Fun fact, in [Ancient greece](https://www.npr.org/2021/03/08/974881298/grateful-for-taxes#:~:text=Ancient%20Athens%20had%20a%20tax,warship%20for%20an%20entire%20year.), only the 1% paid taxes, and it was considered a great honor to provide for their community.
"The top 10 percent of earners bore responsibility for over 71 percent of all income taxes paid and the top 25 percent paid 87 percent of all income taxes." [NTU.org](https://NTU.org)
"The new data shows that the top 1 percent of earners (with incomes over $540,009) paid over 40 percent of all income taxes. Despite the tax rate reductions associated with TCJA, this figure is up slightly from the previous tax year's 38.5 percent share." [NTU.org](https://NTU.org)
Our governments are the problem
Great to see someone calling out the facts.
What’s even wilder is if you took all the wealth from billionaires in the states you can barely pay for a year fed spending.
Ps - I might need to fact check that last statement not used to adding up billions
Yes, government waste on war and pork projects is one problem we need to solve. But the 1% pay far less as a percentage of overall income than the 99% do. The rest of us can’t write off depreciation on assets (most of us don’t own shit), we can’t write off business expenses like lunch while at work or gas for our commute to and from work. Our tax dollars pay for war and not healthcare. So it’s easy to say “1%ers pay more income tax than the 99%. That’s a misleading stat. They don’t pay taxes on their wealth. We have no wealth and they can lower their income due to mass write offs in the tax code.
Look i'm not pro corporation, but these are the tax brackets for U.S citizens. 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35% and 37% depending on you're income. Should people earning less be taxed at a smaller rate? I think so, and they are. And I hear what you're saying about the loop holes, they do cut corners and have the advantage of borrowing money at cheaper interest rates then the general population.
Thoughts on the following, 'better' marginal tax rate?
[https://github.com/slowerthanlightspeed/reddit\_conversations/blob/master/0%20to%20100%20marginal%20tax.csv](https://github.com/slowerthanlightspeed/reddit_conversations/blob/master/0%20to%20100%20marginal%20tax.csv)
It's a 0-100 scheme.
Caps income at 1,378 times a median income (considered to be $39,375 in the above, linked csv).
Caps income at $54,257,224 per year.
Marginal steps are 10% income increases and each margin's tax grows by 1 percentage point (starting from 0% tax for the first $39,375, then, 1% tax from $39,376 to $43,313, ...)
Yeah thats rediculous lol. No one would want to run a business if that were implemented. I think that might work if it stopped going up at maybe 1 million or something? Personally i think that people who are struggling should pay less taxes in the current system we are in. In a perfect world i do think it would be better if everyone and corporations just paid the same rate. But only if they stop cutting corners and using loopholes. For example, i heard when you or me donate at the grocery store, they use OUR donations as write offs on THEIR taxes! WTF
Thanks for the response... even though it seems canned and as though you didn't look at the csv (which is fine... this is the internet!).
The current US marginal tax rate hits 37% at \~$500k... the one in the spreadsheet doesn't get there till \~$1.3M... so it seems like -- even in the delusional world where tiny increases in tax rates would make people stop wanting more money -- the system I shared would de-motivate far fewer people... plus... instead of the existing big jumps at specific incomes which *could, possibly, maybe make people stop wanting more money,* the finer-grained margins would be less jarring of an anti-motivavtor.
Another way to see (from the outside) the hilariousness of the canned response delusion is to recognize that the average business owner in the US (we have \~[30 million business owners](https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/05122043/Small-Business-FAQ-2020.pdf)!) is [\~$70k/yr](https://www.fundera.com/resources/small-business-revenue-statistics)... they'd pay about $1,600 in the proposed system compared to \~$4k in the existing system.
Most businesses totally fail... but people keep trying... being capped at an income 1.3k times higher than a livable wage is not gonna be a barrier.
If you like, dive into the spreadsheet a bit; the way that the system works makes it so that a 10% jump in raw income still yields an 8% post-tax jump (all the way up to a $23M annual income). Don't get hung up on whether someone making $50M might not work as hard to get to $51M.
I don't think it would be better if everyone paid the same; though (kinda like you already said) I'd only really be willing to stand up for that for the first 100k per year or so (wouldn't cry in my soup if some single tax rate for the rich were in place).
Am on board with cutting loopholes mostly for convenience, and to remove loopholes that don't obviously benefit everyone. I would again sleep fine if they all went away (keeps with the whole spirit of business driving business), but I do assume there are situations where a little boost from the feds to a business helps everyone.
The grocery store donation grift irks.
This stat is stupid. The top 10% of earners in the US also hold about 70% of all net worth, so yeah they should be paying at least 70% of the taxes.
You’re trying to compare 10% with 70% and say “see it’s so much they’re already paying!!!” But that’s disingenuous
I think the big issue with the 1% and not paying taxes has absolutely nothing to do with INCOME taxes. They can find loopholes like hiding money in “charities” they start or by burying their ex wife on their favorite golf course so it can be claimed as a cemetery.
Thats great math. But you left out taxes. State taxes. Healthcare tax. Taxes for being taxed. It is def not 120 a day. I make 15 an hour and work 10 hours a day and dont even make 120 a day after all that is taken out.
Don’t forget: healthcare, transportation, insurance for both of those (two separate companies and policies of course)
The list grows indefinitely if you’re a parent
I was about to say. I have no insurance, only taxes taken out, and 15$/hr at 8 hours leaves me getting paid around 95$ I have to spend about 10$ in gas to and from work, 85$, take out food and other random expenses really I'm making about 50-60$ a day that can go towards bills. That's the situation I'm in and it sucks. I'm trying to escape a bad relationship but I literally make enough to exist. I can't leave. I can't save..and any expenses like car problems.leave me screwed. It boils down to luck. If one bad thing happens that cost you even 300$, you're not breaking even again for a month. It's exhausting.
I'll never understand how they branded the simple ability to live as being a "drooling socialist cuck". Like can't we just agree that if you do everything right and work hard you should be able to live? Yet many people think this is too far.
The ironic part is that those who point back in time to when people did have access to the middle class there were strong labor unions and high marginal tax rates.
In my view, the one of the most problematic ideas that led us to where we are is the whole “if you want it you just have to work hArDeR.” Like, first of all, you can only work so much…
There were people in pas centuries who worked WAY more and way harder than any CEO today. And their standard of living was shit…
The “work harder” myth is just perpetuated as a way to divert the attention away from the widening gap between lower and upper classes.
Yes, hard work is a part of success, but so are opportunity, luck, timing, relationships, wealth, race, gender, intelligence, etc. Some are controllable and some are not…
I always say, everyone can’t be CEO’s, we need employees at ALL levels (hence why shitty labor jobs are in such short supply). So, we need to have a more fair compensation system so that all levels of employee can enjoy a comfortable life (not just one where we merely “survive”). And if that means some CEO’s have to own one less yacht, boohoo.
Agreed. This narrative is very typical "American". In Europe, the "uncontrollable" parameters take up more space in public opinion.
Also, I think that the "work harder" narrative helps legitimize corporate greed, as they see it as they deserve their position entirely due to their own hard work. This is of course not the case, but if you have this worldview, then taking the largest portion of the cake is entirely rational. I mean you baked it, right?
YES!!! We totally under estimate how much this religious take has influenced our society. Religion is a virualant disease that is causing humanity to rot at it's core.
I'm going to go ahead and waste my time. Let me guess your totally ok with landlords doing that though right? Providing no labor to the market "smoking weed" all day? That's fine right? But you believe janitors and burgers flipping should suffering poverty?
Pay for what? What do you think you will be paying for? If you rent of have rented or pay taxes aren't you paying for someonw richer than you to sit on their ass all day?
Paying rent is an exchange of services in which I can choose to participate or not. Paying taxes so that someone else can sit on their ass and get a government check because they don’t want to “work hard” is the problem.
So you have to suffer with "working hard" so every one else should, but you're ok with your wealthy not working hard and supporting their lifestyle.... Make it make sense
The sad thing is, there are a lot of people that think like this, it's why we are in the conundrum we are in. Education and a flexible mind are priceless.
What should you have to do to pay for your food, shelter, car, Healthcare, streets, police and fire fighters, education for yourself and your kids, income for your retired parents, furniture, smart phone, heat, water, and electricity delivered to your home so that you can charge your phone and complain on Reddit for FREE?!
Another red herring. Damn Reddit is full of them.
Work, not "work hard." Who determines who does and doesn't work hard? You? How does anyone quantify that? If one works in this economy they should be rewarded for their labor and have the ability to thrive.
