July 22, 2025 • 30 mins
New West Radio Productions
Email: newwestradioproductions@gmail.com
Here’s the Salary It Takes to Live Comfortably in Each U.S. State – 2025 Study Byline profile imageWritten by Jaclyn DeJohn, CFP®
(c)2025 New West Radio Productions
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Email: newwestradioproductions@gmail.com
Here’s the Salary It Takes to Live Comfortably in Each U.S. State – 2025 Study Byline profile imageWritten by Jaclyn DeJohn, CFP®
(c)2025 New West Radio Productions
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/new-west-radio-productions--3288246/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hey, folks, say you're doing Wayne Speerce New West Radio
Productions dot Com. I just wanted to pop in here
and give you a little something. I don't usually do
(00:42):
a podcast except on Mondays, but things happened yesterday and
I have to just yeah, this have to do one today.
I'm not gonna go into detail, but let's just say yeah,
I didn't. I didn't have and to get the podcast
done yesterday not a big deal because there's always today.
(01:06):
So not going to do a full hour like I
usually do. So in that I just want you to
know that once a week is about all I'm going
to be doing now because I've got so many other
things going on, and i may throw in a you know,
(01:30):
follow up to something, or may you know, throw in
a little short podcast or something, but you know, once
a week, So that's the schedule. A lot of stuff
going on, and I want to highlight a few things
that that really have come to my attention that seemed
(01:55):
to be more important than anything else. And that is well,
your own, your own way of making a living. Now,
what am I talking about? Well, certain businesses think that
their policies override the protection of the rights that you
have as an employee. I'm not an attorney. I don't
(02:19):
know the law, but I do my research. Bottom line is,
no business can tell you what to do, when to
do it, why to do it, or even how without
first consulting you and you giving them the consent to do,
(02:41):
to say, to perform their duties of operating the business
telling you what to do. Common sense, folks, just absolute
common sense. Well, let's take that in to the Let's
(03:02):
break that down into smaller groups, two of them. First
of all, here you are, you're at work, you're doing
your thing. You hurt yourself, but you just you know,
you get through the day and you go home the
next day. You're not feeling too good, right, so you
call in. Here's the problem. They want you, the employee,
(03:29):
to call around to other employees or to ask other
employees in some way, shape or form if they would
cover your shift. Well, that's the policy of the company. Well,
first of all, it's the wrong policy again, folks, common sense,
because it is the responsibility of the company to help
(03:50):
the company itself, meaning they have to find someone to
fill in for you. That is the company's responsibility, not
the employees. Okay, now you can look it up yourself
and draw your own conclusion on it. But from what
(04:12):
I've seen and from what I've heard, and all the
companies I had worked for literally had the policy in
there that gave them an out on the work that
(04:38):
they were responsible for covering you for your shift. Here's
the second thing. Okay, your handbook and the company's policies.
Go look those up. By the way, you have a
right to every single document stating that company's policies. You
have a right to that. Ask them, can I see this? Well,
(05:02):
if they don't give it to you, it's called the perspectus.
It's at the end of the year that they give
all their employees that they show them how the company
is doing and how much they made and all that.
It gives a whole rundown of what the company does.
It's the perspectus at the end of the year that
(05:22):
they give out to the people. Now here's the thing,
Like I said, common sense, company's responsibility is for them
to help you when you're sick by them calling around
(05:43):
to see if anybody can come in cover your ship.
Here's the other thing. Okay, if the policy implies that
no matter what you as the employee do, if your
(06:06):
company's policies imply that they will retaliate against you for
missing work, whether it be a write up, whether it
be a warning, whether it be a termination. They are
in violation of certain, not all labor laws. Now again,
(06:32):
let me reiterate. I am not an attorney. I am
a researcher, and the impression that I get from the
information I have received is that the company would be
in violation of your protections under the National Labor Act. Okay,
I could be totally wrong. You should go look this up.
