The percentage of Americans who are employed has fallen from 61 to 51
axios.com
axios.com
Is "employing" XX% of your population in virtual indentured servitude supposed to be something politicians are proud of?
Where I live, an hour outside DC and maybe 30 minutes to Baltimore, you can get a 2BR apartment in a nice new building for $1,000 per month. Share that with someone, and a person making $1,500 is spending the recommended 1/3 on rent. $67/month for healthcare on an ACA silver plan, and that leaves $900/month, which is totally doable for a single person, or better yet each half of a young married couple. And frankly, around here you’d get $15/hour just working checkout. In places that have a significant number of $10/hour jobs, rent is something you spend a few hundred a month on. You can eat at a sit down place for under $10.
So you pay your $500 for rent. Add 150 for utilities. Add 200 for gas and 50 for car insurance since you're gonna be living in a rural place. Thats 900 for a roof and ability to pay for it.
Now you have $600 a month for food and literally any other expense. Say you never eat out and use staples like rice and beans as the basis for every dish, thats $250 a month (maybe you can squeeze out another $50, but one must have a slight bit of slack for say, a single gallon of ice cream per month). $350 for everything else. Entertainment. A gym membership. Your medical deductible. Your sanity.
Silver plans are eligible for Cost Sharing Reduction (reducing deductibles to $500-1,000), and pay for doctor’s visits before deductibles kick in. And preventative care has no co-pay and no deductible.
> So you pay your $500 for rent. Add 150 for utilities. Add 200 for gas and 50 for car insurance since you're gonna be living in a rural place.
How much do you think gas costs in Iowa? The median rural/town commuter travels about 1,150 miles per month. A 2000 Honda Civic gets 27 mpg. At $2/gallon for around 40 gallons a month, that’s under half your estimate.
> Now you have $600 a month for food and literally any other expense. Say you never eat out and use staples like rice and beans as the basis for every dish, thats $250 a month (maybe you can squeeze out another $50, but one must have a slight bit of slack for say, a single gallon of ice cream per month).
You are out of touch if you think $250 per month is a “rice and beans” food budget for a single person: https://mymoneywizard.com/how-i-spend-less-than-35-a-week-on... ($67 per week for two people). A weekly trip to Aldi for my family of five clocks in at about $100, and we don’t even try to save money.
> $350 for everything else. Entertainment. A gym membership. Your medical deductible. Your sanity.
In central Illinois, you can have a sit-down meal for $10, less if ethnic food. Coffee is a buck. The Y near my house is $40/month for a very nice place with heated indoor pool, and making minimum wage you qualify for financial aid. The county one, which is also nice, is $25/month. Netflix is $13/month. A Verizon MVNO is $35/month. In Iowa City, you can get $1-2 well drinks four days a week: https://www.brothersbar.com/iowacity.
> Silver plans are eligible for Cost Sharing Reduction (reducing deductibles to $500-1,000), and pay for doctor’s visits before deductibles kick in. And preventative care has no co-pay and no deductible.
Note that this is ignoring one massive part of healthcare: Dental care. As someone that lived in deep poverty I had to deal with teeth quite literally rotting out of my head because there were no options for me to get care and the insurance that I had didn't cover it. That's easily upwards of a few grand to fix a few teeth which no one can afford on those wages.
> How much do you think gas costs in Iowa? The median rural/town commuter travels about 1,150 miles per month. A 2000 Honda Civic gets 27 mpg. At $2/gallon for around 40 gallons a month, that’s under half your estimate.
Gas costed around ~3 dollars a gallon where I lived and our old car got around 20mpg. That alone creeps up to around $200 for gas and we couldn't afford to get a more efficient car for obvious reasons. The only reason why gas is cheaper now is because of the crash, it was not the norm at all for most people.
> You are out of touch if you think $250 per month is a “rice and beans” food budget for a single person: https://mymoneywizard.com/how-i-spend-less-than-35-a-week-on.... ($67 per week for two people). A weekly trip to Aldi for my family of five clocks in at about $100, and we don’t even try to save money.
You seem to be the one out of touch here considering what the USDA has said. Note that in your money wizard example the prices were incredibly off compared to where I live where things were easily 1.3-1.5x the price at the nearest grocery store. For example, 3lbs pound of chicken breast was easily around $2.80 compared to their example which is around $1.90. It also assumes people actually have time to cook and plan out their meals.
> In central Illinois, you can have a sit-down meal for $10, less if ethnic food. Coffee is a buck. The Y near my house is $40/month for a very nice place with heated indoor pool, and making minimum wage you qualify for financial aid. The county one, which is also nice, is $25/month. Netflix is $13/month. A Verizon MVNO is $35/month. In Iowa City, you can get $1-2 well drinks four days a week
At the very least we can reduce that remaining $350 by another $100 once we factor in internet and phone bills, both of which are required in today's environment.
So let's say you have around $250 left total. That's $250 for emergencies, for feeding your pets, for paying off dental bills, for putting towards loans, for dealing with everything else life has to throw at you.
And people wonder why your average American can't save money or put any of it towards stocks?
From my experience of talking to people - seems like the quickest way to get cavities and ruin your teeth (beyond not brushing) is to not do the regular cleanings.
Source?
It's pretty routine in my circle that everyone does it. If they don't, cavities appear not too long after.
And btw - argument from "oh the masses don't do it, therefore it isn't important" isn't very strong.
You’re right about the deductible - after doing the math I saw that youd qualify for the 150->400% bracket of the federal poverty level. But can you afford 3 weeks pay for that $750 deductible? On top of other stuff?
> You are out of touch if you think $250 per month is a “rice and beans” food budget for a single person
I didn't say it was only rice and beans, but a cheap diet consisting of the cheapest carbs. The USDA has it around $180 as the absolute cheapest per person. Your money wizard person lives in the cheapest area of the country. I'll bet they have a stocked kitchen as well so they never need to buy spices.
https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/media/fil...
> In central Illinois
Having been thru Normal/Bloomington and Champaign, it’s extremely reasonable in price as rentals are dirt cheap, as long as you’re going to aldi. $1-2 well drinks aren’t a thing in a lot of the country. Coffee isn’t a dollar since the 90s. Your original example was between DC and baltimore. Things aren't so cheap there.
Oh, and I forgot about the actual premium cost of the silver plan, which is around $200 per month.
Sorry, but you're going into debt or homelessness the second your hours get cut. You have no stability. The smallest thing going wrong will ruin you. Have you seen the absolute hordes of people going into just APPLY for section 8? https://youtu.be/Q5ocjZ9GatA?t=140
What percentage of people suffer both an adverse health event in their 20s or 30s and a car maintenance event in the same year? I don't understand these types of arguments: you can't establish whether something is a "living wage" or not by reference to worst case scenarios achieved by piling on conjecture upon conjecture. Again, in France the minimum wage works out to $10/hour, and they have 20-30% co-insurance if someone has an adverse health event, and outside Paris most people have cars. It still works out fine for almost everyone.
> The USDA has it around $210 as the absolute minimum per person. Your money wizard person lives in the cheapest area of the country.
The USDA food budget is used as the basis for SNAP benefits, so it has to accommodate costs in high-COL areas. It is, in fact, designed to allow a healthy, balanced diet that most people can follow and is not an "absolute minimum" number. The person I linked to is not some wizard: https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/how-save-money-grocerie.... Regardless, the point is that $250 is not a rice-and-beans diet, like you claimed. This guy is eating lean meats, fruits and vegetables within the sub-$200 USDA Thrifty budget.
