Whirlpool (the appliance manufacturer) donated washers and driers to schools and increased attendance.
According to Whirlpool's research, one in five school children report difficulty finding clean clothes to wear to school. It turns out that offering free in-school laundry services to kids with attendance problems increases their attendance.
When compared to factors like economic opportunity, unemployment, and institutional racism, laundry seems pretty inconsequential in the fight to keep kids in school. But while that might be the case for their parents, for a ten-year-old who already has the odds stacked against them, having nothing clean to wear to school could be the deciding factor in whether or not they want to face their classmates that day.
I can remember my grandmother telling me that she thought lunches in schools were a wonderful innovation, because they didn't have anything like that when she was a girl, and many children couldn't come because they wouldn't have lunch. I'm sure back then nobody thought of lunch as something school should provide. Now apparently laundry is the next big innovation.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday August 18 2016, @04:05AM
Another possibility is that some of the rich don't increase their wealth quite as fast. I understand one of the largest employers and the largest low wage employer in the USA is Walmart, a business owned by one of the richest families in the USA and a business that depends on welfare to make up the shortfall in their wages. Would you really feel bad if they had to pay a living wage, their employees got of welfare and your taxes went down while their wealth increase slowed.
As for the small businesses, they'll have to raise their prices instead of crying to the government, a $1 cup of coffee is not a right.
Where I live, the minimum wage is the lowest in the country while the cost of living is the highest, at least for a densely populated area. The small businesses don't raise wages, they cry to the government for subsidies or the right to bring in foreign workers who don't know what they're getting into and get royally screwed trying to pay of the debt they had to take on to get the job.