(06:59):
So what's the conclusion here? What is my view? What
is my stake in all of this? Well, I'm a
one man operation. I don't have employees, so I don't
have to worry about it. I don't have to worry
about it. I'm it. This is what you get, all right.
(07:22):
So anyway, my conclusion in all of this is companies
have to completely get rid of all of their policies
that are in complete contradiction to the law and do
(07:44):
not benefit the employees. This is what they have to do. Again,
I'm not an attorney, I'm a researcher. That from my
potentarticular perspective, as a result of my observations, these companies
(08:04):
are violating the law, or they're skirting very very close
that if they would just like a snap of the finger,
step over, they're done. And of course, yes, you can
say yes it's my opinion, but I'm a researcher, and
(08:27):
I'm asking you, suggesting to you that you should go
out and look this stuff up for yourself. In the
healthcare care field, in the retail section in like Walmart
or Target or whatever retail operation, or any advertise, any
company that has policies detrimental to the to the employee,
(08:54):
that does not give any incentive for the employee to stay,
or is in retaliation to that employee getting sick or
get you know, taking time off or whatever. To me,
from my particular perspective, is a violation of the law. Period. Now,
(09:21):
any attorneys out there, you are more than welcome to
email me and let me know. All right, go ahead,
email address in the show notes. Now, one other factor
about businesses and about how employee and employer relationships should
(09:43):
be Number one, the employer should do everything they can
to keep that employee. Here's why it takes money to retrain. Okay,
why do you think there's a probation period. Depending on
the company, it's either sixty to ninety days, or in
larger companies it's six months. Now, in what way does
(10:15):
the relationship between the employer and the employee need to
stay very positive for that employee to stay at that company?
The employer should give that person whatever they desire to
a certain degree, to a certain extent. Yes, there are limitations. Yes,
(10:39):
I know, I've crunched the numbers myself. Do it on
your own if you'd like that. If you paid let's say,
on an average, a company with one hundred employees, and
you paid them really really really high, you know, salaries
(11:00):
or wages, a company is not going to stick around
for long. Okay, it just isn't all right. You can
have a very good boss, you can have a very
good owner. You can have somebody that says, well, i'm
gonna pay you X per year and that averages out
(11:21):
to be X and per hour and you know whatever.
But after a while, the financial strain of that is
going to start chipping away at the at the business
and it's probably not going to stick around long. Again,
(11:41):
my perspective, I have a solution, not the solution. You
guys need to get together and say, here's I mean,
the employees, the workers need to find out what that company,
how much that company makes every year? Hello, to pay
(12:01):
your people a living wage. Now, a lot of people
would say, well, what's a living wage? What is that?
Fifty dollars an hour? No, that's ridiculous, excuse me a
little fleming. You might want to go to your favorite
search engine and look up what is the optimum living
(12:25):
wage per state? Go look that up. You need to
pay them that amount. Let me give you, Let me
give you some examples here. Let me look at it.
Op to mum living wage per state? Okay, what should
(12:56):
let's put that before that? What should be the optimum
living wage per state? Smart asset? First one off the
top of the list. Hawaii. Oh, check that out. Anybody
live in Hawaii is the most expensive state for a
single adult to live comfortably. You know how much it
(13:18):
takes to live there? One hundred and twenty four thousand
a year. Uh huh, that's how much it takes. Massachusetts
is three hundred and thirteen dollars. Three hundred and thirteen
thousand dollars. Excuse me, Let me reiterate a total household
(13:40):
income of three hundred and thirteen thousand dollars covers projected
short term and long term expenses for two adults and
two children, or one hundred and twenty thousand a year
to live comfortably. West Virginia. Yeah, a single adult there
(14:05):
may should make need needs to make seventy eight thousand dollars,
and as of twenty twenty five, families need the lowest
income in Mississippi. It's close by too, However, you know
twenty twenty five the income needed is just one hundred
and eighty six thousand dollars family and families in Vermont
(14:30):
right highest one year increase of fifteen point four eight
percent to two hundred and eighty six thousand dollars a year. Oh,
I guess what in the state I live? Montana, So
the highest annual increase in income needed for an adult
(14:52):
with a nine point five percent increase to ninety two thousand,
eight hundred and fifty one on the income of an
income needed for families had a similar abrupt change, jumping
eleven percent to two hundred and thirty four thousand dollars
(15:13):
a year. I'll put this website in there. It has
links to other states. I mean, it has data for
other states. So I'll put that link in the show notes.
