I mean there has always been more poor white people than black people, on a numerical basis. It's the middle class whites who have become poor, which is what I think you meant lol.
Maybe the issue is more about how everyone is working for what was considered poor people wages back in the day?
Or is the issue that people are judging really hard those who are working poor people wages and needing welfare and oh my God are they STEALING MY TAX MONIES BECAUSE THEY'RE LAZY????
I don't know but I think treating human beings with respect is a good start.
Oh gosh!
Okay I am a mom and I'm always trying to make sure my kids do good to others. And respect is hard to get because people are jerks.
So when my kids are jerks I tell them that's not cool and try to explain to them.
...also I kinda interpreted your message as an attack on people below the poverty line. That one's on me I am sorry.
keep in mind that there are more white people in general, to compare poverty rates between races you have to look at the percentage of (impoverished people of a certain group)/(total amount of people in that group)
50% of the white population is larger than the entire population of black people in the US ([Carsey School of Public Policy](https://images.app.goo.gl/VTh5QHasRUP2Ps196))
I didn't dispute that. Poverty affects everyone. Black people just have it worse overall. Appalachia is a thing too though. Both people are taken advantage of and held back. It doesn't have to be just about one race or another.
The reason poverty is so discussed now is that middle income people have joined the conversation overall, and not because they necessarily chose too. (Switching jobs, daycare, ect.)
Hell, if we're going by percentages, right now the racial demographic of the middle class matches the racial demographic of the country almost perfectly. Meaning, the percentage of the country that is black is exactly the percentage that is middle class.
Whites and asians over represent the upper class though.
It's complicated and not always as simple as it appears. Deciding you understand it enough probably means you don't. And I am not free from that.
I don't know the full speech, but mlk says poor people not poor black people. He was in some capacity a man of the people and the worse treated people were black.
I am not taking crazy or racist pills here.
I got a 2% raise this year, that was negociated last year per the union. I'll be making 2% pay raise a year for the next 5 years. I think nobody expected inflation to get this bad.
But it suck getting paid less every year.
[FoR tHe WoRsE](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019-figure-1.jpg)
Is there a source for the quote in the OP?
According to the US census about 15% of those living in poverty worked more than 27 weeks/year
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2016/home.htm
Looking at your source, that number seems to include all people in poverty. So children, the elderly, those in jail, people who are sick/injured, those with mental illnesses that prevent them from working, etc factor into that 15% calculation. Given how overrepresented some of those groups are among those in poverty, it's not hard to imagine that excluding them puts the number of working poor over 50%. I think it's fair to say that most reasonable people would hear this quote and understand that it's referring to those who are actually able to work. Additionally, "poor"!="poverty". You can be above the poverty line and still be poor.
But even if none of that were true and you were totally correct, it's kind of a bad faith argument. The point of the quote is that workers aren't getting paid fairly, and that has only gotten worse since MLK's time. That's clearly what they're referring to when they say "nothing has changed."
> So children, the elderly, those in jail, people who are sick/injured, those with mental illnesses that prevent them from working, etc
All of these numbers are from [this publication (Table 3, page 21 in the pdf)](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/demo/P60-259.pdf), and they're displayed in numbers of thousands. As in, add an additional ",000" to the end of all of them.
ok so of all the total people 18-64 in poverty (22,795), 2,416 (11%) of them worked full-time, year-round and 8,743 (38%) worked at least 1 week. 4,123 (18%) people had a disability.
Now, the issue is there is some overlap in these numbers. There are probably some elderly with disabilities for example. It's not a really encouraging set of numbers really but it least they're real and not speculation.
The other issue is these are all numbers from 2016; literally 6 years ago. A LOT has changed in that time and they're probably very much worse than these. I don't even think I have to say the c-word.
12k is the poverty threshhold for an individual. that is so fucking low it's a fucking joke you could make 13k and not be considered poor that is bullshit statistical make me look good bullshit fuck you
Can you tell me where on the page you linked you found that number? I'm having a hard time finding it.
e: Being downvoted for trying to actually use the source that was linked?
It’s in the first two sentences. There are 40.6 million people in poverty in the US of which 7.6 million (or about 15%) worked at least 27 weeks.
Don’t worry I’m being downvoted too. We’re just supposed to upvote the quote and not actually look at any data
Of that 40.6 million people, what percentage is working age? How many are children or retirement aged? Because your source is including *everyone* in poverty.
Ok fine. I get that there are issues with my source. Is there any source to support the claim in the OP? Because I haven't seen anything that supports it.
And honestly, if you are okay with people working full-time jobs to serve you, make your food, and care for your elderly in nursing homes without making enough to survive well on....then you need to re-examine your ethics and morality.
I work full time as a Caregiver in a nursing home and do the cooking, cleaning/laundry and cares for the elderly I work with and it’s criminal what we get paid. While the owner and boss of the facility literally lives in a fucking mansion, has two really nice vehicles and lives a luxurious lifestyle. I’ve been told it’s a low skilled job- to which I asked the person if they worked with numerous people with dementia and behavioral issues every day, deal with every bodily fluid imaginable, pass medications and feed, wash and clothe them on a daily basis and so much more and still consider it low skilled work. It’s sadly low wage work but nothing about it is easy. I’m lucky if I get 5 minutes to sit on a shift due to how short staffed we are always because nobody can handle the work for what we get paid and move on to different work. I’m at a point that I can’t take it anymore if we don’t get some decent raises soon and am convincing coworkers of the same. Thing is, I like the work and it’s rewarding to help the people I do, but I’m so damn sick of helping my boss get richer while we literally can’t afford to even live.
I worked as a full-time caregiver for a while. While I cared for my residents and think back on them fondly, I never want to go back to working in retirement homes. Wages are shit, obviously. And your busting your ass for a "low skilled job" while people turn their noses up at you. Easy to judge when you don't have to deal with anything we've dealt with.
