Word: wages
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...among fashion publications--in both circulation and prestige. But she has brought the magazine's tone down from its Olympian heights, acknowledging that trends are as likely to start from the ground as be decreed from on high and offering tips on how to get runway looks for real-wage prices. Part of this is out of necessity: to maintain a high circulation, she must appeal to as broad an audience as possible. But she has proved herself committed to discovering and fostering new talent. In 2003, for example, she joined the Council of Fashion Designers of America in creating...
...pages) is to produce a picture of all of those dominoes at once, the multitude of obstacles that keep the working poor on the edge--and sometimes beyond the edge--of household-finance disaster. As the gap between the highest-and lowest-paid workers steadily worsens, he writes, "low wage employees have been testing the American doctrine that hard work cures poverty...
...essence of Shipler's message is that working poverty is a seamless web of challenges, some personal, some erected by a society content to let the federal minimum wage languish at $5.15 an hour. And that's for those who can avoid the unscrupulous bosses who make workers falsify their time sheets so they work longer hours for the same pay. Then there are the fruit pickers who have exorbitant housing costs deducted by labor contractors who warehouse the workers in filthy barracks. As for garment workers, they can be paid at piece rates--try three-fourths of a cent...
...that makes all the difference. When they stumble, low-wage earners have nothing to fall back on. "They spend everything and save nothing," Shipler writes. "They are always behind on their bills. They have minuscule bank accounts or none at all." Bad judgment, bad habits, bad luck--among the middle classes, any of those can lead to setbacks. Among the working poor, they lead to disaster...
Shipler's solutions are the expected ones--a higher minimum wage, better job training, medical coverage for the almost 44 million who have none. Will any of it happen? The working poor don't vote in anything like the numbers of their more affluent neighbors, so even in election years they carry no real weight. But the economic boom of the '90s is behind us, job creation is feeble, and the time limits on welfare are kicking in. Expect those dominoes to start falling faster than ever...