Bottom line is you have to pay a living wage employers. Again,
I understand too much, will cost too much. It'll probably
(15:40):
put your business out of business. Let me ask you,
what's been happening in the last probably twenty five years.
We have been more dependent upon imports than we have
you know, had concern of revenue into the United States
(16:01):
from exports. Our businesses, specifically manufacturing, have costs that are
just would blow you out of the freaking water in
every single state. But where in the United States of America.
What region of the United States of America has the
(16:24):
most the most manufacturing businesses. They'll be scattered around all
over the place. You know why, because we've outsourced all
that manufacturing to other countries, and we don't have a
steel industry anymore. And Midwest up in Ohio and Philadelphia,
(16:48):
we don't, I mean Pennsylvania, we don't have any of
that anymore because we outsourced it. You know why, because
everybody wants to make a dime and more. I get it.
We live on a let's just say, a pseudo capitalistic
(17:11):
type of economy. Now, let me ask you, and I'll
just put it in my own words, what do you
believe would be a better type of economy? Would it
be what I would call a communal economy? Or would
you rather have something where you don't have private property,
(17:35):
you don't have ways to invest, you don't have anything,
As Klaus Schwab would say, have nothing like it. But
what type of economy would give you the necessary means
(17:58):
to be able to pay for everything you do? Okay?
I don't know, but I know that what we have
now is working to a certain degree depending upon how
much money a company makes. Prime example, Walmart, biggest employer
(18:24):
in the United States of America, and guess what, They're
mostly working part time and reports have said that most
of their workers get medicaid, most of their workers have
to get for themselves anyway, and their families, they get
(18:47):
food subsidies, vouchers, EBT, snap, all of that. Why Because
Walmart makes billions of dollars a year and doesn't pay
their employee he's a living wage. This is why. And
I heard reports and someone can verify this if they'd
like that a particular Walmart, I believe it was Canada.
(19:12):
The employers reached out and tried to form a union,
and guess what, the Walmart Corporation did shut down the store.
It's now an abandoned building somewhere in Canada. Same thing
with Amazon. Amazon did the same thing. Some employees wanted
(19:39):
to form a union to get better wages and better conditions,
and guess what they go. They all got fired and
they just go, hey, you know, go away. We don't
you know, at least that's what I heard. You guys
may want to check that out on your own. The
facts are the facts. Folks come and sense rules in business,
(20:01):
and if you don't understand the very nature of your
own particular protection under the national labor laws, you're screwed.
I would suggest finding ways to make sure that your
jobs are safe, secure, and that your job gives you
(20:25):
an incentive to be there. This is something that literally
I've struggled with and I just decided, you know, screw this.
Nobody's gonna listen to me. Nobody's gonna you know, And
I've talked to a lot of people. I was living
in California at the time, and I was talking to
(20:46):
people there. You know, you got to do this, companies
have to do. I was telling them, you know, things
that I'm telling you, and they said, yeah, that won't work,
they'll just fire us. I said, well, how much guilty you?
Well I do this? Well, okay, there's a places around
that do this. And some people would say, well, you're
(21:07):
running into the same thing. The company doesn't want to
pay you a living wage. Well that's when you got
to speak up. And I've seen people do it, hordes
of people doing it in all parts of the United States.
They stand up to their employer, they stand up at
(21:28):
their boss, and they say, listen, dumb ass, I can't
live on what you're paying me. You're gonna pay me more.
And guess what, I already know how much this company makes.
