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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

If we're generous and say that the auto-glass installer job pays a bonus of $10,000 a year that leaves $60,000 earned at $12/hour ... which is about 96 hours a week. I can think of plenty of reasons why you'd have trouble finding people to do that job.

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I doubt the 70k makes $12 an hour. Likely a supervisor making say $20 an hour.. comes to a base of 42k.

Other 28k he would make in 17 hours of overtime per week (Remember you get time and a half for overtime), for a total of 57 hour weeks.

Not out of the question hours in a busy factory. I did some of those in college summer days...

But now you are working 57 hours a week in steady state to make that $70K and it does not sound like such a good deal any more.

It's not a good deal! Thats why I code.

But that is how some working class people make enough to sound their kids to private school. Working their tails off.

I see that they have to do that as a moral failing of capitalism, both that public schooling is insufficiently good for their children and that a worker's base wage is insufficient to provide for that worker's child's education.

I mean your child gets an education either way, its do you get top 5% private school or public school? You can't give everyone free access to a top private school, or it is no longer a top by definition ;)

Working 57 hour weeks for a couple months is a different game than working them as a fact of life.

The $70k figure wasn't meant to be the entry-level pay. I think the idea is that working in that field, you could eventually make that.

"...pay starts at $12 an hour and goes up to $70,000 a year including overtime and bonuses..."

So let's call it $24k (not including bonuses) up to $70k (including bonuses). That's my interpretation.

I'm also assuming that 70k figure is heavy on overtime and bonuses are meager. Such a shock they can't find labor!

Median household income in South Carolina (where they're located) is, according to Wikipedia $43,916.

So.

While you and I might scoff at whatever amount $70k is before bonuses, if you're unemployed in South Carolina you could do a lot worse.

Or a realistic interpretation of what was intended by having content after "starts at $12 hour" would be that they demonstrated they could both do the work and demonstrate customer service skills, and began earning more like $25/hour to get to that "up to 70k/year" more easily.

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