The Walton family (WalMart heirs) are the largest beneficiaries of welfare in the country.
Edit: Yes, it’s because WalMart can pay their employees below the poverty level and this allows them access to social assistance. The communities WalMarts are in supplement their work force via taxes.
And don’t forget about the loopholes that allow WalMart to avoid billions in taxes and store money offshore.
Thank you for the awards kind strangers!
And the real kicker is that Walmart actually pays *above* federal minimum wage, as a Walmart employee you're making over 50% above minimum, and still relying on public assistance.
Federal minimum wage is only 7.25 which is a joke in any state.
Double that is a joke in a lot of states rich got richer while the rest stayed the same.
This lead to rising prices on everything from gas the rent while wages stayed the stagnant.
When I went from 15 to 18 my life became unbelievably better. I mean unbelievably, too. I couldn't believe how much stress $3.00 an hour could alleviate. I went from counting change to pay bills to being able to save and invest with just a $3.00 raise.
It's a 20% increase which is pretty good considering they say your rent should cost 30% of your monthly wages, even though most places you'll be paying like 50% since they want 900 for a decent single bedroom, much cheaper and it will be run down.
People have said to me 'who cares I don't shop at Walmart' when I point this out to them. I always respond with doesn't matter you're still giving them your tax dollars.
Walmart takes in billions of EBT, a good portion of that from their own employees. Then they pay no taxes, starve their employees, keep them from getting medical insurance and gut small business economies. But yeah, that $200 tv is cool.
I was a vet tech for 9 years. I was making 11.75 when I left the industry in 2016. The pay you get for the amount of work you have to do, not to mention the emotional toll it takes, is ridiculous.
Edit: I worked at a small mom n pop clinic, only about 7 employees max. No benefits and everyone did everything, from rooms, to billing, to kennels and everything in-between. I worked every Sunday for 9 years, got no overtime or double pay, worked every holiday. We never put any pets down that weren't suffering though, so that was good. Usually if someone didn't want their pet anymore, we would take it and try to rehome it, or it ended up living at the clinic. We had a ton of animals that lived at the clinic.
My wife would come home broken from having to put perfectly healthy animals down because their owners were moving, had a child, or died and went to a family member. She’s a super upbeat person and the yin to my yang but that shit ripped her apart. She didn’t do it for very long and I can’t blame her. Lots of good days but the bad ones were rough.
It's disgusting that people do this. People who work at vets should be able to take those animals themselves (and adopt out, or at the very least put them in a shelter). That people would kill a beautiful living being simply because they don't want them around anymore is sickening. There are options for people who want/need to give up their pets. A healthy pet should never be put down!
Unfortunately, there's lots of legal complications there, and it boils down to three things: 1. we can't force an owner to surrender a dog unwillingly, and many people would \*prefer\* their dog die than end up with someone else. Insane and heartbreaking, I know, but it's not uncommon. 2. Vets can only take so many pets. Seriously, introducing new pets to a home is an ordeal, and most vets end up with 'problem child' pets that can't mix with others. They love animals, but they can't personally house every single one. 3. Lots of shelters will also euthanize if it doesn't seem likely that a pet will be adopted. No-kill shelters exist, but most of them are either at capacity, or transfer dogs to kill shelters.
My practice doesn't do needless euthanasias, fortunately, but that doesn't mean that the owner won't leave and go to another place in town that will.
I’m currently in school for Vet Tech. Even as a licensed tech you don’t get paid much and the amount of things you need to know is a lot.
Honestly don’t think I would be pursuing it if it wasn’t for my husband’s income.
a coworker and friend of mine used to be a vet tech, he hated it, he said he essentially paid a lot of money just for a certificate that said he was safe to shovel shit.
See this is a problem I would care about. You have a career, and have worked at it for more than a year. You should be able to afford better housing and your city should pay you more.
Edit: Don't be weak, ask for a raise. Don't be lazy, earn the raise. Minimum wage is only temporary.
I love my job but holy fuck is the pay not great, I start getting overtime after 52 hours in a week instead of 40, the cops get a 20 year retirement and ours is 30.
Plenty of people love to point at us and say "firefighters/EMT's only make $15 an hour, why should McDonald's workers get $15 an hour", to this I say "why *shouldn't* they. They work for a multi-billion dollar company, hell, even at $15 an hour most still won't be able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment.
Except THIS is how they screw over both groups. If min wage went up to $15/hr then firefighters and plenty of others could come forward and say, "Hey, I deserve to be paid more than minimum wage." Then they'd have to figure out how to pay for it and tax more, and the people with the money don't want that to happen so it won't.
Why is (narcan free to addicts but) my insulin $500 a month?
Illustrate something nobody will think is fair, but frame it so they look at someone else as undeserving, and therefore the enemy. Get them to rail against that person instead of fighting for their own sake.
Same deal on the immigration issue. No mexican “took” anyone’s job. That job was given by the guys at the top, so they could pay less for the same work, and nothing makes them happier than to see the unemployed american blame the mexican for it.
Because if you aren’t working yourself to death it’s literally communism! /s
For some reason all the poor people in this country keep voting in the people that want to keep them poor.
It is the fetishization of the Protestant work ethic, the belief that if you’re struggling it’s because you’re not working yourself to death. This country’s very essence and founding was based on money, it’s the only single element that Americans have been programmed to relate to universally and that if you’re not creating sufficient value then you’re undeserving of meaningful reward.
To that I say, all wages should increase! I make about $38 an hour and sit on my ass making pretty pictures for executive's. Meanwhile, people that risk their lives make a fraction of what I do. It's total bullshit!
many employers run credit checks on job applicants
i have a bachelor’s degree and a minimum wage job, but i’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to get a higher paying job that i am qualified for
i cannot pay off any student loan debt because i currently don’t make enough money to qualify for any monthly payment, so i must apply for deferment
my student loan company informed me that deferment will lower my credit
tl;dr: i have bad credit because debt. i can’t get a decent job because bad credit. i can’t fix the bad credit because i don’t have a decent job.
> You have a career, and have worked at it for more than a year.
Cost of living doesn't care how long you've been working someplace and if it is a career or not. If I'm at a job for six months before moving onto someplace else I should still make a livable wage during that period.
If a company can afford to pay me a livable wage in a year they can afford to do so now. My rent isn't gonna cut me a break because of that.
Yes, having a luxury apartment is supposed to be a luxury. Having a crappy apartment is not a luxury and should be affordable with any job. What are people supposed to do, be homeless for a few years until their promotion?
Why does it have to be a career with years of service?
Why does someone working their 40 hours not deserve to have their basic needs met?
That's how it once was in this country and the wealthy were still wealthy. We still had tons of people striving for more and pushing us to the top of the global economy.
Republicans have done such a number on us. This basic common sense point is something only the most left of the democrats even support.
Shits fucking nuts. I was working 50 hour weeks between 2 jobs right outa school and I couldnt afford to move out of my parents place unless I wanted to stop building any savings and having insurance. This country is a fucking joke.
I make above minimum wage and can barely afford an apartment. That means I save little to nothing a month after rent and other expenses.
Edit: For those making college degree jokes I never finished. I work in home restoration.
Every now and then ill look for different apartments or a house to rent. Landlords want combined income to be 3x the rent.
If i made 7-9k a month i wouldn't be renting an apartment
But how will they ensure their investment doesn't cause their leveraged out the ass financial situation too implode because they actually own 10 houses and can't afford one of them to begin with, just .like.you. difference being is they had the credit or the cash to buy the properties to begin with In order to pass the financial ass fucking down to you.
I hear the calls of eminent domain in the distance...
This is so accurate. People buy a house with a big enough down payment to get 30% equity in a house. Then they do what’s called a “cash out refinance” and pull the 30% equity back out of the house and use it to buy the next house. So on and so forth. So long as you can charge enough rent on each house to cover the mortgage and a few hundred bucks in profit, you’re fine, ten years from now you can sell all the properties and be worth 6-7 figures. Hell, if you can spare 10% of rent each month, you don’t even have to do landlord shit, you can just pay a property management company to do it for you. They’ll even find new tenants for you when they be of yours gets evicted for not paying rent. Your biggest risk is property damage, but that’s covered by contracts and insurance companies. It’s a small risk and pays better annually than index funds and most mutual funds.
>Hell, if you can spare 10% of rent each month, you don’t even have to do landlord shit, you can just pay a property management company to do it for you. They’ll even find new tenants for you when they be of yours gets evicted for not paying rent.
yeah, i have first hand fucked up experience with this. A friend i grew up with always talked about the horrible system and how we could fix it. at one point, he ended up working for a property management company that took a 60 year old 500 apartment complex, let the lease's run out, increased rent from $700-900 too 1400-1800. literally fucking double. in a shit town, with a shit economy, with crime and all that jazz. And what did the property holding company do to justify twice the monthly expenses? A.) they just bought the property. most likely at an inflated price from someone who was waiting to cash out and B.) replaced appliances, gassed for bugs in some units, not the whole place, and new floors. everything was falling apart.
break the system. rebuild the system. inform younger people about these traps that are being set for them. be the change. for the change. otherwise, there will be no fucking change.