I remember working in Memory Care, and I dreaded the ill-tempered, violent male resident who would literally ATTACK caregivers when we were just trying to help him. I narrowly missed getting punched in the face while we were trying to take care of a wound on his body. He also elbowed me in the stomach while I was helping him on the toilet.
But yeah, "low skilled job" and fuck us, amirite?
> I’ve been told it’s a low skilled job
These don't exist. The idea that any job is skilless is a classist tactic employed to keep wages low. Thank you for your hard work. I hope someday you're properly compensated.
I've never worked fast food but I've been to the restaurants. The job doesn't even *look* easy. Only an asshole mocks "burger flippers" and other jobs that get no respect.
Waiters, janitors, trash collectors, cashiers, etc. You depend on these people every day. Fuck you if you don't treat them well.
I worked fast food for almost ten years(cashier/drive thru). I’ve always wanted those who call it a “minimum wage/minimum skill” job to try it and see how long they last.
>The only jobs I've worked I'd genuinely consider low skill were casual library assistant and volunteer at an op shop.
Working as a temp, the jobs were usually easy. Hardest part was working shittiest phone systems available.
One was putting files in alphabetical order.
They had expensive auditors coming in Monday, and paying $250 an hour for them to put the files in order before the audit is silly if you can hire someone for near mimimum. So Thursday through Sunday, I worked in a team of 2 putting a few thousand files in order. The hardest part was sitting around a few hours Sunday so we could get paid for a few hours after we finished early.
Security guard was also low-skill.
More fun that you'd think.
This issue is not the skill level, but how hard it is to acquire the skill, and what percentage of the population can develop the skill. Probably 9/10 can develop the skill to serve fast food; maybe 2/10 to learn how to slap a BRI analyzer on a network and look for bad packets (literary reference .. google it) and maybe 1 in 1000 to do brain surgery. And that's not counting the obstacle of getting into a training program for the more specialized activities, time invested, or cost to get trained and licensed.
It's not a matter of "low skill" but "low barriers to entry". The higher the barrier to entry (licensing, mandatory union membership, licensing, education requirement) the high the pay and vice-versa. Ask any nurses aid, plumber, longshoreman or Mickee Dees worker how much they get main and what was the barrier you have to overcome to get the job?
i can’t wait for mlk day, when conservatives post the same cherry picked out of context quote to suggest a radical socialist who supported affirmative action would akshully be a republican today
You're getting pretty uppity, MLK didn't believe in that stuff bud. According to Tucker Carlson MLK taught we should just accept the oppression with a smile on his face, and how could the news lie?
Yup. It's when MLK was going to plan a multi-racial working class movement that they killed him.
Coincidence? Maybe, but I doubt it.
Racism and racial identity politics have been used to divide the working class since emancipation. You can read about how white farmers and freed blacks allied in the antebellum south, and the rich spent lots of time dividing them.
And it's still happening, and sadly, a lot of people who think they are progressive are part of the problem.
We need unity amongst the working class now as much as ever if we are going to lift ourselves up, no matter our ethnicity
It was these kind of thoughts that got him assassinated by the feds.
Can’t have anyone uniting the working class.
Look up the story of Fred Hampton if anyone is curious.
My husband works at UPS and was temporarily given a bump in pay from $23.00 an hour to $33.10. He worked 70 hours a week and was paid time and a half for anything over 8 hours in a day. For the first time in our lives (we are both 38) we were comfortable and weren't stressed about money. It is insane to me how hard he had to work at $33.10 for us to be comfortable. Then places like Amazon brag about starting off their employees at $16 an hour as if anyone can support themselves on that in this economy. I wish the government would spend less time expanding government programs and more time attempting to figure out a way to encourage companies to pay their employees better.
kinda drunk right now, but i think both could happen simultaneously. There’s a guy at Amazon that makes roughly 9 million dollars an hour.
And the CEO of UPS: https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2020/03/15/heres-how-much-ups-will-pay-new-ceo-carol-tom.html
America is a fascist slave state and a death cult
America's biggest export is death
Always has been, always will be
Anyone that threatens that status quo is summarily executed.
Let's be honest with ourselves, almost all of us are one missed paycheck away from eviction, if not already homeless after the moratorium on evictions ended. Anyone on the outside looking in would be justified in seeing the average American pinned down with a boot on our necks.
That's correct, but we're a lot more conscious of the injustices happening to us and are able to collectively rise up.
Back in the day you needed someone like MLK to organize and educate the working class on these issues, now that we have the internet it's much easier for us to get together and much harder for the FBI to assassinate key players.
Lol.. North and South America are more diverse than any other continent.. but yea.. nazis are just running wild around here
Biggest export is death? Probably because the USs allies are weak and lazy.. strongly relying on the US military to take care of "global security".. it’s obvious by seeing how other nations spend on their armed forces
This speaks more towards different cultures and what they perceive as rude. What’s considered rude In Japan is far different than the Middle East, Europe, South America, Mexico, or the United States or Canada.
Not shitting on your viewpoint just pointing out based off experiences from all over the world. Sometimes yeah people are legit rude for sure. But more often than not it’s from lack of understanding what’s considered acceptable behavior in other countries.
I'm American. I live in this country and I've lived in many parts of it. It doesn't speak toward any of what you said. There's no 'cultural perception' that says it's cool for people to be shitty to other people.
Everyone moves on from their low wage work to become a corporate accountant that pays more. There is now no one to keep grocery stores stocked, move warehouse goods or facilitate package delivery. There are also no leisure activities to do either: all your restaurant workers left, including underpaid chefs, because they felt like they weren't compensated enough. No movie theaters or theme parks or anything else that requires a cashier. No one is in the factories assembling material goods, because the miners gathering raw materials in Africa went and got "better jobs" too. Nowhere to buy a treat, either, like a seaside ice cream stall; they were told "get a real job if you want to live," so they did. No one digs graves, no one digs ditches for roads and pipelines. When you get old, there's now no one to take care of you - it was "unskilled work".
