Pharrell Williams: How do I look?
P.Diddy: Come on playa lose the pink man. It's not gangster.
Pharrell Williams: That's your problem. Everything is gangster with you.
P.Diddy: The name of the song is "I'm Gangsta!"
Pharrell Williams: You're five zippers away from thriller
P.Diddy: And you're one shirt away from Carlton motherfucker.
Pharrell Williams: Fuck off
P.Diddy: You can fuck me all you want but you're gonna change that goddamn pink

Pharrell is 41 years old and he looks like he is 26. The memes about how he's a vampire are hilarious.

Anyways yeah I mean they're all like that about the environment right? Didnt you almost get run over by Julia Roberts in a Prius Amy?

I have a suggestion: a homing missile that tracks via twitter twatter stupidity.

I'll say this again, and I'm gonna be loud about it: When y'all start living your personal lives like you believe the fecal matter leaving your piehole, then I may start to take you seriously.

I'm looking forward to the next numb nutz who blabbers on about the evil of energy use. I'm going to ask several questions, in no particular order:

1. You have removed your home from the grid, and derive your power from solar/wind/geothermal, and your water from a well?
2. you have traded in your car for a bicycle?
3. you grow all your own food?
4. you make your own material and from that fashion your clothing?

Oh, right, I should make sacrifices so you can feel better about things.

No.

The reason people can make asinine statements like that while flying in their own personal airplane, alone, is that they see themselves as one person and the masses as the main issue.

It's easy to tell the nameless, faceless "them" what to do while seeing your own excess consumption as insignificant because it's only one person. You're not polluting the air by driving, the masses of people on the freeway are. Your house isn't the problem, that suburb over there is.

And the folks who insist people can live on 8 or 9 bucks an hour have never had to themselves.
Except that Ernst chick with the bread bags and such. They must have gone through a lot of bread in that house.

"Eco tourism" falls in this category, too-- fly a 747 to go see someplace pristine.

Darth, that reminds me of what Glenn Reynolds often says: "I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who are telling me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis."

And the folks who insist people can live on 8 or 9 bucks an hour have never had to themselves.

I did for years. Just don't buy a new phone when a new one comes out. Don't have cable. Buy bulk, coupon, food banks.

"And the folks who insist people can live on 8 or 9 bucks an hour have never had to themselves."

Yep did that too. Called living within your means. Huge difference in cost if you have roommates.
Was it difficult, sure at times, but was able to save up.

"When y'all start living your personal lives like you believe the fecal matter leaving your piehole, then I may start to take you seriously."

No you won't.

Because the people who live like that are obviously poor and obviously different from you, and they have no idea about anything because they obviously can't make money.

Tell me you mimic anyone in the conservation movement, I'll be pleased.
I can show you a guy who cleared an acre of native Florida flora - some of which can't be found north of Cuba except on the barrier island in question - and then parked an Insight in his driveway to show off how "green" he is!

What is wrong with living on $8-$9/hr? That is just under $20k/year. I've certainly lived on less. Back when I was in college (90s, not 60s) my budget allowed for $1.5-$2 per meal. ~$5/day in food. So partying wasn't in my budget. And a bottle of wine a month or two was a treat. But you can survive just fine and be happy.

Living on $8 or $9 an hour - yep, been there too.

It is called a starter's wage.

You want to earn more? Then make yourself more valuable to the market place.

You don't want to invest in your self through learning or hard work - then learn to live with less.

What is wrong with living on $8-$9/hr? That is just under $20k/year. I've certainly lived on less.
Try it with a wife and kids, then let me know.

You don't want to invest in your self through learning or hard work - then learn to live with less.
Learning while working two jobs isn't actually a realistic thing.
And "hard work" doesn't get a damn thing most places where you're paid this 'starters' wage. Which a lot of folks who have been working in the same place for years get.

Dr Cos, I worked 2 jobs to get through nursing school, when I had 4 kids under 7. I'm not special. I'm not exceptional. I just did it. My husband made $34000 a year when we got married 12 years ago, and we had 2 kids within 7 months of the wedding. He makes a LOT more now, well more than double, because he, too, took classes while working. He is not exceptional, he is not special. He just did it.

He made $34000 a year, instead of $15000, because he let the air force pay him to get trained in a good field with lots of room for advancement. The 34k was his second year out of the air force.

Starter wage jobs were never meant to support a family, Dr Cos, nor should they. Minimum skills, minimum drive for advancement, minimum pay. No job should have to pay based on how many people the employee might or might not be attempting to support. I mean honestly, most fast food managers work their way up, and (at McDonalds at least) they make about $45000 a year. That's not small potatoes.

It is not reasonable to toss around salary figures in a vacuum.

Cost of living is a critically important component to a discussion of this nature.

To put it simply, earning $20,000 and trying to make a go of it in the middle of Kansas isn't even remotely the same as earning that same amount and trying to support yourself while living in a large city.

Generally I find that people have a very hard time putting themselves into other peoples shoes when assessing these types of expenses.

To try and put things into perspective, back when I was in college my friends and I rented an entire house for $800 a month... that was a dirt cheap price. If I were to rent a studio apartment in the middle of a large city during the same time period my costs would have been closer to $1000-$1200 a month and it couldn't be split with anyone.

The issue at play here is that the cost of living within a large city is easily 4-5 times higher than living in the middle of small town America... but the minimum wage jobs in those locations do not exactly adjust for the cost of living increases.

This is why I think there is such a disconnect between those saying that ~$8 an hour is insufficient to live on and those who are adamant that people can make due.

You can if and only if you live far away from dense population centers.

But guess what... by definition there are many people who live in dense population centers and some of those people are going to earn minimum wage and they are going to need to live somewhere and be able to support themselves.

Let me use Chicago as an example for you of the problems minimum wage earners will invariably run into:

1 - The cost of living within that city is prohibitively expensive for those earning minimum wage... so this option is essentially out the window if we go with the model where minimum wage is a starter wage that allows you to build up skills (you cannot build up skills if you have no discretionary money with which to afford skills training).

2 - While you can live outside of Chicago proper and commute in, the cost of parking would eat up between 25% and 50% of your earned wages (before taxes) because parking costs somewhere between $2 and $4 an hour:

http://chicagometers.com/cost--hours.aspx

As a result owning and operating a car is essentially out.

3 - Public transit into Chicago will eat up ~10% of your minimum wage salary.

I honestly don't think that people who live outside of densely populated areas really comprehend how much more expensive it is to live in or around large cities.

How many of those here advocating how easy it is to get along on $8 an hour have spent a significant portion of their life supporting themselves within a large city?

People keep bringing it back to "supporting a family", which is a red herring. We should be discussing the ability of people to support themselves on these wages without any assistance from outside sources.

If it is not economically feasible to support yourself independently while working a full time job within the local region where you are employed then there is a problem that needs to be resolved.