You can afford it? And again common sense, you start
getting up to the twenty twenty five thirty dollars an hour,
(21:50):
more so thirty thirty five dollars an hour. Unless you're
in that type of business where you can afford to
pay people that you're gonna you're gonna be running into
some problems and you may have to close down the business.
Just in the last twenty five years, I've seen businesses
(22:10):
come and go. Restaurants here where I live, two of
them closed up. Why not enough workers not that they
were in financial straits. No, nobody wanted to work again, folks,
(22:35):
There's two things that you have to I'd like you
to take away from this. First, you have rights. Period.
You have rights. They are protected by law. Period. Okay,
go consult your own local pro bono attorney about that
(22:57):
and get the exact information you need. And the other
thing is people don't want to work. People don't want
to work. There are people who will work and will
do jobs, but they want again, you know, twenty twenty
(23:21):
five dollars an hour. Unless you're in a healthcare field
or some field that the company can afford to pay
you that then okay. But if you don't have the
skill to get paid that kind of money, might as
well forget it. I do work, That's what I do.
(23:46):
I do art on canvas. And I got to tell
you something. Yeah, prices have gone up a little bit.
But I walked into a certain art supply store here
in town and they were starting out their full time
employees an art store, nationwide art store, you'll know the name,
(24:14):
and you've probably been in that art store. But their
top full time employees start at nineteen dollars an hour.
Nineteen okay, part time fifteen. Now, of course you're gonna think, well, okay,
(24:38):
if you're going to if an employer is going to
be pay that much to somebody, then they're not particularly
this specific art store. But the prices are gonna go
up then to accommodate for the that wage increase. This
(25:03):
is a natural economic thing. Okay, you want to pay
your people more, you got to jack up your prices.
That goes on to the consumer. The consumer is going
to look at you and go, wait a minute. Last
week it was five dollars, today it's five twenty five.
What's going on or six or whatever. People are demanding
(25:24):
a higher wage for, you know, because they need to
live well. Chances are to get that higher wage, everything
else has to go up. All the prices at your
grocery store, all the prices at your autoshop, everything has
to go up. Again, the question what type of economics
(25:45):
do you want? Now? If you look at places like
Guitar Qatar, they're oil sales to other countries supports that
whole country from cradle to grave. You've got free education
(26:07):
and free healthcare boom or relatively inexpensive. But if you're retired,
you're going to get a living wage or a living
salary here in the United States. We're too profit driven
to ever have that type of discussion to say, hey,
(26:27):
what is there that the United States can do that
can help us pay our people and give them an
incentive to stay. One word oil. Once you start doing that,
you'll need the plants and other places to be able
to exist, to be able to transport that oil around
(26:51):
the United States or to other countries. We have enough
of it. I drive up and down all these long
highways here in Montana, and I'm every once in a while,
I'll see a long, long, long line of tankers sitting out.
(27:15):
I don't know if they're empty, I don't know if
they're full, but they're oil tankers. Why are we storing
this oil? It's because we want to suck off everybody
else's tit before we ever want to dive into our surpluses.
Somebody's gonna say, well, that's why it's done, and that's
(27:37):
why it's been done for one hundred years. Yeah, and
it's wrong. You want this country to be great again,
or you want this country to be prosperous. You want
free healthcare, you want free education. Drop a down Augur
(27:58):
into the earth and pull out some damn oil. That's
how you do it. And there's a lot of other
ways we can do it. Put manufacturing back into the
United States and build it for other countries like you know,
transport it your sale of cars, of you know, products, stereos,
(28:22):
whatever you want to whatever it is. Put all the
manufacturing back into the United States. What do you get
after that? You get a prosperous country that people want
to come to legally. That's the other thing that I
want her to talk about, but I don't have time.
(28:43):
So remember, you have rights protected by the national labor laws.
Make sure you understand each and every single one of them,
because your employee is violating every single one of them.
I do not give one crap what you businesses say.
(29:05):
Our policies are set in stone, yeah, but they don't
override the protection of the people that work for you. Okay.