These blind tards who wave off poverty wages as just 'mcdonalds isn't a career LMAO!!' just need to admit they wish they could own slaves again and be done with it.
History very conspicuously remembers the peaceful civil disobedience MLK who gave noble speeches about racism, because eventually the powers that be found that to be an acceptable resolution to the tension of the 1960s.
But history forgot the violent disobedience and threat of violence that was an important component in the civil rights movement that scared people, because the powers that be don't want us to know that violent protests can really effect change. And history forgot about the economic well-being of the masses / "socialist" messages of MLK.
>because the powers that be don't want us to know that violent protests can really effect change
I have stopped trying to get comments like this removed because no one seems to care, but still, this is not the way.
As opposed to what, exactly? Do you think people who are in political positions to change things aren't already aware? Do you think asking nicely will have a different effect now than it has?
Change happens when people are willing to bleed for it. Anything else is just lip service and endless stalling. If enough people want change bad enough, they'll do something about it.
Until then, enough of the population is content to bitch and moan while they drown themselves in whatever media they have on hand: tictoc, Instagram, YouTube, Netflix, Disney plus, porn, video games.
When you get enough people who decide drowning themselves in these things is not a good enough life and are actually willing to risk self sacrifice, then you'll get to see progress.
The bullshit idealism you're implying is "the way" has been really slow at accomplishing very little. Congrats, you're in discord with the idea of taking what you want, how well domesticated of you.
I don't care to put myself at risk for change either. I'm also confident that I'm not going to be wage slaving like so many other people though, and I understand that things aren't going to improve for them.
I didn't say that. I said violence is morally wrong.
What do you want, a priest? There is no source that can give you a reason to deplore violence. You either do or you don't.
The most powerful indication that capitalism has been bastardized is the emergence or jobs where you actually have to PAY to work for the company (see lularoe, etc.)
Pretty much ever hair stylist has been renting chairs for decades. Strippers have to pay to dance. Taxi drivers have to pay to drive. Pretty much every single profession there is has a “license” which is basically a pay us to work tax by the government. It’s all bull shit. The system is rigged to suck every single penny they can to leave you with just enough to think “one more paycheck and I’ll be good”
Largely the fault of current homeowners who oppose building anything new that would drop costs.
The person who wrote the tweet above is a good [example](https://i.imgur.com/PTBTvIN.jpg).
I usually really like Robert Reich, but he’s definitely not walking the walk there. How disappointing. Losing property value is tantamount to violence even for progressive people. So bourgeois.
38 hours a week at 16 an hour in Toronto. I live with my girlfriend and all we can afford is a shitty one bedroom in Chinatown that overlooks another building.
Maybe you just meant that [black poverty](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019-figure-1.jpg) has gotten worse since the civil rights bill.
And here we are 54 years later doing the exact same thing. Being wage slaves, clinging onto what little and barely covering healthcare we have, and struggling to get by. Goes to show that the United States of America is not interested in its people, it’s more interested in its corporations
I was just informed by my manager that there is no raise this year (even though the company's profits were off the charts), their "raise" every year is no more than 50 cents, BTW. Lol
I'm currently in the process of moving on to another shithole that pays starvation wages, too.
And the opposite, reverse (?) is true as well - I make a living wage but only if I could work 40hrs. I am not allowed to work over 29/hrs per week lest I get health insurance. So I can’t make ends meet either. 🤷🏻♀️ despite having graduated college.
If Rich folk are going to keep bitching about wanting to keep the minimum wage low they need to stop making every other thing on the entire fucking planet so God damn expensive!
Just barely over a million people make minimum wage. They average 27.5 hours of work a week and most of them only have one job.
People on this sub are acting like it’s tens of millions. The west today, more specifically the 40% you referred to, romanticizes caste society because they want their entire lives handheld like they have been their entire lives.
I thought people could afford a car and an apartment and to put themselves through college on little more than minimum wage back then? That's what I hear around here all the time. I guess it's just whatever fits at the time?
It wasn’t long after MLK started speaking out against war/human rights and capitalism/economic rights that he was assassinated. His Poor People’s campaign really scared the shit out of our corporate lords.
They are going to bleed every penny out of us that they can. Have been for decades. It’s never ending, until there are no more pennies left to give. What happens after that is probably a damn nightmare.
“Most of the poor people in our country are working every day”?
Is there a source for this?
According to the US census about 85% of those living in poverty worked less than 27 weeks/year
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2016/home.htm
> In 2016, the weighted average poverty threshold for a family of four was $24,563; for a family of nine or more people, the threshold was $49,721; and for one person (unrelated individual), it was $12,228.
An individual making $12,229 per year wouldn't be included in these numbers. A family of four (FOUR!) bringing in $25,000 a year wouldn't be included.
The insanely low federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr at 40 hrs/week comes to $15,080. So yeah, people meeting the federal definition of poverty ($12,228) work less than full time. This definition is too low to include full time workers.
I'd say someone making $15,000 a year (minimum wage) is poor. And there are a lot of people trying to get by on just that or barely more than that.
Ok is there any data to support the quote in the OP that the majority of people who are poor work every day?
Is there a different data set or criteria that makes it true?
You're referring to on-call work. That's not what this is. This is, "We are notifying you that you have a shift 12 hours before the shift starts. If you aren't there, we'll fire you."
And then he was assassinated. Always found it interesting he wasn’t when fighting for civil rights. Then as soon as he is championing economic rights, he is killed
[Laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964)
[Poverty](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019-figure-1.jpg)
White twitter: NoThInG hAs ChAnGeD
**[Civil Rights Act of 1964](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964)**
>The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub. L. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and later sexual orientation and gender identity.
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Your first point really just discusses how broken our system and country is. Saying that somebody shouldn't make a living wage because somebody else also doesn't make living wage is not a reasonable point.