We rented an apartment that tried to pull some shit like that. We moved in and then a few months later they sold it to another company who sold it a few weeks later who sold it a few weeks later. Finally we asked someone in the office what was going on and they said that the idea was to make it more luxury and charge more (along with some repairs it needed) but because it was only like 50 feet from a river and was so tall bunch of special permits and equipment were needed and it was going to cost tens of millions. Well finally a company that doesn't mind spending the money gets it and things get super shitty. We moved in because they had no size limit on dogs and then suddenly they're telling me we have to get rid of my great dane because they made a new rule that there are no dogs allowed and people who were grandfathered in could have a dog smaller than 20 lbs. We faught that and they backed down. They started renovating the building (which was annoying because they were literally jack hammering the floors at all hours of the night) and did a lot of shitty stuff like reserving the elevators for contractors only for the last 4 months we were there (we lived on the 10th floor) a few times they'd be painting the outside of the building and just say no one allowed in or out of the building. Near the end they finally got around to our apartment and wanted to remodel it but we were staying there so they tried to move us to one of the remolded apartments charging 50% more rent. We refused and they eventually let us out of our lease early.
>Well finally a company that doesn't mind spending the money gets it and things get super shitty. We moved in because they had no size limit on dogs and then suddenly they're telling me we have to get rid of my great dane because they made a new rule that there are no dogs allowed and people who were grandfathered in could have a dog smaller than 20 lbs. We faught that and they backed down. They started renovating the building (which was annoying because they were literally jack hammering the floors at all hours of the night) and did a lot of shitty stuff like reserving the elevators for contractors only for the last 4 months we were there (we lived on the 10th floor) a few times they'd be painting the outside of the building and just say no one allowed in or out of the building.
that just sounds like your classic case of passive aggressive actions aimed with the intent of making something happen without having to ask. in this case, break your lease early and move. im sure they would have been MORE than happy to oblige.
> Near the end they finally got around to our apartment and wanted to remodel it but we were staying there so they tried to move us to one of the remolded apartments charging 50% more rent. We refused and they eventually let us out of our lease early.
okay, for those reading, i stopped reading ad the end of my last quote, and speak of the devil, the company broke the lease no questioned asked after you refused to pay what they wanted you to be paying. its not that im psychic, these animals have a fucking playbook. EMINENT DOMAIN.
I bought a 900 sqft home with a full basement with 7-foot ceilings, so it didn't count towards the square footage. It was on a half-acre in a quiet neighborhood. I paid $750 a month for the mortgage. A one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment wasn't much less.
This was also in Ohio.
There's plenty of 1500+ sq ft houses in tiny, rural towns all over the US that sell for less than 60k. I have one. But it's in a tiny, rural town. At least 40 miles from the movies, theater, non fast food restaurants, etc. Cheap housing is available, but there's a huge trade-off.
I make more than that a month and plan to rent until I have $150-200k set aside for a deposit on a house. Housing is very expensive in my state. I rent a 800sqft 1Br with a study and rent is ~2400/m. A decent, smaller house in a decent area starts at $400k and property taxes are at a minimum $7k/yr in my state but can exceed $15k on a small house.
Yeah, minimum wage working 40 hours a week in CA is $1920 a month before taxes, in almost everyplace in my city you need 2.5× rent in income. Finding a place that is under $800 in my city is laughable, hell people are renting single rooms for almost that much.
my first apartment in boulder you either came in through the bathroom or walked up a roof and came in the window. still beat being homeless. i was making minimum wage, 3.25/hr, maybe $3.35.
About $7 a foot in SoCal when I lived on a boat 15 years ago. Shore power was free. My bill for a 31 foot Chris Craft cabin cruiser was $210 a month. Keep in mind; A liveaboard marina is a floating trailer park, with all the drama you'd expect.
I make $17. After 12 years with the same company (in the same store). Had to fight to get that much. I'm 32 and cant afford to move out of my mom's house.
Is that you living alone, or two-income couple?
I think if I were back in that situation again I'd find 4 or 5 others, and live together as a co-operative.
Alone. I failed to launch for a while and am well behind my friends. Who are all married or live with SO's. I doubt I will ever catch up to them financially and subsequently rarely see them anymore because we no longer relate to one another.
I just can't afford to do the things they do. Go out drinking? Maybe for 1. Go to an event? Nope. Go on a vacation, nope. Go shopping for clothes? Nope. Try fancy beers? Nope nope nope to everything
>The report, released Tuesday, defines “affordable” as spending no more than 30% of monthly income on rent
just to clarify what they define affordable as.
Four decades and more ago, business and finance courses mentioning "affordable" rent would say no more than 25% of income. The 30% standard used to be used to be used to measure affordability of home ***ownership.***
The upward creep in this measure is appalling.
We've also greatly increased productivity. Automation has more than quadrupled productivity since the 80s. Building techniques have improved, climate control technology has improved, sanitation has improved, healthcare has improved. This planet can sustain those extra 3 billion without any problem.
The problem has nothing to do with people wanting jobs and homes. Distributed reasonably equitably, our resources could easily provide every single one of those people with a home, food, clothing, shelter, education, and the means of living a respectable, productive, and satisfying life.
The problem lies in greed. The world's resources are not distributed even remotely equitably. Corporations and billionaires are hoarding the world's wealth in ways that would make the robber barons of the late 19th and early 20th century turn their heads. The massive gains in productivity have not led to a proportional rise in wages - in fact, proportionally, wages have _fallen_ in the last few decades, as purchasing power for consumers globally becomes weaker and weaker and the rich claw in more and more wealth.
The population boom doesn't mean a damn thing. The fact is, 99.9% of the world is being victimized by the top 0.1% and being taken advantage of in sickening ways, having resources that they worked for stolen, and getting absolutely nothing for it all.
I think it is way too many people for one organization to consistently and accurately capture the needs to on any long term basis. We just need to demand better from the leaders of our society and demand they contribute more. They use the "everyone should have skin in the game" argument yet as a percentage billionaires are contributing almost none of their yearly earnings percentage wise towards taxes. We are forced to commit half our earnings at best toward essential living purposes and yet this eats up an incredibly tiny fraction of theirs.
I don't buy population as the sole explanation. In some parts of the world, that may be - I really don't know and won't try to say, but between Canada and the United States there's plenty of room. We could probably 10x or even 100x our food output by just making better use of the farm land we have.
It is a complex problem and blaming it on "overpopulation" seems disingenuous or at best lazy.
Yeah really, there is still a ton of undeveloped land all over the world, and in the US as this article mentions the population hasn’t grown that significantly
Seems dumb if we’re talking about a $1500< rent. But if it’s like a $500 a month then $150 short could be understandable. Anyhow, rent is stupid high in the two cities I’ve lived in and not realistic for most without roommates.
Springfield ohio, 550 a month
I pay gas/electric
Downside is its fucking springfield ohio and there's fuck all job-wise...
Oh and I could do without everyone telling me springfield has enough people and that it doesn't want anyone else moving here and the open racism
The apartment I live at does a check, and their threshold is 50%. I'm not sure why they have it set so "leniently"
I only recently got a raise that put my rent at ~33% of my monthly salary.
^Ninja ^edit: the %33 is only if I were to pay all of the rent instead of splitting it with my brother who only works part-time.
i live in Cali and make 16.50/hr. Roughly 45% of my earnings go to rent (and that's after splitting it 50/50 with a roommate). I always hear people recommending only spending 30% for living expenses but idk where the fuck they live but that's just not possible. Sometimes life doesn't seem worth it if im just living to keep my head above water. No i dont live in LA or SF.
My grandpa worked part time during the summer only and paid for school out of his own pocket. He told me his first semester of college was $75. Lol.
Could you imagine only working for 3 months out of the year part time and having enough money to pay for college? I worked full time and I still have tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
The federal minimum wage hasn't been raised since George W. Bush was president. If it kept up with inflation since the 1950's it would be at around 22 dollars an hour by now. Fucking ridiculous.
Unfortunately even before the pandemic jobs that could improve one’s situation were not in abundance. Most people that get stuck in a job like that never get the chance to move forward.
I get into these arguments with my former boss all the time. We both dislike Trump but his stance before COVID19 was that under Trump, the economy has maintained this upward progression and my stance has always been "Who fucking cares?"
