She Works 2 Jobs. Her Grocery Budget Is $25. This Is Life Near Minimum Wage

[demmiblue]

Joyce Barnes sometimes pauses, leaving the grocery store. A crowd shifts past, loaded up with goodies. Barnes pictures herself, walking out with big steaks and pork chops, some crabmeat.

"But I'm not the one," she says. Inside her bags are bread, butter, coffee, a bit of meat and canned tuna — a weekly grocery budget of $25.

The shopping has to fit between her two jobs. Barnes, 62, is a home care worker near Richmond, Va. In the mornings, she takes care of a man who lost both his legs, then hustles off to help someone who's lost use of one side of his body in a stroke. The jobs pay $9.87 and $8.50 an hour. Barnes gets home around 9 p.m., then wakes at 5 a.m. to do it all over again.

It's been like this all her life. Virginia lawmakers last month for the first time approved five sick days to some home health care workers. Paid vacation is a dream. "Work, work, work" is a ring tone one of her grandchildren set for Barnes: "She said, 'Nanny, when you call me, I know it's you, because that's all you do is work.' "

Barnes can't afford not to. Home and health aides are among the lowest-paid jobs in America. Also on that list are cooks and cashiers, file clerks and janitors, drivers and construction workers. The most common low-wage work is in retail.

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/26/979983739/walk-one-day-in-our-shoes-life-near-minimum-wage

Care providers (medical care providers/childcare providers) are not paid their worth... not even close. These are the people, mostly women and women of color, who take care of our precious loved ones. It is mind-boggling that we allow this.

[XanaDUer2]

1. We need a general strike nt

[LizBeth]

2. And, if I spend money frivolously like a 12 dollar bottle of wine, I deduct it from that 25 a week.

I have to eat only what I am sitting on, including doing without those often replaced dated items like milk.

Yup.

But hey....

[brewens]

3. I'm in a pretty low cost of living area and I couldn't make it on that. I'm an all whole foods home

cooking and baking guy too. I could shave a little off of it by more selective sale shopping and settling for lower priced meats, but to really cut my budget, it would be a poorer diet for sure.

[erronis]

4. Why wouldn't we want those that take care of us, our children, our parents, our lives to be able to

live well, be happy, be healthy?

This country has enough many times over to give everyone a livable wage.

Sometimes I think it's because certain of us actually have a hatred of others and want to exact pain.

[TexasBushwhacker]

5. And since she's single, without children at home

she makes too much to qualify for food stamps. Wrap your head around that.

[seta1950]

6. My god

Yet Virginia senator manchin doesn’t think people need $15 minimum wage, this is outrageous.

[Sogo]

7. This kind of story really tugs at my heartstrings.

If I knew how, I'd set up a GoFundMe page for her....

[Solly Mack]

8. K&R

[cinematicdiversions]

9. Well forgiving her student loan debt

And repealing the SALT in the tax code will sort things out for her. /S