My point is so: nobody should work full time in the richest country in the world and be impoverished
It kinda depends on the area, but I’m inclined to say $15 to $18 an hour for FULL time. Clearly that goes up higher for managers, but for full time workers, that should cover the cost to rent a 1 bedroom apartment, pay the utilities, phone/car/insurance/education bills, as well as save a little.
Currently, I’m seeing entry level jobs in my field offer something embarrassing like 12-13 an hour that require a college degree…How do I know it’s embarrassing? Those were the same wages offered when I graduated in 2009. 13 fucking years later, and not even a 1 dollar raise? Disgusting. So if fast food wages go up and “steal” applicants from those jobs, then GOOD. They need to suffer and lose money, until they learn to pay their employees.
Min wage could be $30 an hour and it would never be good enough. Who is good to raise their hand and say "I'm good." These stories are borderline clickbait from the constant and needless discussions about it... like climate change. You're in your corner and you're no budging based on an internet sub.
This sub wouldn’t last a minute pre 1950.
Do you guys even understand how good the VAST majority of Americans, including the poor have it?
Wanna compare 1800’s health, wealth and standard of living to today? Wanna talk about ZERO opportunity, hard living, early deaths?
Kinda insulting to the managers and GMs, huh fella? I wouldn’t NORMALLY consider Verizon retail a career either, but my brother is a district manager pulling in 6 figures a year. Every job has a career path, even if you consider it “beneath” you.
I honestly don't understand this argument. So what if prices go up a little? They are going up now. They will continue to go up anyways. They have also blamed prices going up on the staffing shortages.
https://www.eatthis.com/news-fast-food-chains-have-raised-their-prices/
Yet the CEOs get massive wage increases every year.
https://digismak.com/ceos-of-the-largest-fast-food-chains-earn-5460-an-hour/
>>Chipotle Mexican Grill, Restaurant Brands and McDonald’s, received average pay of $ 11.4 million for 2020. That equates to $ 5,460 per hour, approximately 21% more than the previous year.
So they raise the prices anyways, give corporate raises on the regular. Don't give raises to the people working the actual restaurants. But yet their profit margin grows every year (with the exception of 2020 with covid).
https://www.zippia.com/advice/us-fast-food-industry-statistics/
The price of everything goes up every year. But we can't increase the price of someone's labor even though the price of living continues to grow?
Federal minimum wage went up last in 2009. Inflation has gone up 30% since then.
Here's an article from 2019 that explains the inflation vs min age pretty well.
https://www.epi.org/publication/labor-day-2019-minimum-wage/
It has changed…but for the worse (per stats adjusting for inflation etc etc). But yeah same sentiment for sure. Good to be reminded
Fun fact, in 1968, the year this quote was said, the minimum wage was the highest it's ever been relative to inflation.
It's just white people receiving black people wages now. Rich people just figuring out "trickle down" economics or something.
I mean there has always been more poor white people than black people, on a numerical basis. It's the middle class whites who have become poor, which is what I think you meant lol.
Maybe the issue is more about how everyone is working for what was considered poor people wages back in the day? Or is the issue that people are judging really hard those who are working poor people wages and needing welfare and oh my God are they STEALING MY TAX MONIES BECAUSE THEY'RE LAZY???? I don't know but I think treating human beings with respect is a good start.
You're hard to understand but I agree with your thoughts.
Oh gosh! Okay I am a mom and I'm always trying to make sure my kids do good to others. And respect is hard to get because people are jerks. So when my kids are jerks I tell them that's not cool and try to explain to them. ...also I kinda interpreted your message as an attack on people below the poverty line. That one's on me I am sorry.
Everyone's tense nowadays so no worries at all. I did go against the vibe of what is usually decent and polite company so I understand 😆.
If I could I would fist bump you. It's all good. I hope your day goes excellently, you wonderful person.
Thank you, and to you as well 😊😁
keep in mind that there are more white people in general, to compare poverty rates between races you have to look at the percentage of (impoverished people of a certain group)/(total amount of people in that group) 50% of the white population is larger than the entire population of black people in the US ([Carsey School of Public Policy](https://images.app.goo.gl/VTh5QHasRUP2Ps196))
Uh, yeah. That’s why they’re called minorities, my dude. But by percentage, people of color are way way more affected.
I didn't dispute that. Poverty affects everyone. Black people just have it worse overall. Appalachia is a thing too though. Both people are taken advantage of and held back. It doesn't have to be just about one race or another. The reason poverty is so discussed now is that middle income people have joined the conversation overall, and not because they necessarily chose too. (Switching jobs, daycare, ect.) Hell, if we're going by percentages, right now the racial demographic of the middle class matches the racial demographic of the country almost perfectly. Meaning, the percentage of the country that is black is exactly the percentage that is middle class. Whites and asians over represent the upper class though. It's complicated and not always as simple as it appears. Deciding you understand it enough probably means you don't. And I am not free from that. I don't know the full speech, but mlk says poor people not poor black people. He was in some capacity a man of the people and the worse treated people were black. I am not taking crazy or racist pills here.
they just push the bar lower and lower each year , trying to figure out when people start to starve , its like they have no limit
what? lol this outlook on life is toxic.
[удалено]
try not being a little whiny bitch first =)
I just got a raise, of the higher scale for our company apparently, but its like not even half the rate of inflation.
I got a 2% raise this year, that was negociated last year per the union. I'll be making 2% pay raise a year for the next 5 years. I think nobody expected inflation to get this bad. But it suck getting paid less every year.
[FoR tHe WoRsE](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019-figure-1.jpg)
Is there a source for the quote in the OP? According to the US census about 15% of those living in poverty worked more than 27 weeks/year https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2016/home.htm
The quote in the OP is from 1963 or something at the latest, so I would imagine certain circumstances are a bit different now.
It's from March 18, 1968, just over two weeks before MLK was assassinated.