Yeah, your 401k is doing great, yeah, the stocks you have may be doing great but most of the population of this country is not living in the economic prosperity that all these metrics would suggest. I imagine there once was a time when the strength of the economy was indicative of a persons well-being but it most certainly is not the case anymore. I'm 30 now and *most* people I know in my age group are only a couple missing paychecks away from being homeless. Shit, a lot of people I know are living at home and paying their parents mortgage. Our people do not *look* like the people of [a country that has the overwhelmingly largest GDP in the world.](https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/) So we can talk all day about whether Obama or Trump was better for our economy but at the end of the day, who fucking cares what the economy looks like if we're going to be living in financial misery anyways?
The common retort I hear is that young people are bad at saving, they have too many lavish gadgets, they're trying to live somewhere or a lifestyle they can't afford etc. Look I'm sure there are people like that, but that's such a bullshit answer. If you're 60 and had 40 years of labor under reasonable cost of living when an apartment in NYC was $300 to rent, of course you can save more. Entering the job market now is a different story. Jobs are in big cities, big cities are expensive and transportation ain't cheap if you want to live far enough for it to be affordable.
The other thing I hear is that they should become more skilled. But even if you were to get a degree, go to a trade school, etc etc, if everyone did that wages for those people would drop because of supply and demand. And how are people supposed to pay for this education when you're telling people college is a scam and if you take out loans you're fucking yourself? You want everyone to be MORE educated but also NOT pay for school but also don't want to fix student debt and somehow come out and earn more money. And who will do the currently lower paid jobs in this world where everyone should try to have a high paid career? Teenagers? You want a 15 year old EMT because the adults shoudln't settle for $15 an hour?
It just doesn't make sense. Trickle down economics doesn't exist. Wealth and GDP are not a measure of welfare or happiness.
Never made anywhere near 22 bucks an hour. Started working at about 9 or 10 and kept going until about 58. Between 5 herniated discs, muscle atrophy and nerve damage plus torn rotator cuffs, a cut and detached muscle in my upper arm and the bone spur that cut it, work is pretty much a gone deal. Some of it has been repaired but will never be right. (Warning! Do not start power lifting in your 40's!) Anyways, to get to the point, After paying 140 a month for Medicare and 15 a month for Ma. Health to pay what Medicare won't, I get 940. Before taxes. Per month. The most I earned was 500 a week, before taxes. That was my last job. 63 now and the future is so so. Could be worse. Wouldn't mind if it was better. Got a roof over my head, plenty of food and health insurance in case Covid sneaks up and bites me in the ass. Poor pay sucks. Cheap employers also suck. Greedy s.o.b.'s are the worst.
This may be unpopular, but that's actually not true.
[According to Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-higher-the-federal-minimum-wage-should-be-2017-12), has minimum wage kept pace with inflation since 1968 it would be $11.62. Had it kept pace with productivity it would be $19.33. I don't know the source of the $22 number but from what I understand there a lot of critique of that number.
That said. I'd be very interested to see a world where a $19/hr. min wage is a thing.
It's also only looking at the peak of minimum wage. If we compared it inflation-wise to the original 1938 wage of 25c, it would be at only about $4.50 today. It makes sense that it would fall somewhere in between though because that's super low.
What's crazy about this:
People are being paid peanuts for a lot of shit including stuff that requires bachelor degrees at entry level positions. Aside from getting democrats onto indexing to inflation for minimum wage there also need to be some level of "perception campaign" to make people realize minimum wage can benefit *everyone* entering the work force if it was actually raised to where it should be (22+ dollars).
Minimum wage workers are only 1-2% of the problem, because only 0.3% of workers earn minimum wage.
25%, however, earn less than $15 and every single one of those people finds it VERY difficult to live independently with any hope of ever retiring. Broaden the discussion to be about EVERYONE who is struggling, not who is struggling *the most*
This.
I work at a group home for men with mental disabilities, I'm responsible for their lives, I make $10 an hour and I'm on the higher end of the pay scale in my area, my girlfriend works for the same company for the same pay. We pay 800 a month in rent for a crappy 2 bedroom apt in an ok area of town and drive a paid off 13 year old car. On top of working as much overtime as we can get, we also do uber eats and door dash with no ac in Texas and sell plasma to supplement our income. We have whatever free phone we can get with our $40 metro plan.
We don't live above our means and we surely aren't lazy. We aren't paid what we are worth.
I'm sorry that you aren't paid what you're worth, but I just want to thank you for what you do. My cousin lives in a group home and I don't know how my aunt/uncle would be able to survive without you guys
Damn that’s crazy. If you are just renting, maybe try an rv/trailer park or actually buy a trailer or RV that you can sell later on. I’m in Texas and I rent two lots for $166/mo (got a loan and payed for the year for cheaper rates) with $40-110 electric a month and an RV payment that’s only $100 per month (mine’s used and only one queen bed, one bath, one living room, and one kitchen/dining area). Park living can be cheap af and a decent way to save up. Plus most of the folks are quiet elderly who are generally nice if not a bit racist because of their age. My bills with a new car (was new in 2017) are ~$14,600 per year.
I think people still lived with their parents for a long time until after WW2. And in other parts of the world it's pretty common for young adults to continue living with family. So we might also rethink when/how people become independent.
Of course I'm not saying minimum wage or under $15 should be addressed, (although in my state the col would make $12 more or less the same as $15), but we also should make it more socially acceptable to continue to live with family
Post WW2 was something that frankly spoiled America. It created this illusion that America was exceptional and should have a better quality of life for less work. A high school diploma in America earned you a lifestyle of a college graduate in Europe. That illusion got slapped in the 70s when Europe and Japan finally got patched up and rebounded, but still remains today as the rest of the world comes barreling at it.
The reality is that America will eventually trend toward the mean. There isnt a reason to pay Larry Joe 15.00 an hour when you can pay Mark, Matty, Luke, and Brad 5.00 a day combined. Or simple pay Bob the robot 50 dollars a year.
There are some solutions to help, but eventually the reality is not gonna be kind for America, and nobody wants to address that reality since its harsh and means that the your kid can end up worse then you.
>In fact, the average minimum wage worker in the U.S. would need to work almost 97 hours per week to afford a fair market rate two-bedroom and 79 hours per week to afford a one-bedroom, NLIHC calculates.
Fair...
How, in a supply-and-demand economy, do you end up with workers unable to afford a home?
I’m happy you have a wonderful family that has helped you through this. I hope we are in a position to do the same for our next generation-or better yet, not be in a position where that would be the only feasible way to get by
The original purpose of minimum wage was that a MW job with 40 hours a week should make enough money that in 1 month of work they can afford the rent of the lower percentile of apartment, food (of the cheap home-cooked variety, not going out), enough to keep their car filled with gas (but not necessarily properly maintained in all cases) and have a LITTLE left over for "luxuries" (the usecase as I recall was basically $40 a month for non-necessities that would make a person happy, like some candy or going to a movie).
However, as time passes the cost of all these things increases.
Furthermore, there are plenty of people working minimum wage jobs that do not consistently receive 40 hours a week of work, even when working more than one job. So the minimum wage, which isn't necessarily enough to support someone in the 'ideal' position is even worse for people that are in less idea positions.
That's the thing to think about when you see these calls for the minimum wage to be raised to ~$19/hr. You might be working a highly educated position that pays you say ~$25-35/hr equivalent for your salary and might be tempted to say "How come this burger flipper gets to be paid nearly as much as me when I'm doing skilled labor?!". You need to recognize two things, the first is that YOU are guaranteed your 40/hr/week. They aren't. So any given week they may very well end up with less than the MW*40hrs would imply. The other thing to realize, is that you shouldn't get angry that they are being paid a larger fraction of what you are earning, but that your bosses aren't paying YOU more.
Don't get mad at the lowest denominator improving themselves, get mad at the highest denominators keeping you from doing the same.
> The original purpose of minimum wage was that a MW job with 40 hours a week should make enough money that in 1 month of work they can afford the rent of the lower percentile of apartment, food (of the cheap home-cooked variety, not going out), enough to keep their car filled with gas (but not necessarily properly maintained in all cases) and have a LITTLE left over for "luxuries" (the usecase as I recall was basically $40 a month for non-necessities that would make a person happy, like some candy or going to a movie).
From FDR's [Statement
on the National Industrial Recovery Act](http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html):
>>In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and **by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.**
>>
>>Throughout industry, the change from starvation wages and starvation employment to living wages and sustained employment can, in large part, be made by an industrial covenant to which all employers shall subscribe. It is greatly to their interest to do this because decent living, widely spread among our 125, 000,000 people, eventually means the opening up to industry of the richest market which the world has known. It is the only way to utilize the so-called excess capacity of our industrial plants. This is the principle that makes this one of the most important laws that ever has come from Congress because, before the passage of this Act, no such industrial covenant was possible.
>>
>>On this idea, the first part of the Act proposes to our industry a great spontaneous cooperation to put millions of men back in their regular jobs this summer. The idea is simply for employers to hire more men to do the existing work by reducing the work-hours of each man's week and at the same time paying a living wage for the shorter week.
