo system started at $200. There were no boomboxes at that point, so stereos were major presents from one's parents. The LPs to play on these stereo systems cost $3.98 for stereo, 2.98 for mono.

When calculators were first introduced in the early 1970s, they cost $300

Pantihose were expensive, $2.00 a pair, and they didn't last long.

Plane flights were more expensive, but the service was so much better that yesterday's coach class is closer to today's domestic first class than to today's coach class.

When moving out of her house, my mom found a postcard I had written from New York in 1973, informing her that I had paid the "outrageous" price of $2.85 for breakfast.

On the whole, I think that today's minimum wage would have to be at least $12 an hour to have the same purchasing power that it did in 1968.

If you're interested in yesterday's wages and prices, go to the public library and read old newspapers on microfilm or microfiche.

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Lydia Leftcoast  (1000+ posts)      Tue Feb-05-08 12:13 AM
Response to Reply #32
 
33. It clearly shows that college costs have risen faster than inflation for both private and public colleges.

When I ran my senior year (1972) tuition/room and board charge of $2700, it came out at only about $13,800.

Yet that's more like what total costs at a state school would be now.

I blame rising college costs on administrative bloat. Every institution I ever attended or taught at now has more administrators, all of whom need countless assistants, of course, than it did when I was there, anywhere from 15 to 35 years ago.

Uh-oh.  I find myself in full agreement with a primitive.

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angrycarpenter  (674 posts)       Mon Feb-04-08 09:59 PM
Response to Original message

7. Greed is whats wrong with America

It is pure naked greed that has made wages so low. That and the perception that the working poor somehow deserve to suffer for the bad choices they have made.That is all the proof we need that there are two Americas. $5.85 is worse than slave wages. It is an insult to every thing that I thought America stood for.

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A HERETIC I AM  (1000+ posts)       Mon Feb-04-08 10:21 PM
Response to Reply #7

16. Should "bad choices" be rewarded somehow?

I think the minimum wage needs to be adjusted, don't get me wrong but your statement "That and the perception that the working poor somehow deserve to suffer for the bad choices they have made" strikes me as very curious.

There is plenty that is wrong with this country - a poorly educated populace for starters, but I just don't get your point. The working poor don't "deserve to suffer" by any stretch but is the alternative; that they perhaps be rewarded for making bad choices at all logical?

$5.85 an hour is not worse than slave wages. NO pay is worse. But it is, after all, the minimum wage, not a target for a career high.

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angrycarpenter  (674 posts)       Mon Feb-04-08 10:58 PM
Response to Reply #16

23. That is the rationale for turning their backs and not giving a damn. There is are some who believe that if a person is poor they must have done something stupid to get in the situation they are in and therefore deserve the hardship. Well does a single mom who's husband abandoned her and the kids deserve to suffer further?

How about the man who was run out of a good job by walmart and has no choice but to work there? Does he deserve that? for many of the people who work minimum wage the bad choices were made for them. Is it fair to blame all poverty on stupidity? Many do. That was the point I was trying to make.

And it is worse than slave wages. Slave owners at least fed and housed their slaves. Try affording rent, utilities, and food on minimum wage it cannot be done without public assistance. The people who pay min. wage are counting on food stamps to keep their employees afloat. Minimum wage costs tax payers billions every year.

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ayeshahaqqiqa  (1000+ posts)       Mon Feb-04-08 10:06 PM
Response to Original message
11. Class of '68 here
 
 and, if memory serves, a couple years later the minimum for women (yep, this was before equal pay for equal work) was something like $2.35. And gasoline was 35 cents a gallon, a gallon of milk way under a dollar, etc, etc. It appalls me how slowly the minimum wage creeps up--doesn't begin to cope with inflation.

This primitive is full of excresence.

Ever since the minimum wage was first enacted during the mid-1930s, there has NEVER been one rate for men, one rate for women.  There has ALWAYS been the same rate for men and women.