You want to give them an incentive to stay, you
rewrite or tear away all of those policies in your
business that are detrimental to your employees. That's what you
(29:28):
have to do. And if you don't do it, shut
the doors because you don't deserve to be in business.
That's my perspective and my opinion. Folks, you guys are
rock man, you guys are awesome. All the information in
the show notes. I'll talk to you all later each
Hey, folks, say you're doing Wayne Speerce New West Radio
Productions dot Com. I just wanted to pop in here
and give you a little something. I don't usually do
(00:42):
a podcast except on Mondays, but things happened yesterday and
I have to just yeah, this have to do one today.
I'm not gonna go into detail, but let's just say yeah,
I didn't. I didn't have and to get the podcast
done yesterday not a big deal because there's always today.
(01:06):
So not going to do a full hour like I
usually do. So in that I just want you to
know that once a week is about all I'm going
to be doing now because I've got so many other
things going on, and i may throw in a you know,
(01:30):
follow up to something, or may you know, throw in
a little short podcast or something, but you know, once
a week, So that's the schedule. A lot of stuff
going on, and I want to highlight a few things
that that really have come to my attention that seemed
(01:55):
to be more important than anything else. And that is well,
your own, your own way of making a living. Now,
what am I talking about? Well, certain businesses think that
their policies override the protection of the rights that you
have as an employee. I'm not an attorney. I don't
(02:19):
know the law, but I do my research. Bottom line is,
no business can tell you what to do, when to
do it, why to do it, or even how without
first consulting you and you giving them the consent to do,
(02:41):
to say, to perform their duties of operating the business
telling you what to do. Common sense, folks, just absolute
common sense. Well, let's take that in to the Let's
(03:02):
break that down into smaller groups, two of them. First
of all, here you are, you're at work, you're doing
your thing. You hurt yourself, but you just you know,
you get through the day and you go home the
next day. You're not feeling too good, right, so you
call in. Here's the problem. They want you, the employee,
(03:29):
to call around to other employees or to ask other
employees in some way, shape or form if they would
cover your shift. Well, that's the policy of the company. Well,
first of all, it's the wrong policy again, folks, common sense,
because it is the responsibility of the company to help
(03:50):
the company itself, meaning they have to find someone to
fill in for you. That is the company's responsibility, not
the employees. Okay, now you can look it up yourself
and draw your own conclusion on it. But from what
(04:12):
I've seen and from what I've heard, and all the
companies I had worked for literally had the policy in
there that gave them an out on the work that
(04:38):
they were responsible for covering you for your shift. Here's
the second thing. Okay, your handbook and the company's policies.
Go look those up. By the way, you have a
right to every single document stating that company's policies. You
have a right to that. Ask them, can I see this? Well,
(05:02):
if they don't give it to you, it's called the perspectus.
It's at the end of the year that they give
all their employees that they show them how the company
is doing and how much they made and all that.
It gives a whole rundown of what the company does.
It's the perspectus at the end of the year that
(05:22):
they give out to the people. Now here's the thing,
Like I said, common sense, company's responsibility is for them
to help you when you're sick by them calling around
(05:43):
to see if anybody can come in cover your ship.
Here's the other thing. Okay, if the policy implies that
no matter what you as the employee do, if your
(06:06):
company's policies imply that they will retaliate against you for
missing work, whether it be a write up, whether it
be a warning, whether it be a termination. They are
in violation of certain, not all labor laws. Now again,
(06:32):
let me reiterate. I am not an attorney. I am
a researcher, and the impression that I get from the
information I have received is that the company would be
in violation of your protections under the National Labor Act. Okay,
I could be totally wrong. You should go look this up.
(06:59):
So what's the conclusion here? What is my view? What
is my stake in all of this? Well, I'm a
one man operation. I don't have employees, so I don't
have to worry about it. I don't have to worry
about it. I'm it. This is what you get, all right.