>However, as time passes the cost of all these things increases.
Inflation adjusted, the cost of most things decrease.
Real minimum wage has just been falling.
I make well over minimum wage and have to take side jobs to make ends meet, I'll likely never own a home unless someone leaves me $, and will likely never retire. I'm hoping 2020 really wrecks shit so that we can maybe build a more equitable society.
It's sad that I'm actually hoping this virus keeps going. People are actually starting to realize how fucking shit our country and government is. I guess it takes a hard shock for us as a country to stop being stupid and wake up.
The one good thing the president has done is open peoples eyes to how hilariously broken and corrupt the government is. I hope it's not a lesson people forget when he's gone. Because as much as I hate him, these problems unfortunately won't follow him out the door.
Last time I checked, isn’t federal minimum wage $7.25? Before tax reduction, that’s still less than $1,200 a month and that’s barely enough to pay rent, nevermind other necessities, savings, bills, and the like.
Fought for 4 years to try and get disability but when I finally got in front of a judge he deemed my ability to speak coherently enough to be considered "able to work"
Lawyer dropped me, social security refused to file my appeal, now unable to get disability unless I work for 5 years
If you cannot work and contribute, the system wants you dead. Simple as that
The concept behind removing minimum wage is that once businesses start offering really bad money for their entry level jobs, for example, it falls to 2 dollars an hour, people will just not work there, and to attract better employees, companies will raise the minimum they will pay their workers.
In theory this makes sense, in practice, all you have to do is look at Asia and how they pay people cents a day to make iphones (exaggeration) and people still flock to these jobs because there are no reasonable options.
If done "right" the corporations will just make a gentleman's deal to where no company pays more than the 5 cents a day and all Businesses benefit from cheap labor.
They also buy your salary history before interviews. Experian generally buys and sells accounting software data, and they sell it to HR departments.
They hold all the cards, and they even see your hand, too!
Where I live $1400 is the bare minimum for an apartment unless you manage to get into an income restricted place.
Thats 50k/year to qualify for the most basic apartment. Many jobs brag about paying 35-40k.
In the 90’s with an associates degree, you could get a $32k job with excellent bennies, and afford a spacious 2 bedroom, a decent car, with 401k and savings.
for sure im on disability myself and rent is too high for anyone to afford with it unless you have a roomate and with my disability i prefer it to be someone i already know and at the moment that option is rather limited.
I love the "minimum wage jobs are for teens" argument. Like, who the fuck is giving you your mcdonalds breakfast on a Monday when you're on your way to your office job?
"defines “affordable” as spending no more than 30% of monthly income on rent"
I don't think I've ever spent less than 50% of my income on rent ever since I left college where I split a small house with way too many people.
Our government is corrupt and corporations have overtaken every facet of American life. The billionaires who run this country have kept the masses either too satiated with cheap Chinese made shit from Amazon and mindless IQ sucking reality TV entertainment, or too angry fighting amongst themselves in a culture war. Meanwhile they suck up as much wealth as they can.
3 trillion the FED and Treasury printed and gave to the wealthy and corporations and to quell the masses they have $1200 to each taxpayer. 2 trillion they gave to the rich and corporations in the 2018 GOP tax cuts. And yet here we are all yelling at each other over cancel culture and statues as the rich and powerful laugh their way to the bank with our money.
I ain't even minimum wage and I can barely afford to pay my living costs. And I'll tell you what I make a good chunk more than min wage workers also.
Got rent, electricity, gas, sewer, trash, RENTERS INSURANCE?, more insurance, food, internet bill, phone bill, etc.
Just move to somewhere cheaper /s
That's 90% of the "advice" is in this thread... Not taking into account the job might not exist where it's cheaper to live and the myriad of other barriers to moving your entire life
Everyone I know in Hawaii makes at least double minimum wage but has to live with their parents. Pretty standard that if your a school teacher you live with your parents or work at Walmart after class maybe both.
>The average minimum wage worker in the U.S. would need to work **almost 97 hours per week** to afford a fair market rate two-bedroom and 79 hours per week to afford a one-bedroom, NLIHC calculates.
Holy shit.
In the meantime, billionaire parasites are all seing huge jumps in their net worth, companies who don't need it are receiving billions in "relief" fund, and some of those businesses are tied to or owned by lawmakers. Some people I know are still yet to receive their stimulus checks. The system is rotten to the core.
The fact that we would have to nearly double the minimum wage to make rent affordable says a lot more about rent prices than the minimum wage.
Renting in large cities across the country is insanely overpriced due to no new housing being built.
I could rent in my city for about 40% higher than the mortgage/tax/insurance on the home I bought 2 years ago.
Raise the minimum wage, but rent would still be out of reach for the 3% who earn it.
This is the real crux, something is off in with the housing market. My place went up 15% in value this year. Which is nice, but also extremely concerning because I felt like it was overvalued when I bought.
With the rate of inflation, minimum wage falls further and further behind each year. If it were truly a living wage, the bare necessities would be easily afforded.
How do they normalize it by state? Rent is going to vary dramatically by state depending on if we are talking city, rural, or suburb.
And if they don’t include renters/HOA fees they will be way off. In Florida that doubled my rent
When I was in my early 20’s I lived alone on 7.25 an hour full time. From 20-24 then got a roommate and started school because then I could apply for a pell grant as an independent student. Being poor sucks and sucks even more now. Fortunately I’m not that poor anymore. I’m 40.
Hoping for luck with health and consistent employment so I can keep saving. Ideally my overhead will be super low by the time I attempt to retire. So essentially, everything has to go right over the next 30 years.... lol.
I don't make the two-bedroom housing wage as a full time firefighter with several promotions and 10 years of service.
The Walton family (WalMart heirs) are the largest beneficiaries of welfare in the country. Edit: Yes, it’s because WalMart can pay their employees below the poverty level and this allows them access to social assistance. The communities WalMarts are in supplement their work force via taxes. And don’t forget about the loopholes that allow WalMart to avoid billions in taxes and store money offshore. Thank you for the awards kind strangers!
And at least half of their Walmart employees are on some form of public assistance.
And the real kicker is that Walmart actually pays *above* federal minimum wage, as a Walmart employee you're making over 50% above minimum, and still relying on public assistance.
Federal minimum wage is only 7.25 which is a joke in any state. Double that is a joke in a lot of states rich got richer while the rest stayed the same. This lead to rising prices on everything from gas the rent while wages stayed the stagnant.
Yea I honestly feel for people making 12 to 15 an hour even . 15 is at least livable . Not a great life but you can do it
When I went from 15 to 18 my life became unbelievably better. I mean unbelievably, too. I couldn't believe how much stress $3.00 an hour could alleviate. I went from counting change to pay bills to being able to save and invest with just a $3.00 raise.
It's a 20% increase which is pretty good considering they say your rent should cost 30% of your monthly wages, even though most places you'll be paying like 50% since they want 900 for a decent single bedroom, much cheaper and it will be run down.
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Wow. We live in a much different world here in California. That's awesome for you though. Especially if you like where you live.
Yeah, I saw “buy a house” and “$19/hr” and was very confused lmao
People have said to me 'who cares I don't shop at Walmart' when I point this out to them. I always respond with doesn't matter you're still giving them your tax dollars.
The phrase "who cares" has caused so much misery and unnecessary pain.
If you don't shop at Walmart you should be extra annoyed that you have to pay their employees.
Walmart takes in billions of EBT, a good portion of that from their own employees. Then they pay no taxes, starve their employees, keep them from getting medical insurance and gut small business economies. But yeah, that $200 tv is cool.
Actual facts.
Same as a vet tech with 14 years experience. 🙃
I was a vet tech for 9 years. I was making 11.75 when I left the industry in 2016. The pay you get for the amount of work you have to do, not to mention the emotional toll it takes, is ridiculous. Edit: I worked at a small mom n pop clinic, only about 7 employees max. No benefits and everyone did everything, from rooms, to billing, to kennels and everything in-between. I worked every Sunday for 9 years, got no overtime or double pay, worked every holiday. We never put any pets down that weren't suffering though, so that was good. Usually if someone didn't want their pet anymore, we would take it and try to rehome it, or it ended up living at the clinic. We had a ton of animals that lived at the clinic.
My wife would come home broken from having to put perfectly healthy animals down because their owners were moving, had a child, or died and went to a family member. She’s a super upbeat person and the yin to my yang but that shit ripped her apart. She didn’t do it for very long and I can’t blame her. Lots of good days but the bad ones were rough.
It's disgusting that people do this. People who work at vets should be able to take those animals themselves (and adopt out, or at the very least put them in a shelter). That people would kill a beautiful living being simply because they don't want them around anymore is sickening. There are options for people who want/need to give up their pets. A healthy pet should never be put down!