> While Trader Joe's stocks no shortage of reasonably priced pre-packaged indulgences, I stuck to my health-conscious diet of fruits, vegetables, eggs, and lean meats. For $39.68 I bought more than enough for the week.
Hell, it would likely put a big shock in my finances and I actually have good health insurance right now. You can't compare co-insurance costs like you are because it's apples to oranges.
Do you want to know how much it cost me to get my dental work done in the US versus how much it costs in France?
Someone in this situation is not paying cash for a car so there's probably $100-$200 for a car loan on top of that.
At 150% FPL the Silver plan deductible falls from about $7,000 to $250, and your maximum annual out-of-pocket expenses falls from $7,300 to $550.
At some point you hit full-on Medicaid which is, depending on the state, truly excellent insurance and totally free.
If you have a financially ruinous healthcare event, the ACA silver plan saves you — that's the whole point of insurance.
Also literally any surgery is a financially ruinous healthcare event insured or not until you’re rich relative to the average person - I have the receipts of the tens of thousands of dollars of medical bills I’ve had to pay while insured to prove it.
If it’s the only sugary treat someone is eating, that’s still well below average for people in most industrialized countries. If combined with soda/candy/cake/cookies/cocktails/... then probably not such a good idea.
And I actually looked it up and it’s about a half gallon per American per month. I wonder if that includes children too. Probably. And then factor in the mountains of other garbage we also eat...it’s honestly a miracle that we’re not more obese than we are.
That all being to say: $10/hr full time does not in the slightest bit seem unreasonable to me, even if I do strongly believe that workers deserve better than that.
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> Add 200 for gas and 50 for car insurance since you're gonna be living in a rural place.
Or a bike, which is a thing, that people ride to and from work, even in "rural" areas. No gas and no insurance, even for an electric one (and those have come down quite a bit in price, to the point where the only cheaper cars are absolute beaters).
Even "rural" cities/towns often have buses, too. They don't always have the most exhaustive coverage, but bikes can make up for that for the "last mile" of each way's commute (especially if the bus has a bike rack on it, which is becoming increasingly common for exactly this reason and because it's relatively cheap compared to the cost of the bus itself).
> $350 for everything else. Entertainment. A gym membership. Your medical deductible. Your sanity.
You don't need a gym membership to work out (as I'm sure most of us trying to get even basic fitness in can attest over the last couple months, what with all those gyms being shut down). Jogging, hiking, bicycling, pushups, planks, jumping jacks, shovelgloving¹... all dirt cheap to do (if you don't go overboard and splurge on fancy bikes or backpacks or whatever; the basics will work fine). If you happen to live in a snowy area, snow shoveling is a good workout, too, and helps out your neighbors (you might even get paid for it).
All of those things can double for entertainment and "sanity", too, so that just leaves the medical deductible. That $350 would give you enough savings to cover that deductible in a bit over a year (even faster if you throw in the aforementioned $250 you'd be saving without a car). Anything past that is pure savings, enough to eventually buy a used car for the occasional out-of-town trip, or to eat out every once in awhile, or what have you.
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I can tell you're just like "well, the poors can just ride bikes" having never ridden one yourself, otherwise you would know that a bike that you could cycle a 40km to 60km round commute on in a rural area is gonna set you back $2k and you won't get finance on it the way you do with a car, not to mention the fact that the cycling clothes you would need to buy to cover rural distances are mostly in the designer category and therefore very expensive. Not to mention your mechanical service, which if you're commuting daily is probably $80 every six months plus any parts which wear out, $15 for brake pads, $5 every time you puncture any wheel, $60 for new tyres every year, and the occasional unexpected uninsurable $200 "bottom bracket, crank and chainring all wore out at once" repair.
No, you’re the one lacking context. Most low wage workers are young, and the median American lives 18 miles away from their mom. People making $10/hour living on their own for the first time who have parents or grandparents randomly drop by with food is a very common scenario. People making $10/hour trying to support a family is not.
Also, the notion of biking 60 km round trip in rural areas strongly suggests you’ve never been to one. Someone working a $10 service job in a rural county isn’t commuting 30 km each way. My wife grew up in Sibley, Iowa. It’s about a mile and a half across North to south, and less than that East to west. The apartments are all in town, and so are the stores.
The people who might need to commute longer are farmers and farm hands, but they make a lot more money. The average farm hand in Iowa with a high school education or less makes $30-40k/year: https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/html/c1-60.... (The hours are long, so it works out to $12-15/hour.) They’re not riding bikes.
If anything, the average commute is shorter (at least distance-wise) in a rural town/city than a large city, since there's less distance to cover to get from one end of town to the other. Cities tend to grow outward faster than they grow upward, so from a square-cube-law point of view, the bigger the city, the longer the commute (without having to pay through the nose for rent).
Pot, meet kettle.
That's an almost laughably out of touch estimate for a 40-60km commuter bike. Speaking as someone who has cycle-commuted between 30 and 60km, full time, for the better part of two decades (including a couple winters in the upper midwest and a 10 year stint of not even owning a car), plus recreational riding on the weekends, my response is: Horsefeathers.
A nice gravel or cyclocross bike (with components one level below, say, Shimano 105, or SRAM Rival), one that will easily take 10 years / 75,000 miles of daily commuting with moderate maintenance costs, should set you back no more than about $1k. Paying more than $1k doesn't get you a more reliable bike. It gets you a lighter bike (which is often less reliable).
And, respectfully, if you're paying $5 every time you puncture a tire, that's a you problem. When you're on a budget, you patch tubes instead of throwing them away. Cranks generally last the life of a frame, and bottom brackets don't suddenly catastrophically fail without warning.
You're criticizing someone for not understanding what it's like to live on a low income, but all your cost estimates are from the perspective of an upper-middle income person who rides a fancy bike recreationally on the weekends. Like a politician who thinks that a gallon of milk costs $20.
Mine was probably nice when it was new, but it was 10+ years old by the time I got it.
I did ride one to and from work for 3 years, specifically because I couldn't afford a car at the time (and then later did buy a car but couldn't afford to drive it for my daily commute because I was unemployed).
> otherwise you would know that a bike that you could cycle a 40km to 60km round commute on in a rural area
Maybe if you hadn't "disregarded the rest of the post" you would've read the part about using bus services to cover most of that distance. Bus fares are an additional expense, sure, but you can readily save money on a monthly pass, and plenty of transit systems offer discounted rates for low-income riders (though I think $10/hour might be above the typical threshold).
Not that such a commute is typical even in rural areas anyway. "Rural" areas include small towns/cities, and quite a few of the jobs in such towns/cities are within those towns/cities. Ain't everything way out on some random farm (though even in those cases, you'll typically have access to live either on or very close to work; this is a common living arrangement for migrant workers in California).
The furthest I had to bike for work was a one-time computer repair job about 13 miles outside of town, uphill in the mountains. Did that on my bike, even while carrying parts and tools.
> when you don't need to pay for food
Like I said in the comment: even if I didn't have that particular resource (for which I'm grateful and count myself lucky), I still had enough from my paychecks to cover that. That money went into savings and the occasional meal eating out instead.