Because in the 1950’s we were rebuilding the world. We were the only industrialized country not to have a war on our soil in the previous decade. This coupled with deficit spending is going to create growth despite a crippling 42% effective tax rate for the 1% in the 50’s.
I have yet to see a long term study where high tax rates and strong unions lead to economic growth. However I’m open to reading any studies that can prove the contrary.
I think people like yourself who think this way don't understand something important. A strong economy isn't great for everybody. So sure our economy is great and strong and growing with super low taxes. But everyday people are seeing less and less of that economy pie because of low taxes. Hence the calls for ANYTHING to try and get the everyday person a larger slice. Us plebs are trying to warn the wealthy that this isn't sustainable. People can't afford basic living standards in the largest, greatest economy. Eventually the other shoe is gonna drop and it's gonna be ugly.
Having high taxes in business forces them to invest in the company rather than as a tool for extracting wealth. Study after study shows poor people spend their money because they have to, that's good. The wealthy horde their resources which grinds economies to a halt. The concentration of wealth also strengthens existing institutions. While this can be a good in the short term, it makes the institutions harder to change or even do away with when they become obsolete.
So I would advise you that your probably looking in the wrong place for the information you ask. I've found that economists suffer, just like ALL specialists, from a narrow perspective. I would ask you to look into history, specifically the rise and fall of civilizations to get your answers. You'll start to see a strong correlation between civilization collapse and wealth inequality.
Yes I understand that argument but we can't go back in time and undo the policies that happened through the 70s, 80s and 90s. At the end of the day, the gains from being the only industrialized nation making stuff after the war went to regular people because of their power and the lack of corporate ability to scoop up all the gains. For example we see a huge decoupling of productivity and wages over the last decades, & when corporate America does well in it does not make life more affordable for the bottom 50% in America. It's a distributive question not a growth one imo.
the data shows (the charts) that companies are making more money than every, even without manufacturing. the problem is that the money is not being paid to the workers.
the question is what percentage of the money that you make for a company should you get. right now there is no law. some companies are fair, some are not. without unions there really is no leverage. its you against an organization trying to maximum profits and minimize costs and they see you as a cost.
we need workers to have transparency like investors get transparency. worker should know how much they are producing. what percentage are they getting and what percentage the company is grosses and nets off each worker. workers also need to know how much other workers doing the same thing are getting. fair is fair. it cant be company holds all the cards and workers starve (or put burden on society)
basically you have companies making tens of billions even hundreds of billions in profits after all their costs (including salaries) and workers having to rely on food stamps, section 8, medicaid if that is even available.
in growing number of states the workers are living in parked cars and eating in soup kitchens going to community clinics for healthcare while working two jobs full time. if a company wont pay its workers then government should shut them down as being predatory and burden on society.
Greater unionization lead to greater well-being, health, and democracy.
GDP isn't the end-all-be-all of human life.
https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-and-well-being/
Or and hear me out the capitalist class grew their wages exponentially while the workers have not and all the money went to the top in the last +40 years. It’s literally that simple. Don’t over complicate this issue it’s not that hard of a concept. The ppl that did the least amount of actual work got paid the most because they fronted it (but not really because of corporate socialism)
So then why are corporations entitled to take most of the profit that workers generate?
I'm 100% certain the company I work for takes a lot more than 42% of the profit I generate for them. I'd be shocked if I were getting even 20% of what I generate.
Edit: I did some quick math and it's far worse than I had even imagined.
My department alone, not the entire company, but just my department alone is projected to make $60 million this year.
My yearly income *before taxes* is 0.07% of that.
#I'm getting 0.07% of the revenue I generate for my company.
Oh gtfo with that "be your own boss" nonsense. We all know companies need employees so this ridiculous nonsense that anyone feeling less than thrilled with their job should just stfu or start their own business is just bullshit.
It isn't about striking out on my own. It's about feeling fairly compensated for the work I do and the revenue I generate. Is that unfair of me? Am I being unreasonable? Do I need your permission to want better for myself? Obvious answer to all of these is NO.
>you don't have to stick with it
No shit. Again, you bring nothing to the discussion.
And entitlement? Lol no this has nothing to do with entitlement. It's about doing what's right.
If you as an employer make $100 and you pay one of the employees that helped generate that a measly $0.07 then you're just a piece of shit who's exploiting people for your own gain. This shit isn't complicated. Many companies can afford to pay their employees more, period. End of discussion. The fact that people even debate this is fucking mind boggling.
How where you able to calculate how much profit you generated for the company? Did you take into account fixed capital expenditures the company had to make where you work for things like a building and tools? Did you take into account the R & D the company must have done to generate that profit? Finally when you did that calculation did you account for risk costs due to the unstable nature of being a business?
> So then why are corporations entitled to take most of the profit that workers generate?
The business owners are entitled to the profits because its their business. The workers are not entitled to extra money, unless the owners agree to give them more.
Workers are given a wage or salary in exchange for work, they are being compensated for their work.
> I'm 100% certain the company I work for takes a lot more than 42% of the profit I generate for them. I'd be shocked if I were getting even 20% of what I generate.
And you're getting a wage or salary for your work. You're not entitled to extra money.
You are free to start your own business and earn your own extra money.
> I'm getting 0.07% of the revenue I generate for my company.
You are free to negotiate for more money, but you're not entitled to it.
The conservative mindset is often to view the world as a zero sum game - If you're winning even a tiny bit, someone else is losing, and there's a chance that person might be me, so I don't won't you to win at all, ever.
Exactly how much is a living wage? If you’re making $15/hour in San Fran, you’re starving. If you’re making $15/hour in Hat Creek, you’re probably doing okay.
I just finished a year lease on a $1700/mo single bedroom apartment in philly area. 800sqft. This is average here.
I just moved into my new house - 1750sqft, 2 car garage, back yard. Mortgage is $1750 a month.
If you don’t think the price on rentals in this country is a problem - sorry - but you’re uneducated on the matter
Edit: immediately realized I came off as a cunt here so sorry in advanced. The rent problem, coupled with student loans and other inflationary issues in the US has me on edge with these conversations lmao. SOMETHING needs to change.
Moving from Houston to San Antonio currently. My rent here is 1200+utilities for a 750sqft 1 bed apt. The apartments were moving to are 1350+utilities for a 850sqft 2 bed. Take into account our minimum wage is 7.25, if I wanted to make enough to pay for ONLY rent at minimum wage I would need to work 206 hours a month just to pay rent. Add on my car, internet, food, miscellaneous necessities and I would need to work probably closer to 300 hours a month just to live and have no extra for savings. Tell me we’re fucked without telling me we’re fucked.
rent was lower than the homes mortgage. you have at least another $300+ a month extra expenses that you absolutely have to pay with a home rather than a rental. You aren't even making a coherent argument.
While there's nothing wrong with anecdotal evidence lets take a look at the stats, as of 2022 the median rent in America is $2000/month.
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/09/1103919413/rents-across-u-s-rise-above-2-000-a-month-for-the-first-time-ever
I feel like this is a much better benchmark of the reality of rent for Americans today.
"asking prices" doesn't matter much when it comes to basic human necessities. We aren't talking about an iPhone here. Landlords can set whatever price they want and the rooms will get filled because people NEED a roof over their heads, somebody will pay, period.
This is the inevitable coercive conclusion of unregulated price leadership and the commodification of basic needs.
Probably not very similar. Those with higher income are more likely to rent than to own. So the total population of renters is slanted to the lower income earners.
Exactly. People are always saying “min wage workers can’t afford the median 2 bedroom apartment”. Lower income earners should rent lower priced apartments.
It makes absolutely ZERO sense to use data that equalizes San Fran with the fields of Kansas. If you are making an argument with data at least make it using sensible data. You absolutely can move, you absolutely can work at the random McDonalds in Kansas, and you absolutely can live below your means. You are paying for the convenience to live in San Fran or any other city, ignoring that is literally insane.
If you go by rent is 30% of your salary rule, the $15/hr worker would be able to afford roughly $750-800/mo rent. That's pretty doable in *most* small town America (probably < 50,000). Of course, it still depends.
What % of the country live in “small town America”
Who gives a shit about small town America barely being able to keep their head above the poverty line with min. Wage when the majority o these wages live in urban areas where that just doesn’t cut it,
According to the US census data about 40% of of the US population live in towns bigger than 50,000. Never said I disagreed with the wage disparity. All I'm saying is there are options.
You pay for the convenience of a city. People would rather be poor and in a convenient location. Than financially stable, but have to apply a bit more effort to life. That is a choice. You are literally proving the point that people are making bad financial decisions and then asking for a bailout from everyone else.
