(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.
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.)
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...
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/