(07:22):
So anyway, my conclusion in all of this is companies
have to completely get rid of all of their policies
that are in complete contradiction to the law and do
(07:44):
not benefit the employees. This is what they have to do. Again,
I'm not an attorney, I'm a researcher. That from my
potentarticular perspective, as a result of my observations, these companies
(08:04):
are violating the law, or they're skirting very very close
that if they would just like a snap of the finger,
step over, they're done. And of course, yes, you can
say yes it's my opinion, but I'm a researcher, and
(08:27):
I'm asking you, suggesting to you that you should go
out and look this stuff up for yourself. In the
healthcare care field, in the retail section in like Walmart
or Target or whatever retail operation, or any advertise, any
company that has policies detrimental to the to the employee,
(08:54):
that does not give any incentive for the employee to stay,
or is in retaliation to that employee getting sick or
get you know, taking time off or whatever. To me,
from my particular perspective, is a violation of the law. Period. Now,
(09:21):
any attorneys out there, you are more than welcome to
email me and let me know. All right, go ahead,
email address in the show notes. Now, one other factor
about businesses and about how employee and employer relationships should
(09:43):
be Number one, the employer should do everything they can
to keep that employee. Here's why it takes money to retrain. Okay,
why do you think there's a probation period. Depending on
the company, it's either sixty to ninety days, or in
larger companies it's six months. Now, in what way does
(10:15):
the relationship between the employer and the employee need to
stay very positive for that employee to stay at that company?
The employer should give that person whatever they desire to
a certain degree, to a certain extent. Yes, there are limitations. Yes,
(10:39):
I know, I've crunched the numbers myself. Do it on
your own if you'd like that. If you paid let's say,
on an average, a company with one hundred employees, and
you paid them really really really high, you know, salaries
(11:00):
or wages, a company is not going to stick around
for long. Okay, it just isn't all right. You can
have a very good boss, you can have a very
good owner. You can have somebody that says, well, i'm
gonna pay you X per year and that averages out
(11:21):
to be X and per hour and you know whatever.
But after a while, the financial strain of that is
going to start chipping away at the at the business
and it's probably not going to stick around long. Again,
(11:41):
my perspective, I have a solution, not the solution. You
guys need to get together and say, here's I mean,
the employees, the workers need to find out what that company,
how much that company makes every year? Hello, to pay
(12:01):
your people a living wage. Now, a lot of people
would say, well, what's a living wage? What is that?
Fifty dollars an hour? No, that's ridiculous, excuse me a
little fleming. You might want to go to your favorite
search engine and look up what is the optimum living
(12:25):
wage per state? Go look that up. You need to
pay them that amount. Let me give you, Let me
give you some examples here. Let me look at it.
Op to mum living wage per state? Okay, what should
(12:56):
let's put that before that? What should be the optimum
living wage per state? Smart asset? First one off the
top of the list. Hawaii. Oh, check that out. Anybody
live in Hawaii is the most expensive state for a
single adult to live comfortably. You know how much it
(13:18):
takes to live there? One hundred and twenty four thousand
a year. Uh huh, that's how much it takes. Massachusetts
is three hundred and thirteen dollars. Three hundred and thirteen
thousand dollars. Excuse me, Let me reiterate a total household
(13:40):
income of three hundred and thirteen thousand dollars covers projected
short term and long term expenses for two adults and
two children, or one hundred and twenty thousand a year
to live comfortably. West Virginia. Yeah, a single adult there
(14:05):
may should make need needs to make seventy eight thousand dollars,
and as of twenty twenty five, families need the lowest
income in Mississippi. It's close by too, However, you know
twenty twenty five the income needed is just one hundred
and eighty six thousand dollars family and families in Vermont
(14:30):
right highest one year increase of fifteen point four eight
percent to two hundred and eighty six thousand dollars a year. Oh,
I guess what in the state I live? Montana, So
the highest annual increase in income needed for an adult
(14:52):
with a nine point five percent increase to ninety two thousand,
eight hundred and fifty one on the income of an
income needed for families had a similar abrupt change, jumping
eleven percent to two hundred and thirty four thousand dollars
(15:13):
a year. I'll put this website in there. It has
links to other states. I mean, it has data for
other states. So I'll put that link in the show notes.