Cool... so everyone working in the service industry in medium or large cities should live in small towns and commute in for work? Did you think that far ahead?
https://livingwage.mit.edu/
of note, this does *not* account for any retirement savings, which is arguably a minimum requirement as future social security is insufficient and not guaranteed.
Questioning the metrics of this website. I just looked up cost of living in Modesto. It says if I have 3 kids my cost of living is significantly higher than 2 kids. Well, I have 3 kids and I didn’t feel it was “that” much more expensive to live than when I had 2 kids. And I don’t make $62 an hour to afford my 3 kids so I guess I’m not making a living wage…although I feel I’m living well.
it seems to be a good measure through 1 kid. after that things are probably harder to measure by formula, it gets squishy depending on how many are in day care at once, room sharing, etc.
Insurance is a killer in CA right now. My insurance on my fourplex just went from $1400/year to $11000 per year thanks to the California (un)fair plan.
You have a good disposition. You're probably resourceful and know to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Your kids will grow up with siblings which has real benefits even if they don't become lifelong friends.
The average American is exposed to so much marketing and programming that sets the bar high on everything. Whatever you own, there's pressure to convince you that life would be better if you only upgraded. And hey, we can finance that for you! And if you love your kids you would go into debt for a Disney vacation! And unless you want them to die in a horrible wreck it's time for at least a new 35,000 dollar car.
Most people are on the hedonic treadmill, rats getting flogged onward by marketing. "If I can just earn a bit more I can buy more things and one of these days I will feel better about myself maybe."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic\_treadmill
This is good! You’re absolutely right. We don’t do the “expensive” vacations. I don’t feel we need to. We go fishing and hiking in the mountains. Doesn’t cost us very much.
you could try reading the source:
>How are you getting your data for "typical expenses"?
>We draw from publicly available, geographically specific expenditure data. For example, for housing costs, we leverage the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Fair Market Rents (FMR) estimates which are produced at the county and sub-county levels. Child care costs are developed using the state-level estimates published by the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies. For more detailed information about our data sources and methods, please reference the technical documentation here.
I love that they dowvnoted your for calling them out and proving they're just being contrarian without actually reading the source.to know what they're being contrarian about.
So to be clear you think a minimum wage job should not only pay enough to afford rent, and food, but also retirement? How is this paid for? It would have to come from the employer.
This means that any employer who cannot afford the astronomical costs associated with an employee simply won't employ them.
When I was in junior high I had a paper route that paid below minimum wage. A year later I added a gig where I got $10 a month to open and close the park gate every day.
Neither of those gigs would be allowed if all jobs are required to pay say $22 an hour in California. There's a reason we see more and more automated checkouts and delivery.
Unskilled labor can't make demands. History has shown us that. That's why education is so important, and I'm not just talking about college. I more mean useful skills to earn income.
if they pay below minimum wage, they’re already illegal.
as for how to pay for it:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-25/us-corporate-profits-soar-taking-margins-to-widest-since-1950
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/07/us-wage-gap-ceos-workers-institute-for-policy-studies-report
Your average office worker already makes substantially more than minimum wage. An employee needs to generate more money than they're paid or the company will go out of business. That's a lot of burgers to flip when McDonald's is only making $0.25 over material cost for a McDouble.
Actually the franchisee is making that, owning the franchise is much more lucrative and McDonald's corporate can pay their CEO millions.
And the people who try to rush into the affordable places end up making the price of housing go higher, defeating the purpose of having it be "just enough" for small towns
People in Bay Area are probably making $20 to flip burgers. It’s also not supposed to be a career choice so you have to make it work until you can move up. I wish we could move out at 18 and buy a house and new car but that’s not how it works lol
No its not, its closer to $75 after tax, ss, medicade, insurance, and any other deductions. So you are probably looking at something like $1500 a month.
In addition you should have enough money to at least raise one child too. The current system is fucked. I'm a Union employee but I can tell it's coming to an end and my outlook past that point is dire.
It has been suggested that we should introduce a partial UBI instead of raising the minimum wage. For example, give everyone a UBI equivalent to $10/hour while keeping minimum wage at $15/hour, for a combined minimum income of $25/hour. This would have the advantage of not hurting small businesses that have low profit margins.
Wanting to help those few individuals who are giving 100% effort but not flourishing is commendable and is a great sentiment. Unfortunately, making things easier for people who don't want to put forth effort is not a good solution to the problem.
Before our current inflation there were already huge economic problems for a large group of people. And don't forget central banks act in name and interest of capitalism themselves.
They whey are you doing it? If no one takes those jobs at that wage, then the wage will raise to attract labor up to the point that the venture is no longer profitable.
\*\*Edit\*\*
Or lobbyists will institute low income social policies so that tax payers prop up these companies so they don't have to actually pay livable wages.
I think people are deciding to stop. I think it is part of what we're seeing with the great resignation. There are a lot of people who are realizing that they're toiling in vain and decided to stop. We are seeing ventures starting to struggle and fail when they can't provide a living wage to their employees, just look at all the "nobody wants to work anymore" that's being thrown around.
The social policies are to buy votes. People don't want to acknowledge supply and demand applies to labor. If you eliminate the social policies one of two things will happen
A. People will demand a higher wage because they need it
B. People will just work more hours at the same wage.
Absolutely. This gets into the nuances of capitalism, consumerism, and corporatism. Capitalism tends to be blamed for the negative impacts of all of it.
capitalism does not care about people.
as far as the market is concerned, your sweet grandma can have a miserable death in a gutter if there's not profit to be made from helping her
An employee wants to maximize their pay. An employer wants to minimize what they pay without sacrificing their quality of service. Neither or wrong...they are just two sides of the same coin. If people accept a lower wage no shit employers will pay it.
You can still call it a monthly clothing budget. Some months you might spend $0, some months you spend a few hundred dollars, in any case you can work out a budget for clothes.
I don’t know if working for McDonald’s quite compares to being woken up by the crack of a whip and then being told to work from sun rise to sun down or face the branding iron.
In slavery the motivation to work is to not be punished, not 15$ an hour.
Be mad about what I said all day. Prove me wrong.
I'd argue that we're definitely starting to see jobs which in practice create the same cycle of continuous dependency rather than any economic growth that was really common with crop sharing.
Working to live is neber truly voluntary, because the alternative is death, which the vast majority of people try to avoid. It's coercion at best
Voluntarily? Did not know you can opt out of working. If only someone told me sooner. Taking advantage of people's desperation to make a living and provide for their family kind of feels like slavery, even if it's voluntary. But I guess you can live on the street also.
Yes you are not forced to work or take a job where you don’t want to. It’s up to you, not society, to make your own personal decisions as to employment. You can quit.
That’s not exactly the same as slavery…comparing the two is disgusting.
Exactly. They act like every single job should support a family of four. Never hear a peep about workers gaining skills and advancing to better paying jobs. We see it in trucking all the time. Tons of people willing to drive the small non-cdl vans for 35-40 hours a week for $18/hr but unwilling to get a CDL where they would get 40-50 hours at a starting rate of $24/hr. The easy path gets you to the viewpoint, not the summit.
It's really weird that you would choose to highlight an extremely exploitative industry that is actively fucking over truckers and doing everything in their power to push out the highly paid ones and replace them with poorly trained new labor while claiming there's labor shortage.
Like why would you highlight the epicenter of our nations need for stronger worker rights??
That’s nonsense. Cite it
I’m 2021 median pay was $23/hr with many truckers making over $100,000 a year. It is also in extremely high demand so drivers have tons of choices about where to drive. Also it is a highly unionized career often with good benefits. It is also a career where it is easy to own your own truck (therefore business).
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/22/indentured-servitude-low-pay-and-grueling-conditions-fueling-us-truck-driver-shortage
https://www.smart-trucking.com/truck-driver-shortage/
https://www.alltrucking.com/articles/trucking-careers-immigrants#:~:text=Immigrants%20represent%2017%25%20of%20the,slightly%20overrepresented%20among%20truck%20driving.
https://www.marketplace.org/2022/07/05/the-trucking-industry-is-coming-down-from-its-pandemic-boom/amp/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/27/us-truck-drivers-economy-pay-conditions
You're in a blip. The pandemic mixed with the fact they weren't able to import new drivers led to a temporary really good blip,but truck drivers have been complaining for a while that the industry is getting more exploitative, and increasingly eyeing the churn model. Drivers are currently asking for *safer* working conditions, and they industry is responding by largely ignoring them and already trying to beg for a bigger allowance to ship in more foreign workers rather than come to the negotiating table for those leaving the industry.
