. . . it creates the dangerous illusion that we're somehow winning (or even fighting) the right war. Last week I posted Minimum wage, living wage, and the State as Vampire to the Working Poor , in which I argued that the real culprit in keeping the poor in working poor was the government tax bite, not the penury of business owners. If you haven't read that one, you should go back and do so, because the argument is pretty detailed. But if you're not willing, here was my main point: Poverty in America's Living Wage Calculator reports for Delaware that Federal and State taxes (income plus payroll) take a 16.5% bite out of a family of four struggling to reach their target living wage of $45,673. If we were to adopt the principle of not taxing people until after they had earned enough money to meet their family's basic needs , each earner in a two-income family of four would only need to average $9.57/hour in order to achieve the living wage . Under our current ...

There are approximately 8,000 working poor families in Delaware, according to Women's Opportunity Link in Delaware . The Poverty in America Living Wage Calculator suggests that in New Castle County (the only DE county I can find on their site) that a family of four requires a Gross Annual Income of $47,674 to achieve an After-Tax income of $39,817, which they believe is sufficient to constitute a Living Wage . Assuming that this family has a single bread-winner , this means that this individual must pull down $22.92/hour, working full-time (2080 hours/year). However, I suspect that they intend this example to be a two-income family, as they have budgeted $842 monthly for child-care, which would not seem to be necessary with a stay-at-home parent. So let's go two ways with that. If you have only one working parent we should be able to deduct the child-care expenses from the necessary income ($842 x 12 = $10,104 pre-tax, which by my rough calculations would reduce the necessa...