Bottom line is you have to pay a living wage employers. Again,
I understand too much, will cost too much. It'll probably
(15:40):
put your business out of business. Let me ask you,
what's been happening in the last probably twenty five years.
We have been more dependent upon imports than we have
you know, had concern of revenue into the United States
(16:01):
from exports. Our businesses, specifically manufacturing, have costs that are
just would blow you out of the freaking water in
every single state. But where in the United States of America.
What region of the United States of America has the
(16:24):
most the most manufacturing businesses. They'll be scattered around all
over the place. You know why, because we've outsourced all
that manufacturing to other countries, and we don't have a
steel industry anymore. And Midwest up in Ohio and Philadelphia,
(16:48):
we don't, I mean Pennsylvania, we don't have any of
that anymore because we outsourced it. You know why, because
everybody wants to make a dime and more. I get it.
We live on a let's just say, a pseudo capitalistic
(17:11):
type of economy. Now, let me ask you, and I'll
just put it in my own words, what do you
believe would be a better type of economy? Would it
be what I would call a communal economy? Or would
you rather have something where you don't have private property,
(17:35):
you don't have ways to invest, you don't have anything,
As Klaus Schwab would say, have nothing like it. But
what type of economy would give you the necessary means
(17:58):
to be able to pay for everything you do? Okay?
I don't know, but I know that what we have
now is working to a certain degree depending upon how
much money a company makes. Prime example, Walmart, biggest employer
(18:24):
in the United States of America, and guess what, They're
mostly working part time and reports have said that most
of their workers get medicaid, most of their workers have
to get for themselves anyway, and their families, they get
(18:47):
food subsidies, vouchers, EBT, snap, all of that. Why Because
Walmart makes billions of dollars a year and doesn't pay
their employee he's a living wage. This is why. And
I heard reports and someone can verify this if they'd
like that a particular Walmart, I believe it was Canada.
(19:12):
The employers reached out and tried to form a union,
and guess what, the Walmart Corporation did shut down the store.
It's now an abandoned building somewhere in Canada. Same thing
with Amazon. Amazon did the same thing. Some employees wanted
(19:39):
to form a union to get better wages and better conditions,
and guess what they go. They all got fired and
they just go, hey, you know, go away. We don't
you know, at least that's what I heard. You guys
may want to check that out on your own. The
facts are the facts. Folks come and sense rules in business,
(20:01):
and if you don't understand the very nature of your
own particular protection under the national labor laws, you're screwed.
I would suggest finding ways to make sure that your
jobs are safe, secure, and that your job gives you
(20:25):
an incentive to be there. This is something that literally
I've struggled with and I just decided, you know, screw this.
Nobody's gonna listen to me. Nobody's gonna you know, And
I've talked to a lot of people. I was living
in California at the time, and I was talking to
(20:46):
people there. You know, you got to do this, companies
have to do. I was telling them, you know, things
that I'm telling you, and they said, yeah, that won't work,
they'll just fire us. I said, well, how much guilty you?
Well I do this? Well, okay, there's a places around
that do this. And some people would say, well, you're
(21:07):
running into the same thing. The company doesn't want to
pay you a living wage. Well that's when you got
to speak up. And I've seen people do it, hordes
of people doing it in all parts of the United States.
They stand up to their employer, they stand up at
(21:28):
their boss, and they say, listen, dumb ass, I can't
live on what you're paying me. You're gonna pay me more.
And guess what, I already know how much this company makes.
You can afford it? And again common sense, you start
getting up to the twenty twenty five thirty dollars an hour,
(21:50):
more so thirty thirty five dollars an hour. Unless you're
in that type of business where you can afford to
pay people that you're gonna you're gonna be running into
some problems and you may have to close down the business.