I suspect the primitive is thinking of the one-half-the-minimum-wage waiters and waitresses make, and during the far distant long-ago youth of the primitive, nearly all were women.

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jimshoes  (1000+ posts)       Mon Feb-04-08 10:08 PM
Response to Original message

12. In 1971 my first factory job paid $1.75 hr. On the other hand, in 1975 I bought a brand new Monte Carlo for $4950.00. But you are right, wages are not keeping up with prices nowadays.

Once again, the primitive reveal their true ages, coming perilously close to the seventh decade of their lives, as betrayed in their reminescences.
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Offline Chris_

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Re: lowest-paid nurse in America gripes about minimum wage
« Reply #1 on: February 05, 2008, 05:06:56 AM »
If Horse with No Brain is indeed a registered nurse, I find her post to very interesting. My sister-in-law just received her LPN license last year. She is working at a somewhat rural hospital making a little over $8 an hour.
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Offline djones520

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Re: lowest-paid nurse in America gripes about minimum wage
« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2008, 06:21:10 AM »
Well I checked the numbers.  It seems on average a Registered Nurse with less then 1 year of experience makes almost 44K a year (and thats figuring at just a 40 hour work week, which I'm pretty sure is a light week for most).

Now a nurse with 20 years of experience on average makes a little over 61K a year on that same 40 hour work week scale.

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Registered_Nurse_(RN)/Hourly_Rate

So I be thinking that this lady be lying through her teeth about either her job, or pay.
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Offline franksolich

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Re: lowest-paid nurse in America gripes about minimum wage
« Reply #3 on: February 05, 2008, 06:29:54 AM »
Well I checked the numbers.  It seems on average a Registered Nurse with less then 1 year of experience makes almost 44K a year (and thats figuring at just a 40 hour work week, which I'm pretty sure is a light week for most).

Now a nurse with 20 years of experience on average makes a little over 61K a year on that same 40 hour work week scale.

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Registered_Nurse_(RN)/Hourly_Rate

So I be thinking that this lady be lying through her teeth about either her job, or pay.

But those numbers must be a few years old.

In Nebraska, which admittedly has a nursing shortage, R.N.s make in the high five-figures, low six figures, depending upon what they do, and that's without overtime.

Even in the small places (45 beds or less hospitals), an R.N., according to newspaper advertisements, starts at something over $70,000 per year, without overtime.

I'm not sure about L.P.N.s; that was once a popular field but doesn't seem so much any more, but if C.N.A.s in nursing homes are making more than $30,000 per year (without overtime), one suspects the L.P.N.s are making in the mid-five figures.

I think Ms. Ed is lying, but whether about her salary or her profession, I haven't figured out.

But her formatting of her posts on Skins's island strongly suggests a great deal of keyboard work.
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Offline Lord Undies

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Re: lowest-paid nurse in America gripes about minimum wage
« Reply #4 on: February 05, 2008, 08:12:29 AM »
Back in the mid-1960's gasoline cost a quarter per gallon.  Movie theater tickets cost a quarter.  An order of French fries at the drugstore lunch counter was 20 cents. 

Today, and order of French Fries starts at $1.00.  Movie tickets are $8.00 - $10.00.  Gasoline is just under $3.00. 

Which item do most folks find an "outrageous" cost?

Offline jukin

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Re: lowest-paid nurse in America gripes about minimum wage
« Reply #5 on: February 05, 2008, 09:50:36 AM »
WOW, that is just a thread of who can lie biggest.

If the DUmp is all minimum wage earners, then the sure are not the gifted and talented they think they are...........or they just could be lying. ::)
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Offline DixieBelle

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Re: lowest-paid nurse in America gripes about minimum wage
« Reply #6 on: February 05, 2008, 11:39:58 AM »
I thought that this new Democratic controlled congress raised the minimum wage?? Did rainbows and lollipops not sprout forth??? Awww......
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Offline Lord Undies

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Re: lowest-paid nurse in America gripes about minimum wage
« Reply #7 on: February 05, 2008, 11:50:56 AM »
I thought that this new Democratic controlled congress raised the minimum wage?? Did rainbows and lollipops not sprout forth??? Awww......

