> What's the point in working if you're going to be paid in breadcrumbs?
Being able to eat. "Breadcrumbs" for you or me might not be worth it, but for someone else it could be the difference between buying food that the supermarket or stealing ketchup packets from a fast food store.
People on the federal minimum wage are already struggling very hard to make ends meet. What makes you think that they'll be able to afford food on an even lower wage?
People were able to afford food in 1950, when wages were lower and poverty was rampant.
I recommend rereading “The Grapes of Wrath”, to get a taste of what poverty in this country had actually looked like, and what it actually was like to not be able to afford food. Then compare that with what currently passes as “poverty”: you get much more than that already on SNAP benefits.
I am very sympathetic to people in poverty, having grown up in it. However, let’s not pretend that poverty in today’s America is about “affording food”: everyone, no matter how poor, is able to afford food, and poverty today is less about the hunger, and more about the lifestyle you can or are forced to carry out.
Being able to eat. "Breadcrumbs" for you or me might not be worth it, but for someone else it could be the difference between buying food that the supermarket or stealing ketchup packets from a fast food store.