Poverty and Wages

I was really intrigued by this session. I think that this is yet another thing that's overlooked when it comes to talking about poverty and what things we can do to help prevent more people falling into it. In one of the clips I think a good point was made about your work being worth it. I thought it was interesting to see that even if people are working full time plus over time, their yearly income is still relatively low. While raising wages isn't the resolution to poverty, I definitely feel like it would prevent people and families from falling into poverty. I've known people who have worked in restaraunts and location plays a major role in their overall income from their job. One of my friends worked at a restaurant in Buckhead, while the other one worked at a restaurant in Riverdale. If you've never heard about either of these places, Buckhead is in the top ten most richest area codes of the country and Riverdale's crime rates are increasing everyday. Needless to say, while they were both servers and making the same hourly wage, their location put their overall income on different levels.
Going back to how a couple of my peers described poverty as the homeless people walking around our school, this session sheds light on the hard-working people in poverty. It was good to be exposed to this b/c I feel like most people, and sometimes myself, fall into the assumption that all people in poverty are lazy and just want to be dependent on the government. One of the things my group and I learned through the budget exercise was that not all people in poverty rely on government aid however if they were willing to not abuse the aid, they could live comfortable lives and not fall under the poverty level.