And I still did need to pay for most of my food; the main things they brought were soup and Spam (because they could buy them on the cheap at Costco), plus a bag of rice if I remember right. I was on the hook for anything else.
And mind you this was with no roommates and more than $1k/month rent; there were plenty of other areas where I could've trimmed my budget and made things work.
> not to mention the fact that the cycling clothes you would need to buy
You don't need cycling clothes to ride a bike.
> Not to mention your mechanical service, which if you're commuting daily is probably $80 every six months, $15 for brake pads, $5 every time you puncture any wheel, $60 for new tyres every year,
All of this is still a tiny fraction of the $250/month figure for a car.
Though I will say that in the 3 years I did ride my bike daily I didn't change the tires once. Nor did I change the brake pads. Probably should've taken better care of that thing, lol
> Even "rural" cities/towns often have buses, too. They don't always have the most exhaustive coverage, but bikes can make up for that for the "last mile" of each way's commute (especially if the bus has a bike rack on it, which is becoming increasingly common for exactly this reason and because it's relatively cheap compared to the cost of the bus itself).
Bikes are not a viable commuting option in most of America, you cannot transport groceries or children effectively on a bike. This is the strawiest of straw men arguments.
Go visit any of the rougher parts of a big city, and you'll find plenty of low income people transporting groceries and commuting on bike (You can find them in small towns, too). Look for people with plastic shopping bags slung from the bars. It's not just viable, but absolutely essential.
And it's not limited to just people with low income, either. A rack and a set of nice panniers can easily carry a week's worth of groceries for a single person, including bulky items like milk.
I had a basket on my bike (hacked together with a plastic crate and some bungie cords) that worked great for hauling groceries (and computer parts / tools - hell, even whole towers - when I was doing freelance computer repair during various periods of unemployment), and I know plenty of people who have little to no issue with bike strollers/trailers for hauling kids.
Yea - this was the main point bud. You ever ride your bike 10 miles to get to work in the dead of winter in Iowa or Minnesota?
Like I'm glad you were able to rig a basket and all for your bike but acting like your story is relevant for people who are in actual financial hardships is disingenuous and weird. You're pissing people off who actually struggled... like didn't have food sorta struggle. Stop.
Not Iowa or Minnesota, but it was the dead of winter, and yes.
> Like I'm glad you were able to rig a basket and all for your bike
My point is that anyone can. The most expensive part was the $10 for the part to strap the crate on (attached to the pole under the seat). The basket was literally in the trash. The bungees were, like, $5, tops.
> but acting like your story is relevant for people who are in actual financial hardships
It is relevant, because I was in financial hardship, despite what you somehow seem to think.
You're the one pissing people off who actually struggled - that is, you're pissing me off by shitting all over me because God forbid I accepted some help from family when I needed it and wasn't in a position to refuse.
I have one person arguing with me - you. You have multiple people arguing with you, some even sharing difficult personal stories of having to go to a food kitchen to not go hungry...
I'm sorry "I'm pissing you off" and "shitting all over you" but you are not going to change my opinion: you had some serious help but still talk like you're an example..? I agree with others that you sharing your experience of being "poor" is punching down, tone-deaf, and invalidates those who actually find themselves struggling right now.
There are actually a couple people in this discussion who seem to be backing up my points.
> you had some serious help
What part of "less than $50 a month v. more than $500 more in rent" are you not getting here? Real fuckin' serious help. Obviously I was sitting there eating lobster and caviar every day, right? Is that what you think?
My intention is not to "punch down". My only intention is to describe a situation that I think is comparable, based both on facts (namely: the mathematical realities of having to live in a high-cost area with a low wage) and feelings (namely: the emotional toll of having to make the best of every resource available - which, yes, included a whopping $50 a month... wow, so extravagant and sheltered, that'll totally make up for my higher rent).
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EDIT:
Nor should my experience be taken as "invalidating" anyone else's (except maybe the 1%ers trying to "relate"). Just because I was able to stay afloat taking home less than $1k a month after rent doesn't mean people should ever have to do that. We as a country should be paying our workers what they're worth, not merely "enough to live".
I think this stems from me misspeaking and saying $10/hour is "not unreasonable". What I meant was "not unlivable", and that much is true in much of America. We absolutely should be striving for a higher goal than simply "livable" for every American, given that this country was founded on inalienable rights beyond merely "life"; until every American can exercise one's rights to "liberty" and "the pursuit of happiness", this country has not fulfilled its mandate to its people and to the world, and every one of us should be working together to fix that.
Right, which is why a ton of people got flustered. $10 is unreasonable. You posited it was, positioning yourself as some sort of positive example as-to why it is.
> What I meant was "not unlivable"
You said that $10/hr is reasonable. I see "livable", "not unlivable", "survivable", "reasonable", and "not unreasonable" as all synonymous. Your shifting of definitions and "what I meant"-isms doesn't add any sort of positive spin to what you were putting forth with your original comment, it's just backtracking because people called you out.
I stand by my original comment. Just because some random jerks on Hacker News think I wasn't poor merely because I accepted what amounted to less than $50 of help doesn't mean I wasn't poor.
Pretty much any small/medium town or city that's not a tourist destination or near an ocean will fit that bill.
I seem to recall having to move away from my town because there were zero job opportunities for me except for those that were outside of my career and minimum wage.
- Stores
- Restaurants (usually fast food)
- Beauty salons
- Auto shops
- Gas stations
- Small offices (think lawyers, accountants, etc.)
- Clinics (even full-blown hospitals, one of which being my employer for my second job / first IT job)
Not to mention various jobs without fixed workplaces. I did freelance computer repair to help supplement my unemployment checks (during the times when I was on unemployment), since that's what I was good at; landscaping, housecleaning, pest control, plumbing/electrical work, etc. all come to mind there, too.
There are certainly jobs outside of town, too (e.g. farm work), but those often have on-site or near-site housing (whether as simple as renting a room in a farmhouse or there being an outright mobile home park or somesuch) specifically due to the realization that a lot of people working those jobs can't afford to drive every day.
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EDIT: if you're in a specialized career I can definitely understand why it'd be hard to find work. Bigger cities seem to have higher demand for specialized work, while smaller cities/towns more often than not need generalists. I've definitely felt that even in IT. Still, this pandemic notwithstanding, these towns/cities do tend to have up to tends of thousands of workers in 'em, doing the same things that a bigger city needs, albeit probably with less specialization and more generalization.
And indeed, I think that's why I'm doing okay now, even while working in a small-ish city: I learned the hard way that it probably ain't realistic to specialize on a specific technology or a specific role, and that if I'm gonna develop a lasting career I've gotta be flexible enough to be effective in any sort of role. I can't just be the "Linux and Erlang guy"; I gotta be willing to learn and work with whatever the job requires.
Of course, I'm also lucky enough to be working for a company that's not only able to stay open but actively thriving in pandemic conditions; I recognize most Americans - including multiple friends and family members - ain't as lucky as I am, which is exactly why I'm strongly in favor of helping them out wherever possible.
My main question is, as you yourself have admittedly never experienced it, why even bother commenting on it? All your comment provides is ammunition for those looking to dismiss the such wages as livable, when (if you experienced them yourself) they’re clearly not.
