Columnist Susan Snyder: Can wage cover the minimum?

Friday, May 21, 2004 | 4:23 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

WEEKEND EDITION

May 22 - 23, 2004

The young man standing outside a Las Vegas discount department store with a clipboard last week seemed sincere.

"Are you a registered voter?" he asked.

I am.

"Would you like to sign a petition to lower health insurance costs by 20 percent and raise the minimum wage by $1?"

Can't. (Those pesky professional ethics rules. Some folks have to follow them, even if they're not likely to be investigated.)

But I was curious.

"What is the minimum wage now?" I asked him.

Quick. Do you know? Chances are you don't, unless you're paying it or earning it.

It's $5.15 an hour. That's $206 at the end of a 40-hour work week and $10,712 for the year.

Many local households have at least two cars, each of which costs twice the annual salary of a minimum-wage earner. And $1 doesn't seem like much of an improvement -- $246 a week or $12,792 a year.

Cripes, don't break an ankle running to the bank with that paycheck.

A quick check of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a Las Vegas metropolitan-area fast-food cook earns $7.43 on average, or $15,450 annually. A casino change person earns $9.98 on average, or $20,760 a year, the figures show.

That's before taxes, health insurance and other deductions. I'm certainly no wizard in math or economics. There's a reason writers write, and that reason occurs to most of us about halfway through eighth grade algebra.

But the math question here seems pretty obvious:

How do these people afford, well, life?

The median price of a new home in the Las Vegas Valley is $225,813, up 20 percent from last year, according to figures released in March by the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The median price of an existing home is $208,500, up nearly 30 percent from last year. People who want homes are offering thousands more than the asking prices just to assure themselves of a chance to buy homes. And the median rent for an apartment is about $750, the UNLV economic research figures say.

We all make our choices in life. Those who want to do well for themselves can choose to do so by studying hard in school and earning the chance the earn a better wage, right?

Even a person who didn't make those choices in high school can increase his literacy or earn that high school equivalency diploma later, provided people are willing to live on the average $28,250 the U.S. labor statistics show a Las Vegas Valley literacy and General Educational Development (GED) teacher earns annually.

How much did the car parked in your driveway cost again?

"People make more on welfare," the petitioner said.

It's shameful that our federally mandated minimum wage doesn't begin to cover the minimum of anything. It wouldn't even pay for the gasoline most of us burn every month, let alone cover the costs of day care or food or school clothes.

It felt shameful that I didn't know.