as far as food expenses, i have to eat the same things every day to make sure that i m in my range. the face of poverty in america today is overwhelmingly the face of a woman and the children who depend on her. more than 100 million americans are living on or over the brink of poverty, and nearly 70% of them are women and children. that s one in three women living at or near the poverty level. as the structure of the american family has evolved over the years to depend on women working outside the home, women have remained more likely to be their family s primary caregiver. i recently got a promotion to $8. i have three kids and a husband, but with rent, with feeding kids, you know, somebody got to go hungry, and sometimes it s the parents. in the modern american workforce, women are heavily concentrated in the lowest-wage professions, while women represent about half the overall workforce, they make up almost 2/3 of minimum wage workers. i, myself, make $120 a week. i don t ha
time swallowing this. debra, what s so tough about this one? well, the tough thing is, kids are going hungry at school, so we don t have enough lean meats and proteins, we don t have enough great whole grapes, and we all know what happens when kids get hungry, they get grumpy and hard to be around. so i actually think feeding kids better meals, letting the cafeteria have a little bit more flexibility in what they re cooking, is going to make a huge difference. yeah, we don t want them to go hungry but we want them to eat what is available to them. yes. i also think that s very important that children have a lot of different choices. however, i don t think it s obama s the right of passage for him to say what they should and shouldn t be eating. it should all stem within the home, good eating, teaching your children how to eat good fruits and vegetables from the beginning, and then as we know
meet on $8 an hour. with rent, with feeding kids, somebody got to go hungry, and sometimes it s the parents. you know, we re two, you know, married couples that work, that have three children, we live with my mom. we shouldn t have to do that. we re both employed. i m joined now by former mcdonald s president and ceo, ed renzi. he s currently the former and owner of tom and eddy s gourmet burger sand shakes. ed, why can t an enterprise as profitable and successful as mcdonald s is afford to pay its workers a living wage? well, i don t agree with the question in the way you stated it. you might be surprised to know that i actually think the minimum wage needs to be adjusted and needs to be indexed in some fashion that makes sense. it should be adjusted over time for inflation. it should be state-by-state. the federal number needs to go up periodically. but one thing we have to keep in mind, we are going to go to an extreme, from $7.50, $8 an hour to $15 to $16 to $25 an hour.
monthly budget. the idea was, look, you we understand you re not making a ton of money, but if you just are disciplined and real serious about doing this, and you plot it out and you pay this amount, you can make ends meet and you can save. is that a fair as someone who lives this? that is not fair, especially in new york city, that s not realistic at all. if the budget was true, they should follow their own budget. they wouldn t be spending so much money. i think if everyone has a budget, of course, it would be some kind of reality to following a budget and you know you have some kind of mind-set. with rent, with feeding kids, somebody got to go hungry, and it s the parents. does that happen? it does happen. sometimes i eat at work so my husband and my kids can eat.
it s not working, i have three kids and a husband. he s doing his best to support our family, but it s just not helping. mcdonald s put up this graphic recently, it was a monthly budget. the idea was, look, you we understand you re not making a ton of money, but if you just are disciplined and real serious about doing this, and you plot it out and you pay this amount, you can make ends meet and you can save. is that a fair as someone who lives this? that is not fair, especially in new york city, that s not realistic at all. if the budget was true, they should follow their own budget. they wouldn t be spending so much money. i think if everyone has a budget, of course, it would be some kind of reality to following a budget and you know you have some kind of mind-set. with rent, with feeding kids, somebody got to go hungry, and it s the parents.