Like, I'm under no illusion whatsoever that I wasn't fortunate. I'm endlessly grateful that I had a family eager and able to help out, and I know that there are plenty of people who don't have that much. That doesn't mean I didn't still struggle. It doesn't invalidate paying that rent, or making things work. It doesn't invalidate being in that situation two more times due to extended periods of unemployment, or when I was later making less than minimum wage and living off my savings working for a startup that ended up failing.
I don't care that a bunch of FAANG employees think I'm too "privileged" to be able to speak about a situation that very much is comparable. Your downvotes do not invalidate my life experiences. Begrudgingly accepting help from family (that, mind you, added up to, what, $50/month, tops? Yeah, real fuckin' luxurious) does not invalidate my life experiences.
My sole intent is this: you claim that such a wage is livable on its own today. Your evidence for that claim is that you yourself had a similar wage, over a decade ago, with additional family support, and other benefits (eg no healthcare costs).
The two are not the same. Not even close. By by claiming they are, you invalidate the experience of everyone else who actually had to face the struggle of living on a low-wage without any of the benefits you did.
I myself ate from a homeless shelter a handful of times in college just because I couldn’t afford food at that moment in time. That is not an exaggeration. So forgive me if it feels like I’m invalidating your experience - I’m sure you struggled as well, but that doesn’t give you the right to speak for the experience of something you’ve clearly never experienced for yourself.
A $10 wage is not a livable wage in the vast majority of the country today. It’s a survivable wage at best, but not in every city.
And more than double the rent. That's the part y'all seem to be ignoring, and is the exact part that makes my situation comparable and - IMO - worth presenting. If you disagree, can you at least articulate why paying that much more in rent somehow doesn't matter?
That doubling in rent is greater in dollar value than the slightly-higher wages + the occasional Costco run from family. If anything, my income minus rent was lower than the $10/hr minus $500/month situation originally presented and to which I responded ($970 v. $1100, respectively, when factoring in that support from family; this assumes 40 hours per week and a 4-week month). And that's assuming zero taxes (which wasn't the case, especially since this was in California).
> I’m sure you struggled as well, but that doesn’t give you the right to speak for the experience of something you’ve clearly never experienced for yourself.
To be clear here, I don't mean to invalidate your experience, either. My only intent is to describe a situation that IMO is comparable to the one originally presented. If it's not comparable, then fine, but I remain unconvinced when the best that people can do is entirely neglect to read what I wrote and then assume that I was totally paid for and expense-free.
It does sound like your situation was worse than mine and the originally-presented one
> It’s a survivable wage at best
Which is really the only point I was trying to make. Living on that sort of a wage sucks, but it is possible, and it's better than nothing. I strongly believe that human labor is worth more than some measly $10 or $12 per hour, and should be paid accordingly, regardless of whether or not it's technically possible to survive on such a low wage.
That said, "survivable" does definitionally mean "livable". The trouble is that "livable" ain't really enough for class mobility.
...Your experience of having a family or network subsidize $100s per month in various costs, which you are using to try and explain anyway the enormous and well-established economic inequality problem in the US.
Why? Can't you be grateful for your privileged position and not punch down?
As I've explained in multiple other follow-up comments now (EDIT: including, I now realize, in the exact comment to which you replied): it was not "$100s per month". It was barely $50, if that. I think the most luxurious thing was some protein shakes, and that was a box for, like, $20 (that'd be the thing in the fridge). They still give me boxes of those shakes sometimes, since my grandma likes 'em and I do, too, so why not, lol
And, as I already explained in the original comment, it was a $50 that I could've still paid myself. Instead, I accepted the help. I'm grateful for that help, and recognize that even that much is a privilege a lot of people don't have. That doesn't mean I wasn't poor at the time, nor does it mean that describing my experience is somehow "punching down".
Makes your blood boil. Seriously - someone posited "hey - in most of the US a bike is not a viable commuting vehicle..." to which op just replies (paraphrasing) "yes it is! I jerry-rigged a plastic basket on mine to carry things!"
Incredibly out-of-touch and from directly from a place of privilege. This is a person who may have had to ride their bike/budget carefully for a year or two to get on their feet, not someone who's actually experienced poverty.
Yeah, fuck me for figuring out how to make the best of my situation, right?
> This is a person who may have had to ride their bike/budget carefully for a year or two to get on their feet, not someone who's actually experienced poverty.
Three years, through both the aforementioned first job and two multi-month periods of unemployment, plus a period of making less than minimum wage as a contractor.
But no, apparently I'm "too privileged" to be able to talk about when I was poor.
Talk about making blood boil...
1. family fills your fridge
2. $12-13/hr wages
3. didn't pay for health insurance, but still had health insurance
4. have the skills to do IT work (doing it from a bike is moot)
> Yeah, fuck me for figuring out how to make the best of my situation, right?
In good faith, I am not trying to say "fuck you"... I just don't agree that your past self was actually poor given the above bullet points. We have differing definitions of "poor" as you had the tools to improve your situation, without experiencing food scarcity, and all while having a health insurance safety-net.
As someone who's worked around extreme poverty - it's hard to not get flustered reading your posts. Sorry.
"stock" != "fill". We're talking, like, $50/month, tops. I could've swung that myself. Instead I put it into savings and graciously accepted the help.
> $12-13/hr wages
In an area with double the rent of the proposed scenario
> didn't pay for health insurance, but still had health insurance
No, I didn't have health insurance. I specifically said I didn't qualify for my employer's plan until I had already put in my notice.
(I was also uninsured after my second job all the way up to my current job, so covering about a 4-year span; given that the ACA's individual mandate was in full effect, this effectively ate hundreds of dollars out of my tax returns, at least for the years where I actually had returns rather than owing taxes on e.g. my less-than-minimum-wage contract work).
> have the skills to do IT work
That's cold comfort when you're stuck working a non-IT job (as I was), or when you don't have a job at all (as I was later, on two separate occasions, hence the riding of my bike to fix computers and supplement unemployment under-the-table).
Keep in mind I didn't (and still don't) have a degree. That probably helped with keeping expenses low (no student loan debt to worry about), but it also made it substantially harder to find solid work (given that even help desk positions typically required at least an Associate's; I got my first IT job specifically as a temp job that turned unexpectedly permanent).
> I just don't agree that your past self was actually poor
I mean, I obviously can't make you relive my working life (at least up until my current job, which does thankfully pay much better and is helping me bounce back). Nor would I want you to. Still, I definitely think I was poor, both when I was working my first job and after I lost my second job. Really boggles the mind how you'd somehow disagree with that assessment simply because of a marginal amount of support.
What sort of meal do you suppose a person gets at a sit down restaurant for less than $10?
How is a young married couple supposed to establish some wealth and make their way in life on $20K/year each?
Every day HN amazes me at how completely out of touch some people are. "I make six figures typing on a screen in an air conditioned room all day. Why can't these damn poor people just take their $10/hr and shut up?"
It's not $67/month healthcare. Its $500/month healthcare that's highly subsidized by the government. You know, like the healthcare in most countries that have "free healthcare." (The ACA is similar to how the Dutch universal healthcare system works.)
> What sort of meal do you suppose a person gets at a sit down restaurant for less than $10?
Often, a really good one!
> How is a young married couple supposed to establish some wealth and make their way in life on $20K/year each?
They're not supposed to. They get better jobs, they get promoted, etc. From age 22 to age 38, the 25th percentile individual income (so 75% of people make more than that) triples from $10,000/year to $30,000/year.