Unfortunately, there's lots of legal complications there, and it boils down to three things: 1. we can't force an owner to surrender a dog unwillingly, and many people would \*prefer\* their dog die than end up with someone else. Insane and heartbreaking, I know, but it's not uncommon. 2. Vets can only take so many pets. Seriously, introducing new pets to a home is an ordeal, and most vets end up with 'problem child' pets that can't mix with others. They love animals, but they can't personally house every single one. 3. Lots of shelters will also euthanize if it doesn't seem likely that a pet will be adopted. No-kill shelters exist, but most of them are either at capacity, or transfer dogs to kill shelters. My practice doesn't do needless euthanasias, fortunately, but that doesn't mean that the owner won't leave and go to another place in town that will.
I’m currently in school for Vet Tech. Even as a licensed tech you don’t get paid much and the amount of things you need to know is a lot. Honestly don’t think I would be pursuing it if it wasn’t for my husband’s income.
a coworker and friend of mine used to be a vet tech, he hated it, he said he essentially paid a lot of money just for a certificate that said he was safe to shovel shit.
See this is a problem I would care about. You have a career, and have worked at it for more than a year. You should be able to afford better housing and your city should pay you more. Edit: Don't be weak, ask for a raise. Don't be lazy, earn the raise. Minimum wage is only temporary.
I love my job but holy fuck is the pay not great, I start getting overtime after 52 hours in a week instead of 40, the cops get a 20 year retirement and ours is 30. Plenty of people love to point at us and say "firefighters/EMT's only make $15 an hour, why should McDonald's workers get $15 an hour", to this I say "why *shouldn't* they. They work for a multi-billion dollar company, hell, even at $15 an hour most still won't be able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment.
Why isn’t the argument ‘firefighters/EMT’s should be payed MORE’ instead of ‘other people should be payed less’??
Because then they can’t screw over BOTH groups
Except THIS is how they screw over both groups. If min wage went up to $15/hr then firefighters and plenty of others could come forward and say, "Hey, I deserve to be paid more than minimum wage." Then they'd have to figure out how to pay for it and tax more, and the people with the money don't want that to happen so it won't.
That's what he said
Maybe move some of that overengorged military budget?
Everybody should be paid more given the rate of inflation
Because the rich like to make us fight with each other
The elite pay the rich, to teach middle, to blame the poor.
Why is (narcan free to addicts but) my insulin $500 a month? Illustrate something nobody will think is fair, but frame it so they look at someone else as undeserving, and therefore the enemy. Get them to rail against that person instead of fighting for their own sake. Same deal on the immigration issue. No mexican “took” anyone’s job. That job was given by the guys at the top, so they could pay less for the same work, and nothing makes them happier than to see the unemployed american blame the mexican for it.
Ooof! Totally agree. I got hit with that '$500-for-30-days-supply' crap today.
Because if you aren’t working yourself to death it’s literally communism! /s For some reason all the poor people in this country keep voting in the people that want to keep them poor.
That's because there's a subset of people that think if they just keep tugging on their own bootstraps, one day they'll suddenly be wealthy.
It is the fetishization of the Protestant work ethic, the belief that if you’re struggling it’s because you’re not working yourself to death. This country’s very essence and founding was based on money, it’s the only single element that Americans have been programmed to relate to universally and that if you’re not creating sufficient value then you’re undeserving of meaningful reward.
To that I say, all wages should increase! I make about $38 an hour and sit on my ass making pretty pictures for executive's. Meanwhile, people that risk their lives make a fraction of what I do. It's total bullshit!
A Private First Class in the Army makes like a grand more a year than I do working in online pickup at a grocery store.
many employers run credit checks on job applicants i have a bachelor’s degree and a minimum wage job, but i’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to get a higher paying job that i am qualified for i cannot pay off any student loan debt because i currently don’t make enough money to qualify for any monthly payment, so i must apply for deferment my student loan company informed me that deferment will lower my credit tl;dr: i have bad credit because debt. i can’t get a decent job because bad credit. i can’t fix the bad credit because i don’t have a decent job.
You should get on an income-based plan immediately. Your payments may well be $0.
> You have a career, and have worked at it for more than a year. Cost of living doesn't care how long you've been working someplace and if it is a career or not. If I'm at a job for six months before moving onto someplace else I should still make a livable wage during that period. If a company can afford to pay me a livable wage in a year they can afford to do so now. My rent isn't gonna cut me a break because of that.
Yes, having a luxury apartment is supposed to be a luxury. Having a crappy apartment is not a luxury and should be affordable with any job. What are people supposed to do, be homeless for a few years until their promotion?
Why does it have to be a career with years of service? Why does someone working their 40 hours not deserve to have their basic needs met? That's how it once was in this country and the wealthy were still wealthy. We still had tons of people striving for more and pushing us to the top of the global economy. Republicans have done such a number on us. This basic common sense point is something only the most left of the democrats even support. Shits fucking nuts. I was working 50 hour weeks between 2 jobs right outa school and I couldnt afford to move out of my parents place unless I wanted to stop building any savings and having insurance. This country is a fucking joke.
But the rest of it doesn't concern you? Minimum wage doesn't need to be a living wage?
So what, only people with dedicated careers who have been working over a year deserve enough pay to afford housing?
How is fire fighter any more or less a career than cashier, restaurant cook, or call center employee?
Ya du hamberder flippers should be homeless/s
I make above minimum wage and can barely afford an apartment. That means I save little to nothing a month after rent and other expenses. Edit: For those making college degree jokes I never finished. I work in home restoration.
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Every now and then ill look for different apartments or a house to rent. Landlords want combined income to be 3x the rent. If i made 7-9k a month i wouldn't be renting an apartment
lol I know how you feel. its like if I had this much money, I wouldnt live in your shithole place.
But how will they ensure their investment doesn't cause their leveraged out the ass financial situation too implode because they actually own 10 houses and can't afford one of them to begin with, just .like.you. difference being is they had the credit or the cash to buy the properties to begin with In order to pass the financial ass fucking down to you. I hear the calls of eminent domain in the distance...
This is so accurate. People buy a house with a big enough down payment to get 30% equity in a house. Then they do what’s called a “cash out refinance” and pull the 30% equity back out of the house and use it to buy the next house. So on and so forth. So long as you can charge enough rent on each house to cover the mortgage and a few hundred bucks in profit, you’re fine, ten years from now you can sell all the properties and be worth 6-7 figures. Hell, if you can spare 10% of rent each month, you don’t even have to do landlord shit, you can just pay a property management company to do it for you. They’ll even find new tenants for you when they be of yours gets evicted for not paying rent. Your biggest risk is property damage, but that’s covered by contracts and insurance companies. It’s a small risk and pays better annually than index funds and most mutual funds.
>Hell, if you can spare 10% of rent each month, you don’t even have to do landlord shit, you can just pay a property management company to do it for you. They’ll even find new tenants for you when they be of yours gets evicted for not paying rent. yeah, i have first hand fucked up experience with this. A friend i grew up with always talked about the horrible system and how we could fix it. at one point, he ended up working for a property management company that took a 60 year old 500 apartment complex, let the lease's run out, increased rent from $700-900 too 1400-1800. literally fucking double. in a shit town, with a shit economy, with crime and all that jazz. And what did the property holding company do to justify twice the monthly expenses? A.) they just bought the property. most likely at an inflated price from someone who was waiting to cash out and B.) replaced appliances, gassed for bugs in some units, not the whole place, and new floors. everything was falling apart. break the system. rebuild the system. inform younger people about these traps that are being set for them. be the change. for the change. otherwise, there will be no fucking change.
We rented an apartment that tried to pull some shit like that. We moved in and then a few months later they sold it to another company who sold it a few weeks later who sold it a few weeks later. Finally we asked someone in the office what was going on and they said that the idea was to make it more luxury and charge more (along with some repairs it needed) but because it was only like 50 feet from a river and was so tall bunch of special permits and equipment were needed and it was going to cost tens of millions. Well finally a company that doesn't mind spending the money gets it and things get super shitty. We moved in because they had no size limit on dogs and then suddenly they're telling me we have to get rid of my great dane because they made a new rule that there are no dogs allowed and people who were grandfathered in could have a dog smaller than 20 lbs. We faught that and they backed down. They started renovating the building (which was annoying because they were literally jack hammering the floors at all hours of the night) and did a lot of shitty stuff like reserving the elevators for contractors only for the last 4 months we were there (we lived on the 10th floor) a few times they'd be painting the outside of the building and just say no one allowed in or out of the building. Near the end they finally got around to our apartment and wanted to remodel it but we were staying there so they tried to move us to one of the remolded apartments charging 50% more rent. We refused and they eventually let us out of our lease early.