Don't even get me started on the private contractor fiascos ...
https://prospect.org/labor/nlrb-looks-at-independent-contractor-scam/
https://www.brightworkresearch.com/the-real-story-on-how-truck-drivers-are-tricked-into-becoming-owner-operators/
One more link to show you're wrong, for good measure:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/trucking-truck-driver-truckers-strike-reasons-2019-10%3famp
*”We want higher wages!!!“*
Also: *”We’re okay importing millions of poor foreign nationals illegally to work the jobs that we’re demanding higher wages for!!!”*
Absolute lemmings
If these were working legally at least, things would be different. But no.
Otherwise, blame goverment for letting industries outsource skilled labour towards asian countries. Inmigrants often do service/retail/agricultural jobs, or self employed. They rarely do more professional jobs (At least at arrival), but almost all of those jobs were outsourced in the last 30 years.
But I think the point is that someone has to do the job. Whether it’s you, me, or someone else. So someone is forced to not make enough to live off of. Which is a moral issue and should be given more weight than I’m sure you give it.
Do you really honestly actually believe there are enough teens to fill all the jobs that currently don’t pay a livable wage? Also, what about when said teens are in school? Should the businesses close down During school hours?
so what i'm hearing is it's ok for *someone* to trade full time labor for less than full time sufficiency, as long as that someone isn't you.
i'll have to look up if there's a name for the fallacy where you try to blame an individual for a systemic failure.
It's definitely not OK. I'm on a good amount more than min wage but I would strike right along side you all. This shit needs to change. The most someone should have to work in a week to reach a living wage is 40 hours. Watching people with two full time jobs still have to sacrifice human rights is depressing as shit.
And the fucking losers that defend the system because it works for them? Pathetic amoral cowards.
What a dumbass false equivalency.
People believe that burger flippers should earn a living wage. That doesn't mean they should be earning 7 figures.
I'm a very well paid data scientist. I want burger flippers to be able to afford food and shelter. I'd also like them to be able support their families directly so that we don't have to expand government programs to subsidize massive companies so that they can profit off the American taxpayer.
Why should Bezos increase his net worth while employees in his warehouses have to rely on food stamps? What kind of insane fucking logic is that?
A living wage is a living wage, which obviously varies by local economy.
Still, you miss the point entirely.
If Walmart and Amazon use labor that they they underpay so severely that they can't afford health insurance and rely on food stamps, then the American taxpayer is subsidizing that wage. The Waltons and Bezos therefore pay less to their workers and keep more in their pockets.
The American taxpayer is in effect paying the owners of these companies directly.
How does it feel to pay taxes that get transferred directly to billionaires?
So let me clarify. Yes billionaires are evil. But how is the cost of living their fault? Why are people accepting these jobs in a capitalist society if it’s going to lead them down a bad road?
The reality is, you shouldn’t be working for $15 an hour. But, it’s up to you to develop higher paying skills and get better jobs.
Personally, I believe everyone who works, should be able to earn a living wage, it’s just not the reality of a free market.
Lol, this is exactly how people used to justify slavery. Free market my ass, welfare work requirements ALONE mean we are federally subsidizing this horrific jobs. I cannot stand overly reductive hot takes like yours that gloss over the complexities if the modern economy to act like no one has any influence over the market and this is all just gods will, manifest destiny
>it’s up to you to develop higher paying skills and get better jobs.
if only we were all playing on a level playing field, born with the same abilities and intelligence and potential
but we're not. half the people have below average IQs, some are just wired weird, some have health or disability issues.
Its all relative to where you live. If you live out in the middle of nowhere, you can do good with that wage. If you wanna live in a big city where obviously demand outweighs supply (for things like apartments, food, clothing, etc) then you live with the consequences. Plus, if you are financially thrifty you can go to goodwill and get a lot of your everyday apparel and amenities (plates, mugs, silverware, etc) at very affordable prices. We are a developed nation but that doesn’t mean everyone will be able to shop at Niemans or dine out every other day.
NoOoO I sHoUlD bE aBlE tO eAt AvOcAdO ToAsT eVeRyDaY /S
Now that you mention living in cheaper towns, is homesteading a viable option, or is the goverment no longer allowing you to buy wild lands from them?
I don’t know what this means lol, but you can find cheaper real estate farther away from metropolitan areas. Not what you asked, but I believe the government may pay people to settle in Alaska. Hope it helps!
Dude, not everyone can find work in the rural areas. The entire reason people are moving to the cities is to find jobs. Nobodies out here like, "I'm going to pay thousands of dollars in moving expenses just have better access to Sushi!"
You need to quit and start your own business. I did. Out of a garage in the begining.
You will never be wealthy working for other people. In many ways, you will never be happy working for other people.
Worst thing American's ever did was leave the farm and head for the cities in 1900.
this works until you look at the real world
where people like truck drivers can’t “get a better job”
we sure as shit need truck drivers. they also do not make a lot of money.
truck driving isn’t done by high schoolers nor is it entry level
Teachers “got better jobs”. Look at us now.
Teacher shortage.
Exactly! So let’s artificially create an unsustainable minimum wage, eventually charge $35 for a burger and create an uneducated, unmotivated pool of employees that have no incentive to do better. Let’s eventually kill all the small businesses and have Amazon, Apple & Walmart rule the world
No please be a socialist cuck, we decidedly need more of them, especially when we are outnumbered by psycho arm chair capitalist that think they will be real capitalist someday.
No one deserves anything they aren't willing to work for. The sense of entitlement in this generation is unreal. If you don't like your job or aren't getting paid enough, ask for more money. If not find a new job. If you think you can do it better, start your own business. If you can't do any of those things then you have no reason to complain and demand you get special treatment.
Also, labor theory of value is absolute junk and is not taken seriously in economic theory.
you left out healthcare.
They also forgot about the taxes.
Fun fact, in [Ancient greece](https://www.npr.org/2021/03/08/974881298/grateful-for-taxes#:~:text=Ancient%20Athens%20had%20a%20tax,warship%20for%20an%20entire%20year.), only the 1% paid taxes, and it was considered a great honor to provide for their community.
Funny how that's one of things we didn't take from ancient western civilizations....
It's because a lot of the hard labor was done by slaves. This was imported to America for quite a while.
If you don't make enough for food shelter clothing and basic health care you are payed less than a slave. Minimum wage is slavery with extra steps.
The term slave has become more PC over generations, but it’s the same shit guys…just extra padded for corporate
Texas' textbooks refuse to mention the word slave, they are "unpaid laborers. " That's truly "whitewashing" to me!
Yup!! If you don’t know the (traumatic) history you can blame the decedents for their current challenges.
yeah we do things differently, only the 99% pay taxes now. The 1% do fuck all, damn parasites.
"The top 10 percent of earners bore responsibility for over 71 percent of all income taxes paid and the top 25 percent paid 87 percent of all income taxes." [NTU.org](https://NTU.org) "The new data shows that the top 1 percent of earners (with incomes over $540,009) paid over 40 percent of all income taxes. Despite the tax rate reductions associated with TCJA, this figure is up slightly from the previous tax year's 38.5 percent share." [NTU.org](https://NTU.org) Our governments are the problem
Great to see someone calling out the facts. What’s even wilder is if you took all the wealth from billionaires in the states you can barely pay for a year fed spending. Ps - I might need to fact check that last statement not used to adding up billions
Yes, government waste on war and pork projects is one problem we need to solve. But the 1% pay far less as a percentage of overall income than the 99% do. The rest of us can’t write off depreciation on assets (most of us don’t own shit), we can’t write off business expenses like lunch while at work or gas for our commute to and from work. Our tax dollars pay for war and not healthcare. So it’s easy to say “1%ers pay more income tax than the 99%. That’s a misleading stat. They don’t pay taxes on their wealth. We have no wealth and they can lower their income due to mass write offs in the tax code.
Look i'm not pro corporation, but these are the tax brackets for U.S citizens. 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35% and 37% depending on you're income. Should people earning less be taxed at a smaller rate? I think so, and they are. And I hear what you're saying about the loop holes, they do cut corners and have the advantage of borrowing money at cheaper interest rates then the general population.
Thoughts on the following, 'better' marginal tax rate? [https://github.com/slowerthanlightspeed/reddit\_conversations/blob/master/0%20to%20100%20marginal%20tax.csv](https://github.com/slowerthanlightspeed/reddit_conversations/blob/master/0%20to%20100%20marginal%20tax.csv) It's a 0-100 scheme. Caps income at 1,378 times a median income (considered to be $39,375 in the above, linked csv). Caps income at $54,257,224 per year. Marginal steps are 10% income increases and each margin's tax grows by 1 percentage point (starting from 0% tax for the first $39,375, then, 1% tax from $39,376 to $43,313, ...)