> Every day HN amazes me at how completely out of touch some people are. "I make six figures typing on a screen in an air conditioned room all day. Why can't these damn poor people just take their $10/hr and shut up?"
It's the people earning six figures talking about hypothetical people trying to support a family of four on $10/hour that are completely out of touch. Yes, that's the reality for some people and it's sad. But for every one of those people, there are a bunch of 20-somethings making $10/hour who will move onto something better.
People imagine 35 year olds with kids making $10/hour, but that's an outlier. The median household income for people aged 35-44 is $80,000 per year, and for married people that age it's even higher. And remember: that median couple lives in Topeka, not Palo Alto.
That seems a high rate for making $9/hour.
$9/hr * 2080 hours = $18,720 After deductions that's $6,520 of taxable income. Eligible for EITC so a tax rate of negative $3,526. So if they paid zero federal income tax all year they'd get a "refund" check of $3,526 (except its not a refund, since they paid zero, its a negative tax rate)
You can see here: https://www.calculator.net/tax-calculator.html?cfilestatus=S...
Before or after your tax return?
Is your argument that low-wage and part-time workers are irresponsible and cannot be trusted with large windfalls of money around tax return time, because they will squander them faster than they would if the same amount instead was given to them via biweekly installments?
I agree that many of the people who need to know this don't, though.
Our education system often fails to deliver financial literacy and basic life skills to a large portion of the population, leaving them instead to overwhelmed parents trying to feed their families.
(2) - Different discussion -- let's assume for sake of argument we are talking about a young healthy person anyways.
(3) - Sales tax is "almost nothing"?
With respect, this reply is coming off as completely out of touch with someone who can barely afford rent, food, gas and the many "poor taxes".
France is a wealthy, highly developed country with strong labor laws. Cost of living in France certainly isn’t cheaper than the US.
> (2) - Different discussion -- let's assume for sake of argument we are talking about a young healthy person anyways.
You should have insurance, and the ACA made it affordable (the government pays 80% of the premium for some at income).
> (3) - Sales tax is "almost nothing"?
You don’t pay sales tax on rent. I live in a civilized state, so you don’t pay sales tax on groceries and clothes either.
> With respect, this reply is coming off as completely out of touch with someone who can barely afford rent, food, gas
The point is that someone making $10 working 40 hours in a low cost of living place probably isn’t one of those people who can “barely afford rent, food, and gas.” Which goes back to OP’s question: why focus on who is working? Because people who don’t have work or don’t have sufficient hours are the people who are really struggling to afford rent, food, etc.
The people who are out of touch are the ones who apply their SF or NYC-warped glasses to the vast majority of the country that isn’t SF or NYC. I was in Clear Lake Iowa, which is what passes for a tourist destination in Iowa. You can get a 2BR apartment for $650/month. Someone making $10/hour there who is single with a roommate has a perfectly reasonable life.
No, $10/hour jobs won’t support a kid or pay for daycare. If that’s the concern, the government should pay people who have kids and provide free daycare. That’s also a perfectly reasonable approach.
Pretty sure the cost of living is quite a bit cheaper in France.
- Education is free.
- Basic healthcare is free. Little known fact is that private coverage is mandatory in France and paid out of pocket. It's double digits a month instead of three in the US.
- Bills are cheaper. internet/phone/mobile/tv is fixed 35 a month with all providers while the US subjects on hacker news are routinely throwing all sort of crazy numbers for these. similar advantage with water. electricity depends on the US region.
- gas is very expensive in France. One litter is roughly the price of one gallon (3 litters). People don't travel as much and cities have must stronger public transportation (bus, tube, tramway, trains).
- Decent food and items are easier and cheaper to procure in France. Highly discounted food is similar I think (meaning lidl/netto can do cheap shit in volume like wallmart).
Overall French have a lot less money than American. The vast majority of the country is living on 1000-2000 euro salary a month after tax (outside Paris). There's nobody that's routinely making triple or quadruple of anybody else, so anything expensive simply has no audience.
The rent for a 2 bedrooms in the top major cities (toulouse/lyon with one million inhabitants and jobs) is 600-700 euro I'd say. The same rent in deep countryside with no jobs could be closer to 400 euro. Rents typically don't go below 400 (or 300 each for shared) because there are many too subsidies and benefits for people in need. I don't know what is clear lake iowa to compare, is it small city or truly the middle of nowhere?
> - Education is free.
K-12 education is free in the US. The majority of people in both countries don’t go to college. College costs are mainly an issue for middle and upper middle class people.
> - Basic healthcare is free. Little known fact is that private coverage is mandatory in France and paid out of pocket. It's double digits a month instead of three in the US.
The ACA heavily subsidizes healthcare for low income people in the US. Our hypothetical person making $10/hour pays $0-75/month for insurance in ACA states.
> The rent for a 2 bedrooms in the top major cities (toulouse/lyon with one million inhabitants and jobs) is 600-700 euro I'd say.
American cities are poorly managed, and a much smaller percentage of Americans live in cities. But a 2BR in say Memphis, which has 500,000 people, can be had for $700-1,000.
> The same rent in deep countryside with no jobs could be closer to 400 euro. Rents typically don't go below 400 (or 300 each for shared) because there are many too subsidies and benefits for people in need. I don't know what is clear lake iowa to compare, is it small city or truly the middle of nowhere?
Clear Lake is a small tourist town in the middle of nowhere, which makes it a bit more expensive. You can rent a 4BR house in nowhere Michigan for $500/month.
What is your source on this? From what I read about the stats in France, more than 75% of a given generation obtain the BAC, the diploma that grants access to university. I'm fairly confident that for the recent years the majority of any given cohort does go to higher-ed.
> College costs are mainly an issue for middle and upper middle class people.
It's not really an issue for anyone in France though. Maybe you can have a look at university fees here [1]. (<500€/y) Personally we didn't pay anything as it is entirely subsided for families with lower revenues.
1 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frais_d%27inscription_%C3%A0_l...
Just in this post:
* No mention of childcare costs.
* Apparently the working class shouldn't bother too much with higher education.
* No mention of all the pitfalls within US health insurances that causes costs a low-income earner just can't afford.
* Some wild cherry-picking regarding housing costs in the US instead of acknowledging that in Europe these are much more general, in every city, albeit perhaps not in the city center.
> No mention of childcare costs.
That’s because I addressed it in my parent post: “No, $10/hour jobs won’t support a kid or pay for daycare. If that’s the concern, the government should pay people who have kids and provide free daycare.” The vast majority of people making $10/hour don’t have kids. If childcare costs are the concern, then let’s focus on childcare costs. It doesn’t make sense to talk about whether “$10 is a living wage” by including expenses that most people making that income don’t have.
> Apparently the working class shouldn't bother too much with higher education.
Yes. Just about 30% of young people in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and Italy get a college degree. These are some of the most prosperous countries in the world. Most of the population doesn’t need to go to college. We should take the money that we would spend on free college (which will increase black-white wealth inequality) and use it for something worthwhile, like Corey Booker‘s baby bonds. Subsidizing a vast army of professors and administrators teaching kids underwater basket weaving is lighting public money on fire.
> No mention of all the pitfalls within US health insurances that causes costs a low-income earner just can't afford.
The ACA is a real game changer in this respect. People don’t really appreciate how much it does for folks in the $10/hour wage bracket.
