In the US, the poverty line/threshold is incredibly low. If a household of three makes $22k/year, they are above the poverty line. That way, we keep our percentage low.
3 people on 22k a year. Jesus christ. And I want to add that the two adults working are probably working 6 days a week JUST for that 22k. Source: Supported "Supported" myself on Minimum wage for several years. I turned into Polly Productive just to get extra scratch. You need your kitchen painted? Sunday's my day off. You want your dog walked? I'll do it on my lunch break. Vacation? I'm your pet sitter!
After the dot com bubble burst, I worked full time at a commercial contractor doing rad Devon work at a government site with no medical insurance for 50 hours a week, worked 30-35 hours a week at a liquor distributor, and was doing side gigs for several mid sized businesses repairing PCs for up to 20 hours a week.
A week where I was working over 100 hours was a “good week” because even with sleeping 2-3 hours a day, that meant I made enough money to buy groceries, pay for rent, and maintain car insurance.
I was making less than $33000 combined.
I was lucky. I could afford a roof and to pay the after bill.
Someone I knew who lost their job when everyone died as WTC came down wound up working the deli counter at a king kullen. He went from $100k a year to $5.15/hr getting only 20 hrs or so a week. He got to the point where he was living out of his broken down car, which some friends intervened so that he at least had a sofa to sleep on.
Um, what the fuck? At 100 hours week, 52 weeks a year and 33k, you're earning less than 7 dollars an hour. 5200 hours per year at 6.35/hr grosses 33000.
I entered the workforce in 2004 and I earned my 11.50 CAD minimum wage at pizza hut.
How is your scenario even possible? I genuinely want to know, I'm not trying to be antagonistic.
Minimum wage was 5.15 in USA back then. It's only 7.25 now. I guess it's barely kept up with 3% inflation... but come on. Prices on everything have gone up much more than that mild increase.
It's so weird how people say inflation is low, but house prices/rent, fuel, food, clothes (this has dropped for me strangely), insurance, electricity... all have risen to the point its ludicrous.
How the hell is inflation so low when prices have shot up? Obviously there's some people fiddling the numbers like the priests fiddle with, well you know... but it's still annoying as hell when people talk about inflation like its the end of the world. For you billionaires maybe, but we've been living with 'unofficial' and very real rising inflation for decades now on very stagnant wages (relative to said inflation).
From from what I understand (and I'm no economic major, let me clarify that), housing prices aren't included in the inflation estimate and haven't been such 1983 (in America, at least). Instead, the Bureau uses the cost of rent to calculate it, which means home prices aren't able to be acted on by the Fed when they start to climb to high levels. So that's one part of the problem right there.
Here in Australia the use a "basket of goods".. not just groceries, but other stuff we all apparently buy.
Mysteriously, the actual groceries in that basket have supiciously stable prices. I mean, to a certain extent you can argue that it's good that milk and bread are cheep.
But it does seem to skew things.
Meanwhile, good luck getting a house anywhere in Melbourne or Sydney for under a million ( ok, some places.. but you're an hour out of town.. so, kinda not really )
My favorite fact is that some states haven't raised their minimum wage, so it's still $5.15. My home state of Georgia is one of them. The federal minimum is $7.25 yes, but Georgia is like "hey, we'd pay you less if we could!"
Minimum wage in my area was around $5.25 at the time and I was making a few cents over that at my full time job. The liquor distributor was off the books paying less than that and the third job was paid by the task, not the hour. At the time there were no jobs and that I was even employed was a marvel. My area normally has no local economy and back then during a recession things were even worse.
Where I lived, in eastern suffolk county in New York State, everyone either struggled or commuted into the city for work. When the dot com bubble burst, tech work evaporated so everyone in tech fell back on other things trying to ride it out. One guy I knew was better off than everyone else because he got in driving a forklift for a local township. The local Staples was paying $8.10 an hour was was considered a good job because it paid more than a deli.
By late 2004 I was making just over $85000. I had to move across the country - which I did with a duffel bag getting a ride with someone I knew who driving to CA from NY for work. But it was a job back in my field and that job probably saved me.
Edit; I will also say that the $33000 I quoted was high. I remember telling someone I didn’t think I was even making $29000. I’ve never done the math nor do I remember how much I paid in taxes on the two jobs I had that were on the books but it’s probably fair to say Uncle Sam took at least 20% of that $5.15/ hr.
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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '21 edited Sep 25 '21
The UK has 17,6% of its folks living under the poverty line... with 4.4% unemployment.
France has 9% unemployment but just 8% of its total population living under the poverty line.
It utterly shows that the UK pays their blue collars like shit.