If you work 40 hours a week, you deserve all the basics of life.

You deserve a house, good food, good healthcare, access to transportation, and electricity/gas/internet/etc. If you work 8 hours a day, 5 hours a week, you deserve to not only have access to the basic necessities of life but a modicum of comfort as well. It is the responsibility of society to make sure that people that work that much have these things. <br><br>But millions of Americans don't have these things even though they work a full time job. Millions of Americans work full time jobs and still have to struggle to get some of the basic necessities of life. Millions of Americans work a full time job and live paycheck to paycheck. They will never have any savings. The smallest car repair or hospital bill will set them back. If they lose their job and can't find another one right away (and it's hard to find a job on a timetable), they will lose their house, their car, and their savings.<br><br>It's not the minimum wage folks. It's the cost of living. The minimum wage should be $15/hour, but so long as a Big Mac costs $5, rent for a one-bedroom apartment costs $1000/mo, and a new car sells for $40,000, people will still struggle to make ends meet even if they make $15/hour. If people need to work 60-80 hours/week to survive, that means they don't have time to do anything else besides work and sleep. They won't have time to see friends or family. They will have no time for hobbies or self-improvement. They'll have no life outside of work. <br><br>If you work full time, you should make that much. How much you make depends on where you live and the cost of living there. $15/hour won't get you very far in San Francisco or Manhattan. If people need to work 60-80 hours/week in order to pay for Big Macs, rent, cars, and electricity, then they don't make enough. If you make enough to survive a 30% decrease in pay, then you make enough. If you're one car repair or one hospital stay from bankruptcy, then you don't make enough. <br><br>The U.S. is the wealthiest country in the world, both by total GDP and by per-capita GDP. There's no reason why this isn't the case, except that the billionaire CEO class wants to accumulate more wealth for themselves. They don't see their employees as human beings, just as cost of doing business. They don't want to pay a living wage (whatever that would be in your town/state), they want to pay as little as possible so that they can accumulate more.