> Some wild cherry-picking regarding housing costs in the US instead of acknowledging that in Europe these are much more general, in every city, albeit perhaps not in the city center
Americans spend among the lowest percentage of their income on housing in the OECD, but live in among the biggest houses: https://mises.org/power-market/americans-have-much-more-livi...
In fact, low-income American households have similar sized living spaces to average French households. The anecdotes about Memphis and Clear Lake aren’t “cherry picking.” I’m trying to show why America has such affordable housing. It’s because Memphis (or rather the suburbs) and places like it are where Americans live. Out of 315 million Americans, 260 million live somewhere other than the metro areas of New York, DC, LA, or SF. And whereas about half of Europeans in a metro area tend to live “in the city” in the United States 70-80% live outside the city. Even in DC, one of the most expensive cities in America, 85% of the metro area population lives in the cheaper areas outside the city. (And many of them are much cheaper.)
So what you are saying is that education is less free in the US than in other rich countries. I most definitely enjoyed getting my Master in Computer Science degree from a top European university for free.
> The ACA heavily subsidizes healthcare for low income people in the US
That does not mean that a poor person can afford it.
> nowhere Mitchigan
... where there are no jobs to pay the rent. Your cherry picking is amazing.
But, it is true that most Americans pay very little taxes.
> According to the Tax Foundation, the top 50% of taxpayers paid 96.96% of all federal income taxes in 2016, the last tax year for which comprehensive and vetted statistics are available from the Internal Revenue Service. This means that the bottom 50% paid just 3.04%. [1]
And yes, sales tax is "almost nothing". About 2-3% of an average American household's total income.
> With that in mind, the average American pays $10,489 in "personal taxes," representing 14% of the average household's total income. This includes federal and state income taxes, as well as other taxes such as personal property taxes, vehicle taxes, and certain other small taxes. $8,367 of this amount is federal income taxes, $2,046 is state and local taxes, and $75 is other small taxes. [2]
[1] https://www.thebalance.com/what-the-average-american-pays-in...
[2] https://www.fool.com/taxes/2018/04/22/how-much-does-the-aver...
If you're scraping by on, say, $500/month after rent is paid, $10 of that on sales taxes is insignificant imo.
no, that statment is only applicable to income tax, which is intentionally progressive. most other taxes, like employment taxes, are highly regressive, so it's not true that most americans pay "very little taxes". americans pay their fair share of taxes, but not the same proportion to each taxing entity.
The average American household pays about 5-7% of its income in taxes other than income tax. I think that qualifies as "very little".
[0] https://itep.org/wp-content/uploads/WPTiAgraph2.jpg [1] https://itep.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2018/
Virtually no one who works jobs at $10 an hour works full time reliably. These aren't career-style 9-5 regular positions, they're ad-hoc shift work. At best, someone like this works several part time jobs whose hours add up to 40/week on average. In general people in this income bracket end up hopping between jobs and dealing with dry spells where they can't find work. Which is what the linked article is about.
Your numbers are frankly just delusional. I mean, yes, if we had a program that could actually guarantee a regular $400/week income to someone, they could live on that reasonably comfortably in most of the US. But just "having a job" doesn't qualify, not remotely.
Continuing with the French comparison, in France if you have a child you get 16 weeks of maternity leave as well as an 'allowance equal to their average income over the three months preceding the birth'. In France, 80% of childcare is generally covered, in the US its very expensive unless you have a relative that lives nearby that can watch your child.
So while you are indeed correct, it is possible to survive on $10 per hour, many states have a minimum wage under $8.00.
On the whole I very much agree with you, but it can get very complicated very quickly.
If you've been around extreme poverty you know how expensive it is to be poor... You're talking jobs that demand overtime to keep the position, old cars breaking down every other month, being more prone to health problems, the cost of education, the real cost of debt, lower COL housing and theft, etc etc.
I'll argue that those who are advantageous, responsible, and disciplined can absolutely budget/work themselves into a better situation like OP suggests (ABSOLUTELY without children) - but if you've been around poverty (esp. in America) you know that this type of person is the exception and not the rule.
Not disagreeing with anyone - just want to point out that most poor people aren't going to be able to get themselves out of that situation with "just budget!" advice when most of them can't do simple math and/or can barely read... let alone delay instant gratification (drugs/alcohol) for long-term prosperity (positive goals/aspirations).
I agree with your comment so much. Thank you for pointing out how quickly OP's "just budget!" advice breaks down..!
In the US, if you are poor it is very hard to become not poor, the few success stories are by and large the exception to the rule. Most people don't have bootstraps made out of luck and fairy dust. In America the greatest predictor of where you end up is where you start.
Okay, but "people often have the wrong basket of opinions" isn't a strong counterargument to the central point being discussed.
> against the raising if the minimum wage
Raising of the minimum wage comes with price increases, which is a regressive way of guaranteeing a minimum standard of living. Expanding the EITC (or better yet a UBI) allows one to raise a child even if they are earning $10/hour.
[oecd] https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-p...
The answer is multipart and long, but a couple of highlights are; -
- the social point that work is a "quadruple remedy" against deprivation, boredom and isolation, social disrepute, and mental illness. Phrased positively: work gives a person material comforts, social contact, respectability, and self-respect.
Edit: this applies no matter the content of the job or the working conditions. Simply "having a job", any job, provides these things in some measure.
- another aggregate measure, the Gini index, bears on the answer. If a country has both a low Gini index (inequality) and low employment, then unemployed people are able to properly participate in society in that country. The answer in that case might be "no".
Trouble is, such countries are as common as rainbow-colored hens' teeth.
In 2020, in the U.S. for example, yes.
This is why these "jobs" disappeared so quickly when there is a slightest sign of economic trouble.
Someone has to do "real work" and so there will always be a need for indentured servants. Those sort of jobs will always exist. However the need for many other "jobs" has been put into question. When things get tight, companies today are more aware that they can eliminate those positions and carry on, sometimes with increased profits as a result. The pandemic is a perfect wake-up call as it purports to separate "essential" from "non-essential" jobs. With some exceptions, the more you are being paid, the more you think you are worth, the higher the chance that your job is, in fact, "non-essential". Eliminating these higher paid, non-essential positions, even temporarily, saves companies a lot of money. It is not easy to eliminate these positions under normal conditions, however in an "economic crisis", the process becomes easier.
As an employer, I can get those workers back anytime. They will be crawling over each other, lying about their qualifications, doing whatever it takes to get hired, because, on the "strength" of their non-essential job, they have built-up a standard of living that they must maintain.
It's also tremendously different than not having a job at all. We need to be at "okay" before we can be at "good".
And $10/hr is a living wage in most of the US. It ain't comfortable by any means, and doesn't leave room for savings, but it's doable in areas that have a reasonable cost of living (namely: not SF or NYC). That's not to say we can't or shouldn't do better, but it's a start.
$20/hr is where things start to get "okay" for a young single American living with roommates. As in, not constantly stressing about trying to make ends meet and your future. Being able to pay off student loans or slowly build savings.
I had a good quality of life on around that as a single man.
Of course if you live in SF where a coffee can set you back $5 or $6 and you eat out for half your meals it’s hard to really understand.
The biggest downside was not the pay but the stability which was a constant source of stress.
I hear you but you are looking at it from a very skewed perspective.
Look at college - you don’t need it to gain a high level of education anymore. It’s still very useful to get into better jobs - but those jobs are paying way more than $10/hr.