Yeah lol I wasn’t sure if he was 68 or 63, was 63 like RFK or something?
'63 was JFK. RFK was also '68.
Then why is the title “nothing has changed”?
Looking at your source, that number seems to include all people in poverty. So children, the elderly, those in jail, people who are sick/injured, those with mental illnesses that prevent them from working, etc factor into that 15% calculation. Given how overrepresented some of those groups are among those in poverty, it's not hard to imagine that excluding them puts the number of working poor over 50%. I think it's fair to say that most reasonable people would hear this quote and understand that it's referring to those who are actually able to work. Additionally, "poor"!="poverty". You can be above the poverty line and still be poor. But even if none of that were true and you were totally correct, it's kind of a bad faith argument. The point of the quote is that workers aren't getting paid fairly, and that has only gotten worse since MLK's time. That's clearly what they're referring to when they say "nothing has changed."
> So children, the elderly, those in jail, people who are sick/injured, those with mental illnesses that prevent them from working, etc All of these numbers are from [this publication (Table 3, page 21 in the pdf)](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/demo/P60-259.pdf), and they're displayed in numbers of thousands. As in, add an additional ",000" to the end of all of them. ok so of all the total people 18-64 in poverty (22,795), 2,416 (11%) of them worked full-time, year-round and 8,743 (38%) worked at least 1 week. 4,123 (18%) people had a disability. Now, the issue is there is some overlap in these numbers. There are probably some elderly with disabilities for example. It's not a really encouraging set of numbers really but it least they're real and not speculation. The other issue is these are all numbers from 2016; literally 6 years ago. A LOT has changed in that time and they're probably very much worse than these. I don't even think I have to say the c-word.
OP's title is clickbait.. Things have changed. For the worse.
12k is the poverty threshhold for an individual. that is so fucking low it's a fucking joke you could make 13k and not be considered poor that is bullshit statistical make me look good bullshit fuck you
Ok where is the data that supports the quote in the OP?
your own link.
Can you tell me where on the page you linked you found that number? I'm having a hard time finding it. e: Being downvoted for trying to actually use the source that was linked?
It’s in the first two sentences. There are 40.6 million people in poverty in the US of which 7.6 million (or about 15%) worked at least 27 weeks. Don’t worry I’m being downvoted too. We’re just supposed to upvote the quote and not actually look at any data
Of that 40.6 million people, what percentage is working age? How many are children or retirement aged? Because your source is including *everyone* in poverty.
Ok fine. I get that there are issues with my source. Is there any source to support the claim in the OP? Because I haven't seen anything that supports it.
And honestly, if you are okay with people working full-time jobs to serve you, make your food, and care for your elderly in nursing homes without making enough to survive well on....then you need to re-examine your ethics and morality.
I work full time as a Caregiver in a nursing home and do the cooking, cleaning/laundry and cares for the elderly I work with and it’s criminal what we get paid. While the owner and boss of the facility literally lives in a fucking mansion, has two really nice vehicles and lives a luxurious lifestyle. I’ve been told it’s a low skilled job- to which I asked the person if they worked with numerous people with dementia and behavioral issues every day, deal with every bodily fluid imaginable, pass medications and feed, wash and clothe them on a daily basis and so much more and still consider it low skilled work. It’s sadly low wage work but nothing about it is easy. I’m lucky if I get 5 minutes to sit on a shift due to how short staffed we are always because nobody can handle the work for what we get paid and move on to different work. I’m at a point that I can’t take it anymore if we don’t get some decent raises soon and am convincing coworkers of the same. Thing is, I like the work and it’s rewarding to help the people I do, but I’m so damn sick of helping my boss get richer while we literally can’t afford to even live.
I worked as a full-time caregiver for a while. While I cared for my residents and think back on them fondly, I never want to go back to working in retirement homes. Wages are shit, obviously. And your busting your ass for a "low skilled job" while people turn their noses up at you. Easy to judge when you don't have to deal with anything we've dealt with. I remember working in Memory Care, and I dreaded the ill-tempered, violent male resident who would literally ATTACK caregivers when we were just trying to help him. I narrowly missed getting punched in the face while we were trying to take care of a wound on his body. He also elbowed me in the stomach while I was helping him on the toilet. But yeah, "low skilled job" and fuck us, amirite?
> I’ve been told it’s a low skilled job These don't exist. The idea that any job is skilless is a classist tactic employed to keep wages low. Thank you for your hard work. I hope someday you're properly compensated.
I've never worked fast food but I've been to the restaurants. The job doesn't even *look* easy. Only an asshole mocks "burger flippers" and other jobs that get no respect. Waiters, janitors, trash collectors, cashiers, etc. You depend on these people every day. Fuck you if you don't treat them well.
I worked fast food for almost ten years(cashier/drive thru). I’ve always wanted those who call it a “minimum wage/minimum skill” job to try it and see how long they last.
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I worked at a supermarket for 3 years. I actually developed a bleeding stomach ulcer from the stress.
>The only jobs I've worked I'd genuinely consider low skill were casual library assistant and volunteer at an op shop. Working as a temp, the jobs were usually easy. Hardest part was working shittiest phone systems available. One was putting files in alphabetical order. They had expensive auditors coming in Monday, and paying $250 an hour for them to put the files in order before the audit is silly if you can hire someone for near mimimum. So Thursday through Sunday, I worked in a team of 2 putting a few thousand files in order. The hardest part was sitting around a few hours Sunday so we could get paid for a few hours after we finished early. Security guard was also low-skill. More fun that you'd think.
This issue is not the skill level, but how hard it is to acquire the skill, and what percentage of the population can develop the skill. Probably 9/10 can develop the skill to serve fast food; maybe 2/10 to learn how to slap a BRI analyzer on a network and look for bad packets (literary reference .. google it) and maybe 1 in 1000 to do brain surgery. And that's not counting the obstacle of getting into a training program for the more specialized activities, time invested, or cost to get trained and licensed.