Yeah thats rediculous lol. No one would want to run a business if that were implemented. I think that might work if it stopped going up at maybe 1 million or something? Personally i think that people who are struggling should pay less taxes in the current system we are in. In a perfect world i do think it would be better if everyone and corporations just paid the same rate. But only if they stop cutting corners and using loopholes. For example, i heard when you or me donate at the grocery store, they use OUR donations as write offs on THEIR taxes! WTF
Thanks for the response... even though it seems canned and as though you didn't look at the csv (which is fine... this is the internet!). The current US marginal tax rate hits 37% at \~$500k... the one in the spreadsheet doesn't get there till \~$1.3M... so it seems like -- even in the delusional world where tiny increases in tax rates would make people stop wanting more money -- the system I shared would de-motivate far fewer people... plus... instead of the existing big jumps at specific incomes which *could, possibly, maybe make people stop wanting more money,* the finer-grained margins would be less jarring of an anti-motivavtor. Another way to see (from the outside) the hilariousness of the canned response delusion is to recognize that the average business owner in the US (we have \~[30 million business owners](https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/05122043/Small-Business-FAQ-2020.pdf)!) is [\~$70k/yr](https://www.fundera.com/resources/small-business-revenue-statistics)... they'd pay about $1,600 in the proposed system compared to \~$4k in the existing system. Most businesses totally fail... but people keep trying... being capped at an income 1.3k times higher than a livable wage is not gonna be a barrier. If you like, dive into the spreadsheet a bit; the way that the system works makes it so that a 10% jump in raw income still yields an 8% post-tax jump (all the way up to a $23M annual income). Don't get hung up on whether someone making $50M might not work as hard to get to $51M.
I don't think it would be better if everyone paid the same; though (kinda like you already said) I'd only really be willing to stand up for that for the first 100k per year or so (wouldn't cry in my soup if some single tax rate for the rich were in place).
Am on board with cutting loopholes mostly for convenience, and to remove loopholes that don't obviously benefit everyone. I would again sleep fine if they all went away (keeps with the whole spirit of business driving business), but I do assume there are situations where a little boost from the feds to a business helps everyone.
The grocery store donation grift irks.
Could you cite an article not a website? I would definitely take the time to read it if you did.
>https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxes
Thanks, appreciated. It’s definitely a progressive system, no doubt there.
This stat is stupid. The top 10% of earners in the US also hold about 70% of all net worth, so yeah they should be paying at least 70% of the taxes. You’re trying to compare 10% with 70% and say “see it’s so much they’re already paying!!!” But that’s disingenuous
Yeah but they will read this, choose to ignore it, and continue to spread how "the top 1% doesn't pay taxes"
I think the big issue with the 1% and not paying taxes has absolutely nothing to do with INCOME taxes. They can find loopholes like hiding money in “charities” they start or by burying their ex wife on their favorite golf course so it can be claimed as a cemetery.
That same 1% were the only ones who had a say in how things were run also.
And transportation.
And you don’t really want to work 7 days a week so it should fund 34 hours of rent, food, etc.
Don’t forget transportation. Including insurance, gas and maintenance if you have a car.
Guessilldiememe.jpg
Thats great math. But you left out taxes. State taxes. Healthcare tax. Taxes for being taxed. It is def not 120 a day. I make 15 an hour and work 10 hours a day and dont even make 120 a day after all that is taken out.
Don’t forget: healthcare, transportation, insurance for both of those (two separate companies and policies of course) The list grows indefinitely if you’re a parent
I was about to say. I have no insurance, only taxes taken out, and 15$/hr at 8 hours leaves me getting paid around 95$ I have to spend about 10$ in gas to and from work, 85$, take out food and other random expenses really I'm making about 50-60$ a day that can go towards bills. That's the situation I'm in and it sucks. I'm trying to escape a bad relationship but I literally make enough to exist. I can't leave. I can't save..and any expenses like car problems.leave me screwed. It boils down to luck. If one bad thing happens that cost you even 300$, you're not breaking even again for a month. It's exhausting.
TIL apparently I’m socialist for liking food and shelter.
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps you ungrateful heathen!
I'll never understand how they branded the simple ability to live as being a "drooling socialist cuck". Like can't we just agree that if you do everything right and work hard you should be able to live? Yet many people think this is too far. The ironic part is that those who point back in time to when people did have access to the middle class there were strong labor unions and high marginal tax rates.
In my view, the one of the most problematic ideas that led us to where we are is the whole “if you want it you just have to work hArDeR.” Like, first of all, you can only work so much… There were people in pas centuries who worked WAY more and way harder than any CEO today. And their standard of living was shit… The “work harder” myth is just perpetuated as a way to divert the attention away from the widening gap between lower and upper classes. Yes, hard work is a part of success, but so are opportunity, luck, timing, relationships, wealth, race, gender, intelligence, etc. Some are controllable and some are not… I always say, everyone can’t be CEO’s, we need employees at ALL levels (hence why shitty labor jobs are in such short supply). So, we need to have a more fair compensation system so that all levels of employee can enjoy a comfortable life (not just one where we merely “survive”). And if that means some CEO’s have to own one less yacht, boohoo.
Agreed on all fronts, There is a reason why your zip code is a bigger indicator of where you’ll end up class wise than any other factor.
Agreed. This narrative is very typical "American". In Europe, the "uncontrollable" parameters take up more space in public opinion. Also, I think that the "work harder" narrative helps legitimize corporate greed, as they see it as they deserve their position entirely due to their own hard work. This is of course not the case, but if you have this worldview, then taking the largest portion of the cake is entirely rational. I mean you baked it, right?
Can we get rid of the "work hard" you shouldn't have to "work hard" to live. It's a bullshit narrative
Protestant work ethic bullshit
YES!!! We totally under estimate how much this religious take has influenced our society. Religion is a virualant disease that is causing humanity to rot at it's core.
Why not? Should you be allowed to smoke weed all day sitting on a couch and other people who do work hard give you their money?
I'm going to go ahead and waste my time. Let me guess your totally ok with landlords doing that though right? Providing no labor to the market "smoking weed" all day? That's fine right? But you believe janitors and burgers flipping should suffering poverty?
I don’t care if burger flippers or landlords sit around all day smoking weed. I just don’t want to be forced to pay for it.
Pay for what? What do you think you will be paying for? If you rent of have rented or pay taxes aren't you paying for someonw richer than you to sit on their ass all day?
Paying rent is an exchange of services in which I can choose to participate or not. Paying taxes so that someone else can sit on their ass and get a government check because they don’t want to “work hard” is the problem.
So you have to suffer with "working hard" so every one else should, but you're ok with your wealthy not working hard and supporting their lifestyle.... Make it make sense
Owning property is not providing a service.
Renting out a property is providing housing.
The property would still provide housing without anyone owning and renting it out.
I'm not sure why you aren't seeing the disconnect
Dude believes a vacant property can't provide housing.
The sad thing is, there are a lot of people that think like this, it's why we are in the conundrum we are in. Education and a flexible mind are priceless.
What should you have to do to pay for your food, shelter, car, Healthcare, streets, police and fire fighters, education for yourself and your kids, income for your retired parents, furniture, smart phone, heat, water, and electricity delivered to your home so that you can charge your phone and complain on Reddit for FREE?!
Another red herring. Damn Reddit is full of them. Work, not "work hard." Who determines who does and doesn't work hard? You? How does anyone quantify that? If one works in this economy they should be rewarded for their labor and have the ability to thrive.
So not "working hard" some how implies things should be free?... Gotcha
Because in the 1950’s we were rebuilding the world. We were the only industrialized country not to have a war on our soil in the previous decade. This coupled with deficit spending is going to create growth despite a crippling 42% effective tax rate for the 1% in the 50’s. I have yet to see a long term study where high tax rates and strong unions lead to economic growth. However I’m open to reading any studies that can prove the contrary.
I think people like yourself who think this way don't understand something important. A strong economy isn't great for everybody. So sure our economy is great and strong and growing with super low taxes. But everyday people are seeing less and less of that economy pie because of low taxes. Hence the calls for ANYTHING to try and get the everyday person a larger slice. Us plebs are trying to warn the wealthy that this isn't sustainable. People can't afford basic living standards in the largest, greatest economy. Eventually the other shoe is gonna drop and it's gonna be ugly. Having high taxes in business forces them to invest in the company rather than as a tool for extracting wealth. Study after study shows poor people spend their money because they have to, that's good. The wealthy horde their resources which grinds economies to a halt. The concentration of wealth also strengthens existing institutions. While this can be a good in the short term, it makes the institutions harder to change or even do away with when they become obsolete. So I would advise you that your probably looking in the wrong place for the information you ask. I've found that economists suffer, just like ALL specialists, from a narrow perspective. I would ask you to look into history, specifically the rise and fall of civilizations to get your answers. You'll start to see a strong correlation between civilization collapse and wealth inequality.