Likewise where I’m from rents have been fairly stable for the past decade. The major cities with ever increasing rent have average jobs paying a lot higher than $10/hr.
On healthcare - it’s already been covered better by others here but it’s not a big concern.
I'm missing the part how suffering chronic distress (over financials) is part of a "good" or "okay" QoL.
I’m highlighting that a minimum wage hike is not the answer.
And depending on your constitution chronic stress is quite compatible with a high QoL. Ask any new parents for example.
By "okay" I mostly mean "has basic essentials" - namely, food, water, and shelter. It means you ain't homeless and dying of starvation. It means you're surviving. The difference between that and "good" is financial independence - being able to afford to save money, and to afford health insurance (though I'd prefer single-payer), and to afford hobbies or leisure.
And for the record, I believe we all deserve no less than "good". Our country is, after all, founded on the idea that everyone has the inalienable right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", and we shouldn't be satisfied until everyone can exercise those rights. We can't get there, however, unless and until we get to at least "okay".
I agree 100%. That doesn't change the fact that if we can't achieve "not dying of starvation" we have absolutely zero chance of achieving "free man in a free society".
Low wages are supposed to be entry level, meaning a person with no skills can get employed and start learning work skills to move up.
>pay off student loans
The average college grad starts at $25 an hour.
> a person with no skills can get employed and start learning work skills to move up
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead-end_job
> The average college grad starts at $25 an hour
Should be closer to "minimum" in an ideal world, but at least it's something.
Sure. And in a society with the wealth ours has, there should be a certain baseline minimum income—as income with the freedom of choice that entails—but minimum wage may not be a sensible way to provide that. UBI funded by progressive taxes on income that include equal treatment of capital income may just plain work better. The problem with minimum wage is that it amounts to a minimum labor value at which it is worth hiring, but working at a lower value job is often the best way to get skills for a higher value job.
There's plenty of evidence that within a certain range, increasing minimum wage is a net win in the absence of an alternative income floor, but it doesn't mean that minimum wage is the best way to provide that floor (it's inherently leaky) or that it doesn't start falling apart as a mechanism if raised much higher.
I'm happy with increasing the baseline minimum wage significantly, say to $15/hr in current dollars and indexed to inflation, but also adding a UBI and reducing the actual minimum wage to the baseline minus the $1/hr for every $2000 in annualized UBI.
Sure they are in some abstract moral sense. But they're not worth paying more than the value they produce, otherwise the company goes under and no one has a job. There's no way around this.
If you think making a min wage $25/hr would help, why not make it $1000/hr? Once you understand how this fails, you'll understand why all changes of a forced price floor forces a tradeoff with a downside people want to ignore.
Forcing min wages to whatever level always results in someone at the edge being pushed below the employment level. For example, the CBO estimates that raising the federal min wage to $15/hr will push 1,000,000 people out of jobs. Those people are worse off.
Next, min wage rises also result in inflation for products at the low end, because the products made by low wage people cost more to make and low wage people now have more money. If someone is willing to work 10 hours at X/hr for to pay for an apartment costing 10X, then raising wages to Y/hr means the lanlords can raise prices to 10Y, since the same person is still willing to work 10 hours to pay rent.
A better solution is to tax (which we do), and provide assistance to those truly needing it. A high school kid living at home making $10/hr is not the same as a 30yr old making $10/hr. And neither are the same as a comfortably retired person making $10/hr just to get out of the house.
Use targeted assistance to allocate resources always results in a better use of resources than a ham-handed one-size-fits-all approach, with less unwanted side-effects.
You can believe this with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, but it will not change the inescapable law of economics that hiring someone at a wage which is higher than the value they produce is called charity. This is, of course, unsustainable for the sector from which nearly all demand for labour is derived (business) and therefore it would be an axiomatic truth that this situation will not result in net benefits for those with skills that do not justify a wage equal or higher than a legal minimum wage.
So mega-charity for boardroom vampires and Big Finance thumb-twiddlers is acceptable, but not for workers? I don't follow your reasoning as it relates to reality.
It is possible to govern a society that doesn't worship money above all else. It's okay to be charitable.
Remember; using those laws to mandate a minimum wage does not mean that everyone is entitled to that wage. It means many just legally cannot sell their labour. It's mandatory hiring discrimination.
It is in the interest of society, however, that your employees are able to feed and clothe themselves, find shelter and medical care, and participate in capital transactions with the ability to pay their debts.
Society forces you to afford your employees a modicum of dignity and value above that of livestock, furniture or raw materials, despite the fact that, in the cold calculus of supply and demand, cost and profit, they are precisely the same - purchased assets from which business value is to be extracted.
The inconvenience of having to consider the human condition in your valuation of human employees is the cost you pay for civilization and the benefits it provides (among which is a labor force to exploit) and the cost civil society pays to suffer sociopaths who would only consider ethics in their capitalism at the point of a gun.
Can we make the min wage $1000/hr? Why not? Once you understand why not, you must admit there is a tradeoff between price floors and employment. The higher the min wage, the less people can produce that value, so they're unemployed.
The CBO estimates around 1 million people will lose jobs as a result of a $15 min wage.
Those people will certainly not be better off. And, if they're priced out of the job market, they will lose the opportunity to get work experience and move to higher wages, as virtually everyone that gets a job does. Almost no one has the same wage their entire life.
If you think the value paid is unrelated to value added, then if a person could add a ton of value for the employer, more of those companies would spring up. Then as there is less people to employ, they have to compete for employees to absorb this free money you claim exists. Finally, the wages are forced to near the sustainable level for both sides.
Look at some SEC filings for company profits versus salary paid to employees. Profits do not, per employee, support your claim.
In the vast majority of cases it's the other way around: workers are producing value and being paid a fraction of it. Some of this might be somewhat justified (someone's gotta pay for equipment and property), but some of it definitely ain't (e.g. managerial rent-seeking middle-men skimming that value).
> The average college grad starts at $25 an hour.
I think you're almost all the way there to answering your own question.
Terribly disconnected comment. Most single bedroom apartments even in BFE would eat your paycheck.
My comment comes from direct first-hand experience earning only slightly more than that in a high-cost-of-living area with no roommates (albeit 8-ish years ago).
EDIT: and also comes from having been unemployed twice and living on unemployment, which - again - only paid slightly more than that (in the same highish-cost-of-living area).
Is the best generalizable statistic to measure societal engagement "jobs?" No, there are many vocations that don't get counted as "jobs" for government statistics. And given the dematerialization of culture maybe jobs as a concept are on their way out. In the short run the percentage of people employed is a statistic that can inform those interested that many people who were formerly engaged with society in the mode called a job are no longer. Many people who had an identity in some occupation are effectively being told that society does not want or need their effort. I think that is not helpful in developing humanity.
It's a little strange how out-of-touch so many people are with the new reality, but it is not so surprising given how little Americans tend to interact with the world outside their personal space.
I'd like metrics based on hours, or even work weeks (40/hrs). And then count everyone.
Count of employers, jobs (FTE and otherwise), hours worked, payroll.
Total population, working age population, number of workers.
Slice and dice into demographics, regions, quintiles, etc.
Then argue about overtime, wage theft, unpaid work (eldercare, childcare), total compensation (salary, benefits, equity), and so forth.
An extra 10% of the population can't even get a crappy job.
Because most people rely on labor income for their support.