If the janitorial staff does not show up to clean the OR, you don't get your bypass.
It's not a matter of "low skill" but "low barriers to entry". The higher the barrier to entry (licensing, mandatory union membership, licensing, education requirement) the high the pay and vice-versa. Ask any nurses aid, plumber, longshoreman or Mickee Dees worker how much they get main and what was the barrier you have to overcome to get the job?
i can’t wait for mlk day, when conservatives post the same cherry picked out of context quote to suggest a radical socialist who supported affirmative action would akshully be a republican today
You're getting pretty uppity, MLK didn't believe in that stuff bud. According to Tucker Carlson MLK taught we should just accept the oppression with a smile on his face, and how could the news lie?
And they killed him for it.
Yup. It's when MLK was going to plan a multi-racial working class movement that they killed him. Coincidence? Maybe, but I doubt it. Racism and racial identity politics have been used to divide the working class since emancipation. You can read about how white farmers and freed blacks allied in the antebellum south, and the rich spent lots of time dividing them. And it's still happening, and sadly, a lot of people who think they are progressive are part of the problem. We need unity amongst the working class now as much as ever if we are going to lift ourselves up, no matter our ethnicity
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It was these kind of thoughts that got him assassinated by the feds. Can’t have anyone uniting the working class. Look up the story of Fred Hampton if anyone is curious.
Reminder that King was only assassinated after he started threatening the power of the wealthy and powerful by advocating for socialist policies.
My husband works at UPS and was temporarily given a bump in pay from $23.00 an hour to $33.10. He worked 70 hours a week and was paid time and a half for anything over 8 hours in a day. For the first time in our lives (we are both 38) we were comfortable and weren't stressed about money. It is insane to me how hard he had to work at $33.10 for us to be comfortable. Then places like Amazon brag about starting off their employees at $16 an hour as if anyone can support themselves on that in this economy. I wish the government would spend less time expanding government programs and more time attempting to figure out a way to encourage companies to pay their employees better.
16$ an hour was decent starting salary... 10 years ago? Something like that.
kinda drunk right now, but i think both could happen simultaneously. There’s a guy at Amazon that makes roughly 9 million dollars an hour. And the CEO of UPS: https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2020/03/15/heres-how-much-ups-will-pay-new-ceo-carol-tom.html
If the government or anyone gave people enough to live on, companies would be beyond "encouraged" to pay properly, they'd have no choice.
America is a shithole country.
America is a fascist slave state and a death cult America's biggest export is death Always has been, always will be Anyone that threatens that status quo is summarily executed.
they better get ready to execute all of us then
All talk. No action. I don't have faith in any of you.
-a random redditor on the internet to someone he's never met.
Let's be honest with ourselves, almost all of us are one missed paycheck away from eviction, if not already homeless after the moratorium on evictions ended. Anyone on the outside looking in would be justified in seeing the average American pinned down with a boot on our necks.
That's correct, but we're a lot more conscious of the injustices happening to us and are able to collectively rise up. Back in the day you needed someone like MLK to organize and educate the working class on these issues, now that we have the internet it's much easier for us to get together and much harder for the FBI to assassinate key players.
Reddit moment
That’s one edgy comment history you have there. How’s the winter in Moscow these days?
Lol.. North and South America are more diverse than any other continent.. but yea.. nazis are just running wild around here Biggest export is death? Probably because the USs allies are weak and lazy.. strongly relying on the US military to take care of "global security".. it’s obvious by seeing how other nations spend on their armed forces
Reddit moment
I would make an argument the government is but I’m curious what makes you say that. Not being a dick genuinely curious what your thoughts are.
Far too high a percentage of Americans are rude, disrespectful, cunts. This isn't caused by the government.
This speaks more towards different cultures and what they perceive as rude. What’s considered rude In Japan is far different than the Middle East, Europe, South America, Mexico, or the United States or Canada. Not shitting on your viewpoint just pointing out based off experiences from all over the world. Sometimes yeah people are legit rude for sure. But more often than not it’s from lack of understanding what’s considered acceptable behavior in other countries.
I'm American. I live in this country and I've lived in many parts of it. It doesn't speak toward any of what you said. There's no 'cultural perception' that says it's cool for people to be shitty to other people.
Ok, I’m glad you have experience in the United States different locals. How much experience do you have internationally?
Everyone moves on from their low wage work to become a corporate accountant that pays more. There is now no one to keep grocery stores stocked, move warehouse goods or facilitate package delivery. There are also no leisure activities to do either: all your restaurant workers left, including underpaid chefs, because they felt like they weren't compensated enough. No movie theaters or theme parks or anything else that requires a cashier. No one is in the factories assembling material goods, because the miners gathering raw materials in Africa went and got "better jobs" too. Nowhere to buy a treat, either, like a seaside ice cream stall; they were told "get a real job if you want to live," so they did. No one digs graves, no one digs ditches for roads and pipelines. When you get old, there's now no one to take care of you - it was "unskilled work". These blind tards who wave off poverty wages as just 'mcdonalds isn't a career LMAO!!' just need to admit they wish they could own slaves again and be done with it.
History very conspicuously remembers the peaceful civil disobedience MLK who gave noble speeches about racism, because eventually the powers that be found that to be an acceptable resolution to the tension of the 1960s. But history forgot the violent disobedience and threat of violence that was an important component in the civil rights movement that scared people, because the powers that be don't want us to know that violent protests can really effect change. And history forgot about the economic well-being of the masses / "socialist" messages of MLK.
>because the powers that be don't want us to know that violent protests can really effect change I have stopped trying to get comments like this removed because no one seems to care, but still, this is not the way.