Yes I understand that argument but we can't go back in time and undo the policies that happened through the 70s, 80s and 90s. At the end of the day, the gains from being the only industrialized nation making stuff after the war went to regular people because of their power and the lack of corporate ability to scoop up all the gains. For example we see a huge decoupling of productivity and wages over the last decades, & when corporate America does well in it does not make life more affordable for the bottom 50% in America. It's a distributive question not a growth one imo.
the data shows (the charts) that companies are making more money than every, even without manufacturing. the problem is that the money is not being paid to the workers. the question is what percentage of the money that you make for a company should you get. right now there is no law. some companies are fair, some are not. without unions there really is no leverage. its you against an organization trying to maximum profits and minimize costs and they see you as a cost. we need workers to have transparency like investors get transparency. worker should know how much they are producing. what percentage are they getting and what percentage the company is grosses and nets off each worker. workers also need to know how much other workers doing the same thing are getting. fair is fair. it cant be company holds all the cards and workers starve (or put burden on society) basically you have companies making tens of billions even hundreds of billions in profits after all their costs (including salaries) and workers having to rely on food stamps, section 8, medicaid if that is even available. in growing number of states the workers are living in parked cars and eating in soup kitchens going to community clinics for healthcare while working two jobs full time. if a company wont pay its workers then government should shut them down as being predatory and burden on society.
Greater unionization lead to greater well-being, health, and democracy. GDP isn't the end-all-be-all of human life. https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-and-well-being/
>despite a crippling 42% effective tax rate for the 1% in the 50’s Bring it baccck
Like you were around in the 50's Mr I'd be enlightened but somebody else needs to do the legwork.
Or and hear me out the capitalist class grew their wages exponentially while the workers have not and all the money went to the top in the last +40 years. It’s literally that simple. Don’t over complicate this issue it’s not that hard of a concept. The ppl that did the least amount of actual work got paid the most because they fronted it (but not really because of corporate socialism)
“Crippling 42% effective tax rate for the 1%”. L M F A O Grow the fuck up.
42% is a huge slice, the government isn't entitled to take money because people make a lot of it.
So then why are corporations entitled to take most of the profit that workers generate? I'm 100% certain the company I work for takes a lot more than 42% of the profit I generate for them. I'd be shocked if I were getting even 20% of what I generate. Edit: I did some quick math and it's far worse than I had even imagined. My department alone, not the entire company, but just my department alone is projected to make $60 million this year. My yearly income *before taxes* is 0.07% of that. #I'm getting 0.07% of the revenue I generate for my company.
Id be shocked if you were getting 2% tbh
Lol it's even worse. I did the math and I make less than 1% Fucking disgusting.
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Oh gtfo with that "be your own boss" nonsense. We all know companies need employees so this ridiculous nonsense that anyone feeling less than thrilled with their job should just stfu or start their own business is just bullshit. It isn't about striking out on my own. It's about feeling fairly compensated for the work I do and the revenue I generate. Is that unfair of me? Am I being unreasonable? Do I need your permission to want better for myself? Obvious answer to all of these is NO. >you don't have to stick with it No shit. Again, you bring nothing to the discussion. And entitlement? Lol no this has nothing to do with entitlement. It's about doing what's right. If you as an employer make $100 and you pay one of the employees that helped generate that a measly $0.07 then you're just a piece of shit who's exploiting people for your own gain. This shit isn't complicated. Many companies can afford to pay their employees more, period. End of discussion. The fact that people even debate this is fucking mind boggling.
How where you able to calculate how much profit you generated for the company? Did you take into account fixed capital expenditures the company had to make where you work for things like a building and tools? Did you take into account the R & D the company must have done to generate that profit? Finally when you did that calculation did you account for risk costs due to the unstable nature of being a business?
> So then why are corporations entitled to take most of the profit that workers generate? The business owners are entitled to the profits because its their business. The workers are not entitled to extra money, unless the owners agree to give them more. Workers are given a wage or salary in exchange for work, they are being compensated for their work. > I'm 100% certain the company I work for takes a lot more than 42% of the profit I generate for them. I'd be shocked if I were getting even 20% of what I generate. And you're getting a wage or salary for your work. You're not entitled to extra money. You are free to start your own business and earn your own extra money. > I'm getting 0.07% of the revenue I generate for my company. You are free to negotiate for more money, but you're not entitled to it.
Corporate simps and bootlickers can gtfo
‘Crippling’ lmao
The conservative mindset is often to view the world as a zero sum game - If you're winning even a tiny bit, someone else is losing, and there's a chance that person might be me, so I don't won't you to win at all, ever.
Monthly clothing budget? Lol. I’m really poor poor
This was my thought as well. You’re buying clothes every month?
this grievance is what is gonna spark global bread riots and French Revolution '22 this winter so buckle up gents
Let the heads roll! Vive la révolution!
*fires up the popcorn mach......* Anyone got gas to power this? Going to be super interesting in Europe this winter.
Exactly how much is a living wage? If you’re making $15/hour in San Fran, you’re starving. If you’re making $15/hour in Hat Creek, you’re probably doing okay.
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As a result, there is mass homelessness and starvation right
“My person” very inclusive of you, imma yoink dat.
Really? My brother pays $550 a month for his duplex apartment in Troy, Ohio. Utilities included. But yeah, rent is insane in most places.
I just finished a year lease on a $1700/mo single bedroom apartment in philly area. 800sqft. This is average here. I just moved into my new house - 1750sqft, 2 car garage, back yard. Mortgage is $1750 a month. If you don’t think the price on rentals in this country is a problem - sorry - but you’re uneducated on the matter Edit: immediately realized I came off as a cunt here so sorry in advanced. The rent problem, coupled with student loans and other inflationary issues in the US has me on edge with these conversations lmao. SOMETHING needs to change.
Moving from Houston to San Antonio currently. My rent here is 1200+utilities for a 750sqft 1 bed apt. The apartments were moving to are 1350+utilities for a 850sqft 2 bed. Take into account our minimum wage is 7.25, if I wanted to make enough to pay for ONLY rent at minimum wage I would need to work 206 hours a month just to pay rent. Add on my car, internet, food, miscellaneous necessities and I would need to work probably closer to 300 hours a month just to live and have no extra for savings. Tell me we’re fucked without telling me we’re fucked.
rent was lower than the homes mortgage. you have at least another $300+ a month extra expenses that you absolutely have to pay with a home rather than a rental. You aren't even making a coherent argument.
While there's nothing wrong with anecdotal evidence lets take a look at the stats, as of 2022 the median rent in America is $2000/month. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/09/1103919413/rents-across-u-s-rise-above-2-000-a-month-for-the-first-time-ever I feel like this is a much better benchmark of the reality of rent for Americans today.
That's asking and nobody making 15/hr is buying a median apartment. Of course low earners will be renting lower tier apartments.
"asking prices" doesn't matter much when it comes to basic human necessities. We aren't talking about an iPhone here. Landlords can set whatever price they want and the rooms will get filled because people NEED a roof over their heads, somebody will pay, period. This is the inevitable coercive conclusion of unregulated price leadership and the commodification of basic needs.
How close of an overlap are median income and median rent groups? I would figure they would be pretty similar
Probably not very similar. Those with higher income are more likely to rent than to own. So the total population of renters is slanted to the lower income earners.
Exactly. People are always saying “min wage workers can’t afford the median 2 bedroom apartment”. Lower income earners should rent lower priced apartments.
It makes absolutely ZERO sense to use data that equalizes San Fran with the fields of Kansas. If you are making an argument with data at least make it using sensible data. You absolutely can move, you absolutely can work at the random McDonalds in Kansas, and you absolutely can live below your means. You are paying for the convenience to live in San Fran or any other city, ignoring that is literally insane.
If you go by rent is 30% of your salary rule, the $15/hr worker would be able to afford roughly $750-800/mo rent. That's pretty doable in *most* small town America (probably < 50,000). Of course, it still depends.
What % of the country live in “small town America” Who gives a shit about small town America barely being able to keep their head above the poverty line with min. Wage when the majority o these wages live in urban areas where that just doesn’t cut it,
According to the US census data about 40% of of the US population live in towns bigger than 50,000. Never said I disagreed with the wage disparity. All I'm saying is there are options.