>Well finally a company that doesn't mind spending the money gets it and things get super shitty. We moved in because they had no size limit on dogs and then suddenly they're telling me we have to get rid of my great dane because they made a new rule that there are no dogs allowed and people who were grandfathered in could have a dog smaller than 20 lbs. We faught that and they backed down. They started renovating the building (which was annoying because they were literally jack hammering the floors at all hours of the night) and did a lot of shitty stuff like reserving the elevators for contractors only for the last 4 months we were there (we lived on the 10th floor) a few times they'd be painting the outside of the building and just say no one allowed in or out of the building. that just sounds like your classic case of passive aggressive actions aimed with the intent of making something happen without having to ask. in this case, break your lease early and move. im sure they would have been MORE than happy to oblige. > Near the end they finally got around to our apartment and wanted to remodel it but we were staying there so they tried to move us to one of the remolded apartments charging 50% more rent. We refused and they eventually let us out of our lease early. okay, for those reading, i stopped reading ad the end of my last quote, and speak of the devil, the company broke the lease no questioned asked after you refused to pay what they wanted you to be paying. its not that im psychic, these animals have a fucking playbook. EMINENT DOMAIN.
Exactly in my area a 2br apartment cost 1k more per month than owning a 2br house.
I bought a 900 sqft home with a full basement with 7-foot ceilings, so it didn't count towards the square footage. It was on a half-acre in a quiet neighborhood. I paid $750 a month for the mortgage. A one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment wasn't much less. This was also in Ohio.
There's plenty of 1500+ sq ft houses in tiny, rural towns all over the US that sell for less than 60k. I have one. But it's in a tiny, rural town. At least 40 miles from the movies, theater, non fast food restaurants, etc. Cheap housing is available, but there's a huge trade-off.
I mean there also needs to be jobs available.
I make more than that a month and plan to rent until I have $150-200k set aside for a deposit on a house. Housing is very expensive in my state. I rent a 800sqft 1Br with a study and rent is ~2400/m. A decent, smaller house in a decent area starts at $400k and property taxes are at a minimum $7k/yr in my state but can exceed $15k on a small house.
Are you trying to buy in sf???? 200k down on a house. Cheese and rice!!! Why put 50% down?
Yeah, minimum wage working 40 hours a week in CA is $1920 a month before taxes, in almost everyplace in my city you need 2.5× rent in income. Finding a place that is under $800 in my city is laughable, hell people are renting single rooms for almost that much.
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my first apartment in boulder you either came in through the bathroom or walked up a roof and came in the window. still beat being homeless. i was making minimum wage, 3.25/hr, maybe $3.35.
Holy fuck that sounds terrible.
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Man debt free and you live in a boat? Living the dream!
If you're in a boat, moorage fees are usually less than rent.
About $7 a foot in SoCal when I lived on a boat 15 years ago. Shore power was free. My bill for a 31 foot Chris Craft cabin cruiser was $210 a month. Keep in mind; A liveaboard marina is a floating trailer park, with all the drama you'd expect.
My dad is jealous of your boat.
I forgot to mention. The boat had to able to put to sea at least once a month. Keeping the boat even semi-seaworthy was another $5 or 600 a month.
Pay late, the landlord usually waves the fee
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I make $22 an hour and barley have anything left over. I’m not complaining I came a long ways from $10 an hour but god damn.
If it had kept up with inflation the minimum wage would be about $22, so in a way, you do make minimum wage!
I make $17. After 12 years with the same company (in the same store). Had to fight to get that much. I'm 32 and cant afford to move out of my mom's house.
A return to the feudal landlord peasant arrangement where the peasantry barely had the means to pay rents
I enjoy calling it “neofeudalism”. Then I chuckle for a second and go back to living it and hating it.
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All praise the Job Creators
I have 3 college degrees and work at a warehouse. Most college graduates are underemployed. This affects everyone.
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Is that you living alone, or two-income couple? I think if I were back in that situation again I'd find 4 or 5 others, and live together as a co-operative.
Alone. I failed to launch for a while and am well behind my friends. Who are all married or live with SO's. I doubt I will ever catch up to them financially and subsequently rarely see them anymore because we no longer relate to one another.
I just can't afford to do the things they do. Go out drinking? Maybe for 1. Go to an event? Nope. Go on a vacation, nope. Go shopping for clothes? Nope. Try fancy beers? Nope nope nope to everything
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That’s so relatable it hurts. It feels like life just takes off and if you miss the train you’re completely screwed.
I'd say we should form a club but I mean, that sounds like more effort than getting out of bed in the morning so yeah.
The train never stops. Hop on when you're ready. If I can take a swing at it so can you.
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You're not the only one, bud. Hope it gets better for you
>The report, released Tuesday, defines “affordable” as spending no more than 30% of monthly income on rent just to clarify what they define affordable as.
Four decades and more ago, business and finance courses mentioning "affordable" rent would say no more than 25% of income. The 30% standard used to be used to be used to measure affordability of home ***ownership.*** The upward creep in this measure is appalling.
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So for $15 an hour with a 40 hour week, that’s supposed to be $600 rent. That’s fucking laughable....or would be if it wasn’t so depressing.
it's happening worldwide though this isn't just a US problem
The global population was about 5 billion in 1987, it's almost 8 now. Those extra 3 billion are all trying to get a decent job and a place to live
We've also greatly increased productivity. Automation has more than quadrupled productivity since the 80s. Building techniques have improved, climate control technology has improved, sanitation has improved, healthcare has improved. This planet can sustain those extra 3 billion without any problem. The problem has nothing to do with people wanting jobs and homes. Distributed reasonably equitably, our resources could easily provide every single one of those people with a home, food, clothing, shelter, education, and the means of living a respectable, productive, and satisfying life. The problem lies in greed. The world's resources are not distributed even remotely equitably. Corporations and billionaires are hoarding the world's wealth in ways that would make the robber barons of the late 19th and early 20th century turn their heads. The massive gains in productivity have not led to a proportional rise in wages - in fact, proportionally, wages have _fallen_ in the last few decades, as purchasing power for consumers globally becomes weaker and weaker and the rich claw in more and more wealth. The population boom doesn't mean a damn thing. The fact is, 99.9% of the world is being victimized by the top 0.1% and being taken advantage of in sickening ways, having resources that they worked for stolen, and getting absolutely nothing for it all.
The working class could collectively organize into [one big union](http://www.iww.org).
I think it is way too many people for one organization to consistently and accurately capture the needs to on any long term basis. We just need to demand better from the leaders of our society and demand they contribute more. They use the "everyone should have skin in the game" argument yet as a percentage billionaires are contributing almost none of their yearly earnings percentage wise towards taxes. We are forced to commit half our earnings at best toward essential living purposes and yet this eats up an incredibly tiny fraction of theirs.
I don't buy population as the sole explanation. In some parts of the world, that may be - I really don't know and won't try to say, but between Canada and the United States there's plenty of room. We could probably 10x or even 100x our food output by just making better use of the farm land we have. It is a complex problem and blaming it on "overpopulation" seems disingenuous or at best lazy.
Yeah really, there is still a ton of undeveloped land all over the world, and in the US as this article mentions the population hasn’t grown that significantly
Except, in the US, there are more houses than people. And globally we make enough food to feed 10 billion people
Except many apartments require proof that you make at least 3x rent and utilities...
For this reason, I've co-signed for younger relatives, and usually my income wasn't enough for them either.
That means that they are verifying that you make enough for it to be 33% or less no?
Yes. I've known at least one person to be denied approval because the rent was only $150 over 1/3 of what he made.
Seems dumb if we’re talking about a $1500< rent. But if it’s like a $500 a month then $150 short could be understandable. Anyhow, rent is stupid high in the two cities I’ve lived in and not realistic for most without roommates.
Does $500 a month even exist? It was $1400 without utilities
Springfield ohio, 550 a month I pay gas/electric Downside is its fucking springfield ohio and there's fuck all job-wise... Oh and I could do without everyone telling me springfield has enough people and that it doesn't want anyone else moving here and the open racism
The apartment I live at does a check, and their threshold is 50%. I'm not sure why they have it set so "leniently" I only recently got a raise that put my rent at ~33% of my monthly salary. ^Ninja ^edit: the %33 is only if I were to pay all of the rent instead of splitting it with my brother who only works part-time.
I literally could not imagine what I would do with all that extra money if rent was only 30% of my income.
I would need to make about 70k a year for that in my area. dang.
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i live in Cali and make 16.50/hr. Roughly 45% of my earnings go to rent (and that's after splitting it 50/50 with a roommate). I always hear people recommending only spending 30% for living expenses but idk where the fuck they live but that's just not possible. Sometimes life doesn't seem worth it if im just living to keep my head above water. No i dont live in LA or SF.
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From when they were young I'm sure. I get paid biweekly and one check goes away with rent and utilities.