Just in the last twenty five years, I've seen businesses
(22:10):
come and go. Restaurants here where I live, two of
them closed up. Why not enough workers not that they
were in financial straits. No, nobody wanted to work again, folks,
(22:35):
There's two things that you have to I'd like you
to take away from this. First, you have rights. Period.
You have rights. They are protected by law. Period. Okay,
go consult your own local pro bono attorney about that
(22:57):
and get the exact information you need. And the other
thing is people don't want to work. People don't want
to work. There are people who will work and will
do jobs, but they want again, you know, twenty twenty
(23:21):
five dollars an hour. Unless you're in a healthcare field
or some field that the company can afford to pay
you that then okay. But if you don't have the
skill to get paid that kind of money, might as
well forget it. I do work, That's what I do.
(23:46):
I do art on canvas. And I got to tell
you something. Yeah, prices have gone up a little bit.
But I walked into a certain art supply store here
in town and they were starting out their full time
employees an art store, nationwide art store, you'll know the name,
(24:14):
and you've probably been in that art store. But their
top full time employees start at nineteen dollars an hour.
Nineteen okay, part time fifteen. Now, of course you're gonna think, well, okay,
(24:38):
if you're going to if an employer is going to
be pay that much to somebody, then they're not particularly
this specific art store. But the prices are gonna go
up then to accommodate for the that wage increase. This
(25:03):
is a natural economic thing. Okay, you want to pay
your people more, you got to jack up your prices.
That goes on to the consumer. The consumer is going
to look at you and go, wait a minute. Last
week it was five dollars, today it's five twenty five.
What's going on or six or whatever. People are demanding
(25:24):
a higher wage for, you know, because they need to
live well. Chances are to get that higher wage, everything
else has to go up. All the prices at your
grocery store, all the prices at your autoshop, everything has
to go up. Again, the question what type of economics
(25:45):
do you want? Now? If you look at places like
Guitar Qatar, they're oil sales to other countries supports that
whole country from cradle to grave. You've got free education
(26:07):
and free healthcare boom or relatively inexpensive. But if you're retired,
you're going to get a living wage or a living
salary here in the United States. We're too profit driven
to ever have that type of discussion to say, hey,
(26:27):
what is there that the United States can do that
can help us pay our people and give them an
incentive to stay. One word oil. Once you start doing that,
you'll need the plants and other places to be able
to exist, to be able to transport that oil around
(26:51):
the United States or to other countries. We have enough
of it. I drive up and down all these long
highways here in Montana, and I'm every once in a while,
I'll see a long, long, long line of tankers sitting out.
(27:15):
I don't know if they're empty, I don't know if
they're full, but they're oil tankers. Why are we storing
this oil? It's because we want to suck off everybody
else's tit before we ever want to dive into our surpluses.
Somebody's gonna say, well, that's why it's done, and that's
(27:37):
why it's been done for one hundred years. Yeah, and
it's wrong. You want this country to be great again,
or you want this country to be prosperous. You want
free healthcare, you want free education. Drop a down Augur
(27:58):
into the earth and pull out some damn oil. That's
how you do it. And there's a lot of other
ways we can do it. Put manufacturing back into the
United States and build it for other countries like you know,
transport it your sale of cars, of you know, products, stereos,
(28:22):
whatever you want to whatever it is. Put all the
manufacturing back into the United States. What do you get
after that? You get a prosperous country that people want
to come to legally. That's the other thing that I
want her to talk about, but I don't have time.
(28:43):
So remember, you have rights protected by the national labor laws.
Make sure you understand each and every single one of them,
because your employee is violating every single one of them.
I do not give one crap what you businesses say.
(29:05):
Our policies are set in stone, yeah, but they don't
override the protection of the people that work for you. Okay.
You want to give them an incentive to stay, you
rewrite or tear away all of those policies in your
business that are detrimental to your employees. That's what you
(29:28):
have to do. And if you don't do it, shut
the doors because you don't deserve to be in business.
That's my perspective and my opinion. Folks, you guys are
rock man, you guys are awesome. All the information in
the show notes. I'll talk to you all later each
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