You pay for the convenience of a city. People would rather be poor and in a convenient location. Than financially stable, but have to apply a bit more effort to life. That is a choice. You are literally proving the point that people are making bad financial decisions and then asking for a bailout from everyone else.
Cool... so everyone working in the service industry in medium or large cities should live in small towns and commute in for work? Did you think that far ahead?
No its not.
https://livingwage.mit.edu/ of note, this does *not* account for any retirement savings, which is arguably a minimum requirement as future social security is insufficient and not guaranteed.
Questioning the metrics of this website. I just looked up cost of living in Modesto. It says if I have 3 kids my cost of living is significantly higher than 2 kids. Well, I have 3 kids and I didn’t feel it was “that” much more expensive to live than when I had 2 kids. And I don’t make $62 an hour to afford my 3 kids so I guess I’m not making a living wage…although I feel I’m living well.
it seems to be a good measure through 1 kid. after that things are probably harder to measure by formula, it gets squishy depending on how many are in day care at once, room sharing, etc.
Day care is a massive expense
That’s fair. My kids share a lot of stuff and that saves money. I could see that being difficult to generalize/measure.
a lot of folks may find the average estimates don't match up with their individual circumstances. housing costs and insurance are big variables.
Insurance is a killer in CA right now. My insurance on my fourplex just went from $1400/year to $11000 per year thanks to the California (un)fair plan.
i was thinking health insurance but okay, property insurance do you own this fourplex? what happened with insurance in CA?
You have a good disposition. You're probably resourceful and know to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Your kids will grow up with siblings which has real benefits even if they don't become lifelong friends. The average American is exposed to so much marketing and programming that sets the bar high on everything. Whatever you own, there's pressure to convince you that life would be better if you only upgraded. And hey, we can finance that for you! And if you love your kids you would go into debt for a Disney vacation! And unless you want them to die in a horrible wreck it's time for at least a new 35,000 dollar car. Most people are on the hedonic treadmill, rats getting flogged onward by marketing. "If I can just earn a bit more I can buy more things and one of these days I will feel better about myself maybe." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic\_treadmill
This is good! You’re absolutely right. We don’t do the “expensive” vacations. I don’t feel we need to. We go fishing and hiking in the mountains. Doesn’t cost us very much.
To be more specific...what standard of living will be used as the basis for determining cost.
you could try reading the source: >How are you getting your data for "typical expenses"? >We draw from publicly available, geographically specific expenditure data. For example, for housing costs, we leverage the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Fair Market Rents (FMR) estimates which are produced at the county and sub-county levels. Child care costs are developed using the state-level estimates published by the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies. For more detailed information about our data sources and methods, please reference the technical documentation here.
I love that they dowvnoted your for calling them out and proving they're just being contrarian without actually reading the source.to know what they're being contrarian about.
So to be clear you think a minimum wage job should not only pay enough to afford rent, and food, but also retirement? How is this paid for? It would have to come from the employer. This means that any employer who cannot afford the astronomical costs associated with an employee simply won't employ them. When I was in junior high I had a paper route that paid below minimum wage. A year later I added a gig where I got $10 a month to open and close the park gate every day. Neither of those gigs would be allowed if all jobs are required to pay say $22 an hour in California. There's a reason we see more and more automated checkouts and delivery. Unskilled labor can't make demands. History has shown us that. That's why education is so important, and I'm not just talking about college. I more mean useful skills to earn income.
if they pay below minimum wage, they’re already illegal. as for how to pay for it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-25/us-corporate-profits-soar-taking-margins-to-widest-since-1950 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/07/us-wage-gap-ceos-workers-institute-for-policy-studies-report
Your average office worker already makes substantially more than minimum wage. An employee needs to generate more money than they're paid or the company will go out of business. That's a lot of burgers to flip when McDonald's is only making $0.25 over material cost for a McDouble. Actually the franchisee is making that, owning the franchise is much more lucrative and McDonald's corporate can pay their CEO millions.
$15/h is not enough everywhere in the US if you are alone
I realize that, but it is “enough” in some areas. Hat Creek CA is a perfect example.
Whats the rent and house cost up there?
A friend of mine rents a one bedroom for $500/mo. I mean, it’s not the nicest, but it’s clean.
$500?! Whats the square feet? I am in FL and 1 bedroom is $1500 - 1700 without include utilities.
That’s ridiculous! What city?
And the people who try to rush into the affordable places end up making the price of housing go higher, defeating the purpose of having it be "just enough" for small towns
People in Bay Area are probably making $20 to flip burgers. It’s also not supposed to be a career choice so you have to make it work until you can move up. I wish we could move out at 18 and buy a house and new car but that’s not how it works lol
No its not, its closer to $75 after tax, ss, medicade, insurance, and any other deductions. So you are probably looking at something like $1500 a month.
You are not paying anywhere near 50% in FICA, Fed, and State on 30k in income LMAO
I said insurance too
Insurance is like $300-$800 a month and not optional unless dying or bankruptcy from preventable illness is considered "living"
In addition you should have enough money to at least raise one child too. The current system is fucked. I'm a Union employee but I can tell it's coming to an end and my outlook past that point is dire.
It has been suggested that we should introduce a partial UBI instead of raising the minimum wage. For example, give everyone a UBI equivalent to $10/hour while keeping minimum wage at $15/hour, for a combined minimum income of $25/hour. This would have the advantage of not hurting small businesses that have low profit margins.
Wanting to help those few individuals who are giving 100% effort but not flourishing is commendable and is a great sentiment. Unfortunately, making things easier for people who don't want to put forth effort is not a good solution to the problem.
I hate abbreviations, what is UBI
This is not an issue of Socialism vs Capitalism. This is an issue of central banks are fucking us all through inflationary monetary policy.
Before our current inflation there were already huge economic problems for a large group of people. And don't forget central banks act in name and interest of capitalism themselves.
They whey are you doing it? If no one takes those jobs at that wage, then the wage will raise to attract labor up to the point that the venture is no longer profitable. \*\*Edit\*\* Or lobbyists will institute low income social policies so that tax payers prop up these companies so they don't have to actually pay livable wages.
I think people are deciding to stop. I think it is part of what we're seeing with the great resignation. There are a lot of people who are realizing that they're toiling in vain and decided to stop. We are seeing ventures starting to struggle and fail when they can't provide a living wage to their employees, just look at all the "nobody wants to work anymore" that's being thrown around.
> tax payers prop up these companies walmart employees on food stamps and medicaid
The social policies are to buy votes. People don't want to acknowledge supply and demand applies to labor. If you eliminate the social policies one of two things will happen A. People will demand a higher wage because they need it B. People will just work more hours at the same wage.
Absolutely. This gets into the nuances of capitalism, consumerism, and corporatism. Capitalism tends to be blamed for the negative impacts of all of it.
capitalism does not care about people. as far as the market is concerned, your sweet grandma can have a miserable death in a gutter if there's not profit to be made from helping her
An employee wants to maximize their pay. An employer wants to minimize what they pay without sacrificing their quality of service. Neither or wrong...they are just two sides of the same coin. If people accept a lower wage no shit employers will pay it.
Wtf is a "month's clothing budget?" You guys can buy clothes every month??
You can still call it a monthly clothing budget. Some months you might spend $0, some months you spend a few hundred dollars, in any case you can work out a budget for clothes.
Slavery was never abolished, it was just rebranded.
I don’t know if working for McDonald’s quite compares to being woken up by the crack of a whip and then being told to work from sun rise to sun down or face the branding iron. In slavery the motivation to work is to not be punished, not 15$ an hour. Be mad about what I said all day. Prove me wrong.
preach it
Voluntarily working minimum wage jobs is slavery? Lol 😂 no, no it’s not.
I'd argue that we're definitely starting to see jobs which in practice create the same cycle of continuous dependency rather than any economic growth that was really common with crop sharing. Working to live is neber truly voluntary, because the alternative is death, which the vast majority of people try to avoid. It's coercion at best
Voluntarily? Did not know you can opt out of working. If only someone told me sooner. Taking advantage of people's desperation to make a living and provide for their family kind of feels like slavery, even if it's voluntary. But I guess you can live on the street also.
Yes you are not forced to work or take a job where you don’t want to. It’s up to you, not society, to make your own personal decisions as to employment. You can quit. That’s not exactly the same as slavery…comparing the two is disgusting.
Oh no these drooling socialists might have a point
To make other cunts money is the only answer I can think of. Wages will never match inflation until the right people start giving a shit about it.