> A $10/hr job with no benefits is tremendously different than a $60K/yr job with health care.
But not as different as both are from no job with no benefits.
I don't disagree that it presents an incomplete picture, but it's not an unimportant one, either.
To avoid focus falling on inconvenient truths.
Haven't you seen a magician waving his right hand? It means he's doing something sneaky with his left :)
I think it is possible that in future, Americans don't have to work and rely completely on their export of US$ as world currency. The global currency must be protected military might and a constitution that allows for fairness, justice and ability to challenge authority. This is necessary for the trust and stability in global economics. The country owning the global currency would also need to setup military restrictions so that other countries may not be allowed to match military power. All this might look bad but it is truly an economic service that is needed to be provided by someone. US citizens job is then to protect constitution, military powers and the currency. For that job, they get goods and services from rest of the world. As merely 5% of population is engaged in providing this economic service, it is probably not an inefficient either.
At the current state of geopolitics, this is basically calling for WW3 in the next decade. US economic hegemony is on super shaky ground right now.
It's not coming out of a textbook if that's what you're wondering.
But will the real manufacturers goods, and now tech, accept such a currency in the future?
Especially, in the light of erratic political leadership that could renege on agreements and impose sanctions unilaterally??
Here are the things that make up a reserve currency:
1. Floated
2. No capital controls
3. Respect property rights
4. Have a bond market big enough
5. Have global trust
6. Be willing to have trade deficits
7. Stop export priority mercantilism
8. Have a currency market big enough
Only the US dollar satisfies all of these rules.
What is this theory called? I'd like to read more.
As but one rebuttal: The European Central Bank has acted mostly in concert with the FED since 2008, "printing" about as much money via quantitative easing and similar mechanisms.
The Euro is nowhere close to the US$ as a reserve currency, and even less as a trade currency.
And yet inflation in Europe has been just as non-existent as it has in the US.
I bought a lawnmower on craigslist and started putting up flyers. This set me back ~$75 at the time. I also did odd job painting and handyman jobs. I found a solid collection of clients fairly quickly and just walked around the neighborhood.
Encourage him to start a business, do all the financials, etc. and set up a scheme whereby you get a percentage ownership in lieu of rent. Step one might be management accounting literacy, specifically financial projections. For bonus points, demand a board report and get an experienced adult friend of yours to be a proxy board member for thorny issue resolution. You can start with non-monetized assets, like crops grown on personal property for repayment in kind. This way, capital outlay is minimal and real skills are developed, and there is even scope to involve others in exchange food and an education in business, without needing to crash-tackle tax accounting or financial services.
For example in France it was around 50% unemployment for 18-20 population before the virus. Must be worse now with the virus.
Why are people downvoting this? Teenagers in EU and Australia routinely travel around the world for jobs. Once they grow up, they become excellent hires at "real" jobs because of skills gained at such jobs.
Probably due to the travel ban being imposed against people from the US by those places right now.
I'm a bit of a bumpkin so I'm not familiar with various labor theory and whatnot... but in the long run we should maybe have more people working, but working less overall.
It seems with the current political climate nothing radical can really happen at all, but there are pragmatic steps that can be taken to help ensure we can keep people fed and in their homes.
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/labor-force-partic...
Countries with older, more experienced workforce, usually have higher employment, and are less sensitive to shocks.
I find that very hard to believe.
Here is a more reliable source from worldbank, claiming ~60% labor participation rate [1].
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.NE.ZS?locat...
What I like about them is their data is very up to date.
Rolling the statistics up to the population level is not the best way to look at this. They should have broken out the trends by age bracket. Pretty shoddy journalism.
But youth unemployment still really sucks. Good first job is critical to success in life.
pre-covid, it was 61%, so we're down 10 points in 6 months.
Yikes.
“The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development defines the employment rate as the employment-to-population ratio. This is a statistical ratio that measures the proportion of the country's working age population (statistics are often given for ages 15 to 64) that is employed.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment-to-population_rat...
Well, 47.2% of the U.S. population does not have a job, and the headline was "Almost half of the U.S. population does not have a job" - what are you objecting to?
(Note: that is the headline of the Axios article - I don't know what the old headline of the HN submission was.)
This does not mean that the unemployment rate is 52.8% - and that is not what the headline claims.
FWIW, all the main indicators show a massive spike:
* Employment-Population Ratio (discussed here) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMRATIO
* Labor Force Participation Rate https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
* Unemployment Rate https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE
1. It gives an idea of how many people are being supported by means outside of regular employment. In most cases this will have some form of impact on the economy.
2. Other job figures are misleading in different ways. Job creation numbers are irrelevant unless you know how many people are seeking work. Unemployment numbers only consider the number of people actively looking for work, ignoring those who are able and willing to work but are unable to seek employment.
Also, see reverse factoring, the new financial tool that let's companies pretend to have much better financials then they do and is probably the next big bubble that will entirely collapse when people start digging into it.
Err.. I mean, according to them, they are expanding the pool of money available, by buying out the junk bonds issued by corporate America. The same bonds from the cheap loans that they took out at super low interest rates, in order to buy back their shares, thus increasing their stock value, and enabling them to give millions of dollars in bonuses to their executives. While everyone else, gets an unpaid furloughed vacation and unemployment.
The Treasury has also spent about $2 trillion on jobs programs. About 70% of people on unemployment are currently getting more money than they were earning while working.
Certainly buying corporate debt is a bit stretching the Fed mandate but going to equities would arguably be illegal.
what's not to get about that
let me break it down:
money from a business operation goes into account. some money goes to costs such as employees. the rest doesn't go anywhere but is owned proportionally by shareholders. now the employees are fewer and most never needed to be there to begin with, but people - the clients - keep putting money into the account. the proportional amount for shareholders keeps growing, so other people are willing to pay an existing shareholder more for the existing share.
FTFY. Your original language implied the choice to work was up to the individual person. You can't stay on unemployment insurance if you were given the option to return to work and declined. Many people believe that part of the reason many governments were so quick to reopen in the US was because opening businesses allowed people to be kicked off unemployment insurance if they refused to return to work due to health concerns.
Yes? The point is to make sure people aren't starving, not to preserve their ego and satisfy the "This isn't why I got a college degree" crowd. Obviously there's a good bit of frictional unemployment, which is really what unemployment is designed to handle. That may go up a bit during times of economic stagnation or contraction, but unemployment isn't supposed to handle the "I was making X dollars before and can't maintain my lifestyle if I take a lower-paying job" sort of situation. In this sort of environment, most people will experience a significant reduction in quality of life, and probably should, as there are fewer goods and services being produced. I guess that doesn't win votes, though, so the politicians are out here telling people they shouldn't have to. And I'll get to have my retirement taken in taxes to pay for it.
Having helped an older American (not on social security) to try to obtain the said $600 / week, I can tell you that it is practically impossible to get that money.
What was your experience?
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/inspiring-story-of...
Other factor here is the fed printing money to inflate financial assets, making the rich richer and driving up the housing market.
Ultra capitalist policies by the left and right to completely outsource American jobs.
The effects of all of these have not been realized yet. But they will. We’re 15 years off from real crises when both the left and right middle class populations realize they’ve been had
Citation? There are only about 3 million H1B visa holders in the US. The remaining ~120 million workers are citizens or immigrants in non-specialized work.
[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/which-incom...