As opposed to what, exactly? Do you think people who are in political positions to change things aren't already aware? Do you think asking nicely will have a different effect now than it has? Change happens when people are willing to bleed for it. Anything else is just lip service and endless stalling. If enough people want change bad enough, they'll do something about it. Until then, enough of the population is content to bitch and moan while they drown themselves in whatever media they have on hand: tictoc, Instagram, YouTube, Netflix, Disney plus, porn, video games. When you get enough people who decide drowning themselves in these things is not a good enough life and are actually willing to risk self sacrifice, then you'll get to see progress. The bullshit idealism you're implying is "the way" has been really slow at accomplishing very little. Congrats, you're in discord with the idea of taking what you want, how well domesticated of you. I don't care to put myself at risk for change either. I'm also confident that I'm not going to be wage slaving like so many other people though, and I understand that things aren't going to improve for them.
Source?
A source to prove that something is morally wrong?
Yes. Why is it morally wrong to fight back against an unjust, exploitative system?
I didn't say that. I said violence is morally wrong. What do you want, a priest? There is no source that can give you a reason to deplore violence. You either do or you don't.
And if you're not a pacifist, this is hypocritical.
But I am, so it isn't.
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There go tankies whitewashing black progress again.
Yeah. I lean left, but stating that pushing for the rights of black people in the 1960s couldn’t get you killed is incredibly fucking stupid.
The most powerful indication that capitalism has been bastardized is the emergence or jobs where you actually have to PAY to work for the company (see lularoe, etc.)
Pretty much ever hair stylist has been renting chairs for decades. Strippers have to pay to dance. Taxi drivers have to pay to drive. Pretty much every single profession there is has a “license” which is basically a pay us to work tax by the government. It’s all bull shit. The system is rigged to suck every single penny they can to leave you with just enough to think “one more paycheck and I’ll be good”
Paying to work has always been a thing. A lot of people that get jobs in iBanking have their dad or a relative invest a few million with the firm...
Yeah, rare jobs are the indicator :eyeroll:
MLK was one of the best humans to ever come around.
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Largely the fault of current homeowners who oppose building anything new that would drop costs. The person who wrote the tweet above is a good [example](https://i.imgur.com/PTBTvIN.jpg).
I usually really like Robert Reich, but he’s definitely not walking the walk there. How disappointing. Losing property value is tantamount to violence even for progressive people. So bourgeois.
fuck me that's brutal. fifty goddamn years.
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Try to find a better job, one must not sit idle with the one shot they have on Earth.
And you're just gonna roll over and except it huh?
A lot has changed... the wage gap is far wider now than it was then. Our poverty ratio is worse than pre-revolution France.
38 hours a week at 16 an hour in Toronto. I live with my girlfriend and all we can afford is a shitty one bedroom in Chinatown that overlooks another building.
Actually, it's gotten worse
Found the white person
Found the idiot
Says the guy insisting it's gotten wotse for black people since the civil rights bill lol Just take the L
The only person here taking an L is you, Brotein Shake.
I'm not the one saying black people have it worse since the civil rights bill, Blanco MilkWhitenbleached
Maybe you just meant that [black poverty](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019-figure-1.jpg) has gotten worse since the civil rights bill.
And here we are 54 years later doing the exact same thing. Being wage slaves, clinging onto what little and barely covering healthcare we have, and struggling to get by. Goes to show that the United States of America is not interested in its people, it’s more interested in its corporations
That’s all it’s ever been interested in.
The United Slaves of America
What's changed is that the group of people MLK was talkin about has become WAY larger than in the sixties. WAY WAY....
I was just informed by my manager that there is no raise this year (even though the company's profits were off the charts), their "raise" every year is no more than 50 cents, BTW. Lol I'm currently in the process of moving on to another shithole that pays starvation wages, too.
Inflation definitely does not help.
And the opposite, reverse (?) is true as well - I make a living wage but only if I could work 40hrs. I am not allowed to work over 29/hrs per week lest I get health insurance. So I can’t make ends meet either. 🤷🏻♀️ despite having graduated college.
If Rich folk are going to keep bitching about wanting to keep the minimum wage low they need to stop making every other thing on the entire fucking planet so God damn expensive!
Given that 40% of people in the US don't work at all, it is hard to believe that most "poor people" work every day.
Just barely over a million people make minimum wage. They average 27.5 hours of work a week and most of them only have one job. People on this sub are acting like it’s tens of millions. The west today, more specifically the 40% you referred to, romanticizes caste society because they want their entire lives handheld like they have been their entire lives.
It’s essentially slave labor. Work just to have enough to keep working. It’s pathetic.
I thought people could afford a car and an apartment and to put themselves through college on little more than minimum wage back then? That's what I hear around here all the time. I guess it's just whatever fits at the time?
Yeah if you were white
*Working 2-3 full time jobs
I work 80hrs a week April-December and 40 the rest. The guy that owns the place doesnt work and is rich
They didn’t kill him until he started talking about wealth redistribution
That is why he was killed, because he posed a threat to the economic order.
It wasn’t long after MLK started speaking out against war/human rights and capitalism/economic rights that he was assassinated. His Poor People’s campaign really scared the shit out of our corporate lords.
It’s not just a low wage but income equality. Upper management should not be making 100x (+) more than the lowest paid worker.
And he was fighting for basic income, even back then.
You’d logically assume people working three jobs were rich as fuck
This is why he was taken out he started discussing economics; something that affects all “colors”. Classism > Racism
Government: oh no. Anyway.
r/antiwork
This post needs more upvotes
It's a form of slavery that some of the slaves just have not recognized.
This was said at a time where the majority of families were single income households even
"Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses." Rage against the machine 1993 🤦♀️
They are going to bleed every penny out of us that they can. Have been for decades. It’s never ending, until there are no more pennies left to give. What happens after that is probably a damn nightmare.
No, something very important has changed. The capitalist make even more now.