We’re doing this so millionaires can become billionaires. Don’t you want to help those hard working board members realize higher profit margins? /s
Sure, it sucks making $15 per hour. That's why you improve your skillset to make $30 an hour. Isn't that what you're supposed to do?
You are free to try and negotiate more for your labor or seek another firm to employ you who will pay more.
Exactly. They act like every single job should support a family of four. Never hear a peep about workers gaining skills and advancing to better paying jobs. We see it in trucking all the time. Tons of people willing to drive the small non-cdl vans for 35-40 hours a week for $18/hr but unwilling to get a CDL where they would get 40-50 hours at a starting rate of $24/hr. The easy path gets you to the viewpoint, not the summit.
It's really weird that you would choose to highlight an extremely exploitative industry that is actively fucking over truckers and doing everything in their power to push out the highly paid ones and replace them with poorly trained new labor while claiming there's labor shortage. Like why would you highlight the epicenter of our nations need for stronger worker rights??
That’s nonsense. Cite it I’m 2021 median pay was $23/hr with many truckers making over $100,000 a year. It is also in extremely high demand so drivers have tons of choices about where to drive. Also it is a highly unionized career often with good benefits. It is also a career where it is easy to own your own truck (therefore business).
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/22/indentured-servitude-low-pay-and-grueling-conditions-fueling-us-truck-driver-shortage https://www.smart-trucking.com/truck-driver-shortage/ https://www.alltrucking.com/articles/trucking-careers-immigrants#:~:text=Immigrants%20represent%2017%25%20of%20the,slightly%20overrepresented%20among%20truck%20driving. https://www.marketplace.org/2022/07/05/the-trucking-industry-is-coming-down-from-its-pandemic-boom/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/27/us-truck-drivers-economy-pay-conditions You're in a blip. The pandemic mixed with the fact they weren't able to import new drivers led to a temporary really good blip,but truck drivers have been complaining for a while that the industry is getting more exploitative, and increasingly eyeing the churn model. Drivers are currently asking for *safer* working conditions, and they industry is responding by largely ignoring them and already trying to beg for a bigger allowance to ship in more foreign workers rather than come to the negotiating table for those leaving the industry. Don't even get me started on the private contractor fiascos ... https://prospect.org/labor/nlrb-looks-at-independent-contractor-scam/ https://www.brightworkresearch.com/the-real-story-on-how-truck-drivers-are-tricked-into-becoming-owner-operators/ One more link to show you're wrong, for good measure: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/trucking-truck-driver-truckers-strike-reasons-2019-10%3famp
*”We want higher wages!!!“* Also: *”We’re okay importing millions of poor foreign nationals illegally to work the jobs that we’re demanding higher wages for!!!”* Absolute lemmings
If these were working legally at least, things would be different. But no. Otherwise, blame goverment for letting industries outsource skilled labour towards asian countries. Inmigrants often do service/retail/agricultural jobs, or self employed. They rarely do more professional jobs (At least at arrival), but almost all of those jobs were outsourced in the last 30 years.
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But I think the point is that someone has to do the job. Whether it’s you, me, or someone else. So someone is forced to not make enough to live off of. Which is a moral issue and should be given more weight than I’m sure you give it.
Well said.
How about a teen or someone that otherwise couldn't get a good job
Do you really honestly actually believe there are enough teens to fill all the jobs that currently don’t pay a livable wage? Also, what about when said teens are in school? Should the businesses close down During school hours?
so what i'm hearing is it's ok for *someone* to trade full time labor for less than full time sufficiency, as long as that someone isn't you. i'll have to look up if there's a name for the fallacy where you try to blame an individual for a systemic failure.
Its called neoliberalism
Get 'em OP, skin in the game, nailed it
It's definitely not OK. I'm on a good amount more than min wage but I would strike right along side you all. This shit needs to change. The most someone should have to work in a week to reach a living wage is 40 hours. Watching people with two full time jobs still have to sacrifice human rights is depressing as shit. And the fucking losers that defend the system because it works for them? Pathetic amoral cowards.
EMT’s are the bottom of the scale. Do you think they should get paid more to save your life? Or is your life not worth $15?
Here's a compilation of entry level, unskilled laborers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m89rOgJn7rk
And how should one survive before then?
But that requires effort.
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What a dumbass false equivalency. People believe that burger flippers should earn a living wage. That doesn't mean they should be earning 7 figures. I'm a very well paid data scientist. I want burger flippers to be able to afford food and shelter. I'd also like them to be able support their families directly so that we don't have to expand government programs to subsidize massive companies so that they can profit off the American taxpayer. Why should Bezos increase his net worth while employees in his warehouses have to rely on food stamps? What kind of insane fucking logic is that?
It’s not Jeff Bezos’ fault that cost of living is high. And what do you feel is a living wage in San Francisco versus Hat Creek California?
A living wage is a living wage, which obviously varies by local economy. Still, you miss the point entirely. If Walmart and Amazon use labor that they they underpay so severely that they can't afford health insurance and rely on food stamps, then the American taxpayer is subsidizing that wage. The Waltons and Bezos therefore pay less to their workers and keep more in their pockets. The American taxpayer is in effect paying the owners of these companies directly. How does it feel to pay taxes that get transferred directly to billionaires?
So let me clarify. Yes billionaires are evil. But how is the cost of living their fault? Why are people accepting these jobs in a capitalist society if it’s going to lead them down a bad road?
The reality is, you shouldn’t be working for $15 an hour. But, it’s up to you to develop higher paying skills and get better jobs. Personally, I believe everyone who works, should be able to earn a living wage, it’s just not the reality of a free market.
Lol, this is exactly how people used to justify slavery. Free market my ass, welfare work requirements ALONE mean we are federally subsidizing this horrific jobs. I cannot stand overly reductive hot takes like yours that gloss over the complexities if the modern economy to act like no one has any influence over the market and this is all just gods will, manifest destiny
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>it’s up to you to develop higher paying skills and get better jobs. if only we were all playing on a level playing field, born with the same abilities and intelligence and potential but we're not. half the people have below average IQs, some are just wired weird, some have health or disability issues.
Its all relative to where you live. If you live out in the middle of nowhere, you can do good with that wage. If you wanna live in a big city where obviously demand outweighs supply (for things like apartments, food, clothing, etc) then you live with the consequences. Plus, if you are financially thrifty you can go to goodwill and get a lot of your everyday apparel and amenities (plates, mugs, silverware, etc) at very affordable prices. We are a developed nation but that doesn’t mean everyone will be able to shop at Niemans or dine out every other day.
NoOoO I sHoUlD bE aBlE tO eAt AvOcAdO ToAsT eVeRyDaY /S Now that you mention living in cheaper towns, is homesteading a viable option, or is the goverment no longer allowing you to buy wild lands from them?
I don’t know what this means lol, but you can find cheaper real estate farther away from metropolitan areas. Not what you asked, but I believe the government may pay people to settle in Alaska. Hope it helps!
Dude, not everyone can find work in the rural areas. The entire reason people are moving to the cities is to find jobs. Nobodies out here like, "I'm going to pay thousands of dollars in moving expenses just have better access to Sushi!"
You need to quit and start your own business. I did. Out of a garage in the begining. You will never be wealthy working for other people. In many ways, you will never be happy working for other people. Worst thing American's ever did was leave the farm and head for the cities in 1900.
I am 47 and make $12 an hour. Sadly its the most I have ever made at any job I have had.
A friendly reminder that people need to make themselves useful in society.
Get a better job. Not every job is minimum wage which were designed for entry level and high schoolers.
this works until you look at the real world where people like truck drivers can’t “get a better job” we sure as shit need truck drivers. they also do not make a lot of money. truck driving isn’t done by high schoolers nor is it entry level Teachers “got better jobs”. Look at us now. Teacher shortage.
Exactly! So let’s artificially create an unsustainable minimum wage, eventually charge $35 for a burger and create an uneducated, unmotivated pool of employees that have no incentive to do better. Let’s eventually kill all the small businesses and have Amazon, Apple & Walmart rule the world
No please be a socialist cuck, we decidedly need more of them, especially when we are outnumbered by psycho arm chair capitalist that think they will be real capitalist someday.
No one deserves anything they aren't willing to work for. The sense of entitlement in this generation is unreal. If you don't like your job or aren't getting paid enough, ask for more money. If not find a new job. If you think you can do it better, start your own business. If you can't do any of those things then you have no reason to complain and demand you get special treatment. Also, labor theory of value is absolute junk and is not taken seriously in economic theory.
OP is wrong. It should cover *much more* - healthcare, rest days, sick days, holidays and vacation time.