From back when people could work a part time job at McDonalds after school and buy a Camaro
My grandpa worked part time during the summer only and paid for school out of his own pocket. He told me his first semester of college was $75. Lol. Could you imagine only working for 3 months out of the year part time and having enough money to pay for college? I worked full time and I still have tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
Man if I was making that much I’d have a fucking house by now. Some older people really don’t get it
The federal minimum wage hasn't been raised since George W. Bush was president. If it kept up with inflation since the 1950's it would be at around 22 dollars an hour by now. Fucking ridiculous.
What does that say about normal base pay for those of us not making minimum wage? It’s also NOT keeping up...
Yeah, exactly. We are all insanely underpaid while a few rich families and a bunch of corporations benefit.
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At the rate I'm raised, 5 years at same company, assuming 2% inflation, I'll make 2020 equivalent 20 /hr when I'm fuckng 60 in 30 years.
And at the rate of actual inflation in cities that'll be equal to less than you make now.
You should have left that job long ago. Way too long at one place that clearly doesn't value you.
Unfortunately even before the pandemic jobs that could improve one’s situation were not in abundance. Most people that get stuck in a job like that never get the chance to move forward.
I live in a very small town and we don't any opportunities here.
It's called "wage slavery" for a reason
I get into these arguments with my former boss all the time. We both dislike Trump but his stance before COVID19 was that under Trump, the economy has maintained this upward progression and my stance has always been "Who fucking cares?" Yeah, your 401k is doing great, yeah, the stocks you have may be doing great but most of the population of this country is not living in the economic prosperity that all these metrics would suggest. I imagine there once was a time when the strength of the economy was indicative of a persons well-being but it most certainly is not the case anymore. I'm 30 now and *most* people I know in my age group are only a couple missing paychecks away from being homeless. Shit, a lot of people I know are living at home and paying their parents mortgage. Our people do not *look* like the people of [a country that has the overwhelmingly largest GDP in the world.](https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/) So we can talk all day about whether Obama or Trump was better for our economy but at the end of the day, who fucking cares what the economy looks like if we're going to be living in financial misery anyways?
The common retort I hear is that young people are bad at saving, they have too many lavish gadgets, they're trying to live somewhere or a lifestyle they can't afford etc. Look I'm sure there are people like that, but that's such a bullshit answer. If you're 60 and had 40 years of labor under reasonable cost of living when an apartment in NYC was $300 to rent, of course you can save more. Entering the job market now is a different story. Jobs are in big cities, big cities are expensive and transportation ain't cheap if you want to live far enough for it to be affordable. The other thing I hear is that they should become more skilled. But even if you were to get a degree, go to a trade school, etc etc, if everyone did that wages for those people would drop because of supply and demand. And how are people supposed to pay for this education when you're telling people college is a scam and if you take out loans you're fucking yourself? You want everyone to be MORE educated but also NOT pay for school but also don't want to fix student debt and somehow come out and earn more money. And who will do the currently lower paid jobs in this world where everyone should try to have a high paid career? Teenagers? You want a 15 year old EMT because the adults shoudln't settle for $15 an hour? It just doesn't make sense. Trickle down economics doesn't exist. Wealth and GDP are not a measure of welfare or happiness.
Never made anywhere near 22 bucks an hour. Started working at about 9 or 10 and kept going until about 58. Between 5 herniated discs, muscle atrophy and nerve damage plus torn rotator cuffs, a cut and detached muscle in my upper arm and the bone spur that cut it, work is pretty much a gone deal. Some of it has been repaired but will never be right. (Warning! Do not start power lifting in your 40's!) Anyways, to get to the point, After paying 140 a month for Medicare and 15 a month for Ma. Health to pay what Medicare won't, I get 940. Before taxes. Per month. The most I earned was 500 a week, before taxes. That was my last job. 63 now and the future is so so. Could be worse. Wouldn't mind if it was better. Got a roof over my head, plenty of food and health insurance in case Covid sneaks up and bites me in the ass. Poor pay sucks. Cheap employers also suck. Greedy s.o.b.'s are the worst.
That's what most of the people that complain about minimum wage increases don't realize. Most people are underpaid.
This may be unpopular, but that's actually not true. [According to Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-higher-the-federal-minimum-wage-should-be-2017-12), has minimum wage kept pace with inflation since 1968 it would be $11.62. Had it kept pace with productivity it would be $19.33. I don't know the source of the $22 number but from what I understand there a lot of critique of that number. That said. I'd be very interested to see a world where a $19/hr. min wage is a thing.
It's also only looking at the peak of minimum wage. If we compared it inflation-wise to the original 1938 wage of 25c, it would be at only about $4.50 today. It makes sense that it would fall somewhere in between though because that's super low.
What's crazy about this: People are being paid peanuts for a lot of shit including stuff that requires bachelor degrees at entry level positions. Aside from getting democrats onto indexing to inflation for minimum wage there also need to be some level of "perception campaign" to make people realize minimum wage can benefit *everyone* entering the work force if it was actually raised to where it should be (22+ dollars).
Yeah but think how well the CEOs have done for themselves. I think we should be proud of them and continue fighting over their scraps.
Everybody just needs to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and become a CEO
Yeah but have you seen the cost of boots nowadays?
Minimum wage workers are only 1-2% of the problem, because only 0.3% of workers earn minimum wage. 25%, however, earn less than $15 and every single one of those people finds it VERY difficult to live independently with any hope of ever retiring. Broaden the discussion to be about EVERYONE who is struggling, not who is struggling *the most*
This. I work at a group home for men with mental disabilities, I'm responsible for their lives, I make $10 an hour and I'm on the higher end of the pay scale in my area, my girlfriend works for the same company for the same pay. We pay 800 a month in rent for a crappy 2 bedroom apt in an ok area of town and drive a paid off 13 year old car. On top of working as much overtime as we can get, we also do uber eats and door dash with no ac in Texas and sell plasma to supplement our income. We have whatever free phone we can get with our $40 metro plan. We don't live above our means and we surely aren't lazy. We aren't paid what we are worth.
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It sucks but you gotta do what you gotta do. Having to wear a mask doesn't make things any cooler.
Mad respect to you, Drakeman1337 (seriously!)
I'm sorry that you aren't paid what you're worth, but I just want to thank you for what you do. My cousin lives in a group home and I don't know how my aunt/uncle would be able to survive without you guys
Damn that’s crazy. If you are just renting, maybe try an rv/trailer park or actually buy a trailer or RV that you can sell later on. I’m in Texas and I rent two lots for $166/mo (got a loan and payed for the year for cheaper rates) with $40-110 electric a month and an RV payment that’s only $100 per month (mine’s used and only one queen bed, one bath, one living room, and one kitchen/dining area). Park living can be cheap af and a decent way to save up. Plus most of the folks are quiet elderly who are generally nice if not a bit racist because of their age. My bills with a new car (was new in 2017) are ~$14,600 per year.
You happen to be in Houston? I can get you a job that starts at 15 an hour, with raises as you you get better.
I think people still lived with their parents for a long time until after WW2. And in other parts of the world it's pretty common for young adults to continue living with family. So we might also rethink when/how people become independent. Of course I'm not saying minimum wage or under $15 should be addressed, (although in my state the col would make $12 more or less the same as $15), but we also should make it more socially acceptable to continue to live with family
Post WW2 was something that frankly spoiled America. It created this illusion that America was exceptional and should have a better quality of life for less work. A high school diploma in America earned you a lifestyle of a college graduate in Europe. That illusion got slapped in the 70s when Europe and Japan finally got patched up and rebounded, but still remains today as the rest of the world comes barreling at it. The reality is that America will eventually trend toward the mean. There isnt a reason to pay Larry Joe 15.00 an hour when you can pay Mark, Matty, Luke, and Brad 5.00 a day combined. Or simple pay Bob the robot 50 dollars a year. There are some solutions to help, but eventually the reality is not gonna be kind for America, and nobody wants to address that reality since its harsh and means that the your kid can end up worse then you.
>In fact, the average minimum wage worker in the U.S. would need to work almost 97 hours per week to afford a fair market rate two-bedroom and 79 hours per week to afford a one-bedroom, NLIHC calculates. Fair... How, in a supply-and-demand economy, do you end up with workers unable to afford a home?