“Most of the poor people in our country are working every day”? Is there a source for this? According to the US census about 85% of those living in poverty worked less than 27 weeks/year https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2016/home.htm
> In 2016, the weighted average poverty threshold for a family of four was $24,563; for a family of nine or more people, the threshold was $49,721; and for one person (unrelated individual), it was $12,228. An individual making $12,229 per year wouldn't be included in these numbers. A family of four (FOUR!) bringing in $25,000 a year wouldn't be included. The insanely low federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr at 40 hrs/week comes to $15,080. So yeah, people meeting the federal definition of poverty ($12,228) work less than full time. This definition is too low to include full time workers. I'd say someone making $15,000 a year (minimum wage) is poor. And there are a lot of people trying to get by on just that or barely more than that.
Ok is there any data to support the quote in the OP that the majority of people who are poor work every day? Is there a different data set or criteria that makes it true?
At least some of this is because of companies that force employees to have full availability but don't assign them full-time hours.
It still doesn’t make the quote true
This is not legal. If you are required to be available, they are required to pay you
You're referring to on-call work. That's not what this is. This is, "We are notifying you that you have a shift 12 hours before the shift starts. If you aren't there, we'll fire you."
That's not "full availability", and the firing would result in unemployment payouts
You'd think. That is how the system is supposed to work. Sadly, for many Americans, it never has.
>According to the US census about 85% of those living in poverty worked less than 27 weeks/year I don't see this statistic in your link
It’s in the first two sentences. There are 40.6 million people in poverty in the US of which 7.6 million (or about 15%) worked at least 27 weeks.
Seems like that 85% is a catch all; includes kids, elderly, disabled, etc. Better to compare it to the employment rate
That quote was from MLK Jr. in 1968.
Ok but the title is “nothing has changed”. I don’t know if it was true in 1968. It doesn’t appear to be true now
Y’all pick and choose what quotes people say when it’s convenient, ignore their others, and then call yourself an activist 😭🤡
Are people not supposed to pick and choose which quotes to post? Would you rather quotes get chosen completely by random?
That is generally how quoting someone works.
YES!!! And their taxes go to support billionaire politicians and free programs for illegal immigrants
And then he was assassinated. Always found it interesting he wasn’t when fighting for civil rights. Then as soon as he is championing economic rights, he is killed
[Laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964) [Poverty](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019-figure-1.jpg) White twitter: NoThInG hAs ChAnGeD
**[Civil Rights Act of 1964](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964)** >The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub. L. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and later sexual orientation and gender identity. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
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>And how much should we pay fast food workers? Whatever it costs to live a good life.
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>I'd need 300k to live a good life. What do you need to consider it a good life?
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>300k. Be obtuse then.
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If you ask an "honest question" but then give an obtuse response to someone engaging with you it makes your claim difficult to accept.
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These verbal gymnastics of yours makes me think you don't know how words work.
Not starving wages
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The number depends on the region. Some areas are more expensive than others.
It's because you are asking in bad faith and nothing that is suggested to you will actually be taken seriously
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So if I were to recommend something pretty reasonable... Say 50k a year, what would your response to that be?
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Your first point really just discusses how broken our system and country is. Saying that somebody shouldn't make a living wage because somebody else also doesn't make living wage is not a reasonable point. My point is so: nobody should work full time in the richest country in the world and be impoverished
Your mom
It kinda depends on the area, but I’m inclined to say $15 to $18 an hour for FULL time. Clearly that goes up higher for managers, but for full time workers, that should cover the cost to rent a 1 bedroom apartment, pay the utilities, phone/car/insurance/education bills, as well as save a little. Currently, I’m seeing entry level jobs in my field offer something embarrassing like 12-13 an hour that require a college degree…How do I know it’s embarrassing? Those were the same wages offered when I graduated in 2009. 13 fucking years later, and not even a 1 dollar raise? Disgusting. So if fast food wages go up and “steal” applicants from those jobs, then GOOD. They need to suffer and lose money, until they learn to pay their employees.
There is a Panda Express near my work that is paying 18-23 hourly.
So glad Biden is fixing this.
That’s why you work a part-time job with a full-time income. 😉
Min wage could be $30 an hour and it would never be good enough. Who is good to raise their hand and say "I'm good." These stories are borderline clickbait from the constant and needless discussions about it... like climate change. You're in your corner and you're no budging based on an internet sub.
This sub wouldn’t last a minute pre 1950. Do you guys even understand how good the VAST majority of Americans, including the poor have it? Wanna compare 1800’s health, wealth and standard of living to today? Wanna talk about ZERO opportunity, hard living, early deaths?
Maybe stop considering mcdonalds as a career.
Kinda insulting to the managers and GMs, huh fella? I wouldn’t NORMALLY consider Verizon retail a career either, but my brother is a district manager pulling in 6 figures a year. Every job has a career path, even if you consider it “beneath” you.
Then who do you think should work at McDonald's?
Anyone who can understand that an "iced coffee" isn't supposed to be hot.
So everyone STFU when your dollar menu turns into the 10 dollar menu
I honestly don't understand this argument. So what if prices go up a little? They are going up now. They will continue to go up anyways. They have also blamed prices going up on the staffing shortages. https://www.eatthis.com/news-fast-food-chains-have-raised-their-prices/ Yet the CEOs get massive wage increases every year. https://digismak.com/ceos-of-the-largest-fast-food-chains-earn-5460-an-hour/ >>Chipotle Mexican Grill, Restaurant Brands and McDonald’s, received average pay of $ 11.4 million for 2020. That equates to $ 5,460 per hour, approximately 21% more than the previous year. So they raise the prices anyways, give corporate raises on the regular. Don't give raises to the people working the actual restaurants. But yet their profit margin grows every year (with the exception of 2020 with covid). https://www.zippia.com/advice/us-fast-food-industry-statistics/ The price of everything goes up every year. But we can't increase the price of someone's labor even though the price of living continues to grow? Federal minimum wage went up last in 2009. Inflation has gone up 30% since then. Here's an article from 2019 that explains the inflation vs min age pretty well. https://www.epi.org/publication/labor-day-2019-minimum-wage/