What sprouted was one job out of three disappearing for teenagers.  Instead of three kids sharing $15.00, now only two share it.  That's the reality where it applies.  Business is not out any more money than they were before the increase. 

Liberalism always fails to achieve its goal.  But they never give up, no matter how many people they hurt.

Offline DixieBelle

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Re: lowest-paid nurse in America gripes about minimum wage
« Reply #8 on: February 05, 2008, 12:08:40 PM »
*Liberal banging his head against the wall*

Conservative: "Why are you doing that?"

Liberal: "Because it feels so good when I stop."

 :-)
I can see November 2 from my house!!!

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Forget change, bring back common sense.
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No, my friends, there’s only one really progressive idea. And that is the idea of legally limiting the power of the government. That one genuinely liberal, genuinely progressive idea — the Why in 1776, the How in 1787 — is what needs to be conserved. We need to conserve that fundamentally liberal idea. That is why we are conservatives. --Bill Whittle

Offline Chris_

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Re: lowest-paid nurse in America gripes about minimum wage
« Reply #9 on: February 07, 2008, 11:08:13 PM »
If Horse with No Brain is indeed a registered nurse, I find her post to very interesting. My sister-in-law just received her LPN license last year. She is working at a somewhat rural hospital making a little over $8 an hour.

The hospitals here are DESPERATE for LN's and RN's.  Licensed nurses make $30,000 a year MINIMUM.
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Offline overlord

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Re: lowest-paid nurse in America gripes about minimum wage
« Reply #10 on: February 08, 2008, 12:02:44 AM »
If Horse with No Brain is indeed a registered nurse, I find her post to very interesting. My sister-in-law just received her LPN license last year. She is working at a somewhat rural hospital making a little over $8 an hour.

The hospitals here are DESPERATE for LN's and RN's.  Licensed nurses make $30,000 a year MINIMUM.

My ex-wife was a CNA for a while (this was about 10 years ago) and made 23000/yr.  How the hell does a LPN make only 24?? :bs:

As for min wage, I don't know about you guys but I haven't made that since I was 16 and got my first raise.  And this was just pushing plates through a dishwasher.  If a person can't go out and make more than min wage they really need to re-evaluate their decisions.  Hell, where I work now the absolute bottom starting pay is $10.50, and that's just for putting the blue crap in the toilets :loser: :lmao:
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Women and children are precious resources to be protected at all costs.  Men are expendable commodities whose function is to protect those resources, at all costs.

So how does it feel to know that someone's kid in the heart of america has blood on their hands to defend your rights so you can maintain a lifestyle that insults his family's existence?

Offline Chris_

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Re: lowest-paid nurse in America gripes about minimum wage
« Reply #11 on: February 08, 2008, 12:09:14 AM »
I don't think you can walk into a hospital in this city and not make $15 an hour as an LN.  Last time I looked, Vanderbilt University had a dozen openings for nurses.  And it's not like it's expensive to live here.  This is the south.  You can rent a 2-bedroom apartment out in the country for $500 a month.
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Offline overlord

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Re: lowest-paid nurse in America gripes about minimum wage
« Reply #12 on: February 08, 2008, 12:11:50 AM »
I don't think you can walk into a hospital in this city and not make $15 an hour as an LN.  Last time I looked, Vanderbilt University had a dozen openings for nurses.  And it's not like it's expensive to live here.  This is the south.  You can rent a 2-bedroom apartment out in the country for $500 a month.

When I was still married we lived in AL and paid 500/month for 1400 sq ft 3/2 in a good neighborhood.  Very good times

Destroy all that which is evil, so that which is good may flourish

Women and children are precious resources to be protected at all costs.  Men are expendable commodities whose function is to protect those resources, at all costs.

So how does it feel to know that someone's kid in the heart of america has blood on their hands to defend your rights so you can maintain a lifestyle that insults his family's existence?