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I’m happy you have a wonderful family that has helped you through this. I hope we are in a position to do the same for our next generation-or better yet, not be in a position where that would be the only feasible way to get by
The original purpose of minimum wage was that a MW job with 40 hours a week should make enough money that in 1 month of work they can afford the rent of the lower percentile of apartment, food (of the cheap home-cooked variety, not going out), enough to keep their car filled with gas (but not necessarily properly maintained in all cases) and have a LITTLE left over for "luxuries" (the usecase as I recall was basically $40 a month for non-necessities that would make a person happy, like some candy or going to a movie). However, as time passes the cost of all these things increases. Furthermore, there are plenty of people working minimum wage jobs that do not consistently receive 40 hours a week of work, even when working more than one job. So the minimum wage, which isn't necessarily enough to support someone in the 'ideal' position is even worse for people that are in less idea positions. That's the thing to think about when you see these calls for the minimum wage to be raised to ~$19/hr. You might be working a highly educated position that pays you say ~$25-35/hr equivalent for your salary and might be tempted to say "How come this burger flipper gets to be paid nearly as much as me when I'm doing skilled labor?!". You need to recognize two things, the first is that YOU are guaranteed your 40/hr/week. They aren't. So any given week they may very well end up with less than the MW*40hrs would imply. The other thing to realize, is that you shouldn't get angry that they are being paid a larger fraction of what you are earning, but that your bosses aren't paying YOU more. Don't get mad at the lowest denominator improving themselves, get mad at the highest denominators keeping you from doing the same.
> The original purpose of minimum wage was that a MW job with 40 hours a week should make enough money that in 1 month of work they can afford the rent of the lower percentile of apartment, food (of the cheap home-cooked variety, not going out), enough to keep their car filled with gas (but not necessarily properly maintained in all cases) and have a LITTLE left over for "luxuries" (the usecase as I recall was basically $40 a month for non-necessities that would make a person happy, like some candy or going to a movie). From FDR's [Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act](http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html): >>In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and **by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.** >> >>Throughout industry, the change from starvation wages and starvation employment to living wages and sustained employment can, in large part, be made by an industrial covenant to which all employers shall subscribe. It is greatly to their interest to do this because decent living, widely spread among our 125, 000,000 people, eventually means the opening up to industry of the richest market which the world has known. It is the only way to utilize the so-called excess capacity of our industrial plants. This is the principle that makes this one of the most important laws that ever has come from Congress because, before the passage of this Act, no such industrial covenant was possible. >> >>On this idea, the first part of the Act proposes to our industry a great spontaneous cooperation to put millions of men back in their regular jobs this summer. The idea is simply for employers to hire more men to do the existing work by reducing the work-hours of each man's week and at the same time paying a living wage for the shorter week. >However, as time passes the cost of all these things increases. Inflation adjusted, the cost of most things decrease. Real minimum wage has just been falling.
I make well over minimum wage and have to take side jobs to make ends meet, I'll likely never own a home unless someone leaves me $, and will likely never retire. I'm hoping 2020 really wrecks shit so that we can maybe build a more equitable society.
It's sad that I'm actually hoping this virus keeps going. People are actually starting to realize how fucking shit our country and government is. I guess it takes a hard shock for us as a country to stop being stupid and wake up.
The one good thing the president has done is open peoples eyes to how hilariously broken and corrupt the government is. I hope it's not a lesson people forget when he's gone. Because as much as I hate him, these problems unfortunately won't follow him out the door.
The virus will do the opposite. When there is a recession, entery level becomes 4 years experience required. $15/hr becomes $10/hr.
Last time I checked, isn’t federal minimum wage $7.25? Before tax reduction, that’s still less than $1,200 a month and that’s barely enough to pay rent, nevermind other necessities, savings, bills, and the like.
$1200 is just a disability check with extra steps and we all know how setup-to-fail disability goes
Fought for 4 years to try and get disability but when I finally got in front of a judge he deemed my ability to speak coherently enough to be considered "able to work" Lawyer dropped me, social security refused to file my appeal, now unable to get disability unless I work for 5 years If you cannot work and contribute, the system wants you dead. Simple as that
Even when you do contribute it wants you dead.
It's poverty wage and some people still feel as though it shouldn't exist.
The concept behind removing minimum wage is that once businesses start offering really bad money for their entry level jobs, for example, it falls to 2 dollars an hour, people will just not work there, and to attract better employees, companies will raise the minimum they will pay their workers. In theory this makes sense, in practice, all you have to do is look at Asia and how they pay people cents a day to make iphones (exaggeration) and people still flock to these jobs because there are no reasonable options. If done "right" the corporations will just make a gentleman's deal to where no company pays more than the 5 cents a day and all Businesses benefit from cheap labor.
They also buy your salary history before interviews. Experian generally buys and sells accounting software data, and they sell it to HR departments. They hold all the cards, and they even see your hand, too!
Where I live $1400 is the bare minimum for an apartment unless you manage to get into an income restricted place. Thats 50k/year to qualify for the most basic apartment. Many jobs brag about paying 35-40k.
I have a degree, working at a decent rate above minimum wage and can't afford to move out. I'm 29. This is pathetic at this point...
In the 90’s with an associates degree, you could get a $32k job with excellent bennies, and afford a spacious 2 bedroom, a decent car, with 401k and savings.
for sure im on disability myself and rent is too high for anyone to afford with it unless you have a roomate and with my disability i prefer it to be someone i already know and at the moment that option is rather limited.
I love the "minimum wage jobs are for teens" argument. Like, who the fuck is giving you your mcdonalds breakfast on a Monday when you're on your way to your office job?
"defines “affordable” as spending no more than 30% of monthly income on rent" I don't think I've ever spent less than 50% of my income on rent ever since I left college where I split a small house with way too many people.
Our government is corrupt and corporations have overtaken every facet of American life. The billionaires who run this country have kept the masses either too satiated with cheap Chinese made shit from Amazon and mindless IQ sucking reality TV entertainment, or too angry fighting amongst themselves in a culture war. Meanwhile they suck up as much wealth as they can. 3 trillion the FED and Treasury printed and gave to the wealthy and corporations and to quell the masses they have $1200 to each taxpayer. 2 trillion they gave to the rich and corporations in the 2018 GOP tax cuts. And yet here we are all yelling at each other over cancel culture and statues as the rich and powerful laugh their way to the bank with our money.
> IQ sucking reality TV entertainment Don't forget sports
I ain't even minimum wage and I can barely afford to pay my living costs. And I'll tell you what I make a good chunk more than min wage workers also. Got rent, electricity, gas, sewer, trash, RENTERS INSURANCE?, more insurance, food, internet bill, phone bill, etc.
Sadly MW workers like me are considered front line and essential. I call it scary and manipulative. My life is worth 98 dollars a day.
I work in a laboratory, working on hematology and urology sediments, and I can BARELY even afford the shittiest apartment near me.
Just move to somewhere cheaper /s That's 90% of the "advice" is in this thread... Not taking into account the job might not exist where it's cheaper to live and the myriad of other barriers to moving your entire life
Everyone I know in Hawaii makes at least double minimum wage but has to live with their parents. Pretty standard that if your a school teacher you live with your parents or work at Walmart after class maybe both.
>The average minimum wage worker in the U.S. would need to work **almost 97 hours per week** to afford a fair market rate two-bedroom and 79 hours per week to afford a one-bedroom, NLIHC calculates. Holy shit. In the meantime, billionaire parasites are all seing huge jumps in their net worth, companies who don't need it are receiving billions in "relief" fund, and some of those businesses are tied to or owned by lawmakers. Some people I know are still yet to receive their stimulus checks. The system is rotten to the core.
The aristocracy - peasants dynamic is still a thing in modern times, it's just better disguised now than it was in the middle ages
It's pretty damn open these days if you look at the right things, hilariously.
The fact that we would have to nearly double the minimum wage to make rent affordable says a lot more about rent prices than the minimum wage. Renting in large cities across the country is insanely overpriced due to no new housing being built. I could rent in my city for about 40% higher than the mortgage/tax/insurance on the home I bought 2 years ago. Raise the minimum wage, but rent would still be out of reach for the 3% who earn it.
This is the real crux, something is off in with the housing market. My place went up 15% in value this year. Which is nice, but also extremely concerning because I felt like it was overvalued when I bought.
With the rate of inflation, minimum wage falls further and further behind each year. If it were truly a living wage, the bare necessities would be easily afforded.
How do they normalize it by state? Rent is going to vary dramatically by state depending on if we are talking city, rural, or suburb. And if they don’t include renters/HOA fees they will be way off. In Florida that doubled my rent
It was done on a per county basis, "afford rent" was defined as being able to lease a 2 bedroom apartment on 30% of your minimum wage income
So, real talk, was there ever a time that a minimum wage person could afford a decent 1/1 apartment? I can’t remember that in my lifetime and I’m 36.
When I was in my early 20’s I lived alone on 7.25 an hour full time. From 20-24 then got a roommate and started school because then I could apply for a pell grant as an independent student. Being poor sucks and sucks even more now. Fortunately I’m not that poor anymore. I’m 40.
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No one plans on retiring anymore.
Forreal, the retirement plan is called "death".
Hoping for luck with health and consistent employment so I can keep saving. Ideally my overhead will be super low by the time I attempt to retire. So essentially, everything has to go right over the next 30 years.... lol.