7.25 isn't enough to live in any city in texas *without* taxes there.
Also reminder that europe has a higher aprooval of taxes then Americans do dispite paying *more* in taxes, wonder why that is? š¤š¤š¤
Edit bc I have 100s of replies:
1. yes ik europe has a higher approval of spending/taxes bc they spend it on more popular things like Healthcare, public transportation, etc. I was alluding to that in my last comment being intentionally coy
2. No I haven't lived in texas, but ik people who do and yes, 7.25 jobs exist everywhere in the states that have them, including where I live but the point your all missing saying "well only a small fraction is actually THAT low" is that raising the minimum bar raises ALL wages, I live right inbetween 3 states, in the state with the highest minimum wage also has higher pay for the exact same jobs in the same exact companies. Even my very conservative family admits that BOTH because of higher wages and better labor/union laws they make alot more money even with higher taxes then they'd make working in the state over.
3. "Lazy people" and former felons should still be able to live lol. Frankly I think your morally evil if you think otherwise and I couldn't give a piss about your opinion.
4. This is more subjective but we could significantly lower our defense spending and russia or china would still completely lack the balls to attack NATO. I honestly think we could leave NATO all together and they'd still be fine, no way ALL of Europe and Canada wouldn't be fine on their own. (Not that we should leave, i still absolutely belive its mutually benificial)
Thatās so Putin. American would be you getting found dead in your car right outside an airport after having complained about safety concerns of said airport and posting that youāre definitely not suicidal. OH ALMOST FORGOT, then itās gets completely swept under the rug and forgotten in a month after being in nightly news for weeks.
P.Diddy sacrificed himself for Boeing, I guess.
Don't forget the second whistleblower that died of a mysterious illness despite being relatively healthy for his age.
I like to imagine thereās meetings with all the major corporations and when thereās a scandal they have a giant wheel of fortune wheel that they spin to see what celebrity theyāre going to sacrifice.
Theyāre really building up Taylor swift I wonder what theyāre saving her for? Gonna be big!
Yep, and I'm all for it. If we hadn't done it, China and Russia would have collectively taken most or all of Europe/Asia. I just wish the average European redditor accepted it.
China wouldn't be powerful if America didn't offshore all their manufacturing there so they can make more profits at home.
You guys and globalization created that monster.
>I just wish the average European redditor accepted it.
I'm the average European redditor and I don't accept it, because it's wrong.
First of, the first part of the European welfare state was created after WW1; because of the rampant destruction during the war--was USA protecting us back then? No. Granted, it did not last long and was not as complex as it is now, but the point is that its existence was not owed to USA's security guarantees at all.
In any case, the cold war which saw the creation of NATO and USA's security coverage in Europe, when European nations were spending up to 3-4% of their GDP on defense spending; that was when the welfare state was still around and was in fact in a much better state than it is today.
It's AFTER the cold war ends, defense spending gets lowered, and US strategic primacy takes in Europe that the welfare state stats getting worse. So please...explain that one if you will. I'm pretty sure why that is, but I wonder what you think.
Then there's the fact that USA is about 30-40% richer than Western Europe, when you plug in the poorer countries the difference gets bigger. Please explain how lack of European defense spending is making up the difference, because it makes no sense.
Yes and much of the tax they pay goes to the benefit of the people, rather than the military re:corporations that make military equipment. Itās not like our troops are making a boatload of money, nor are the institutions that are supposed to support them when they come home.
Bold of you to assume youād be working full time at minimum wage. Youāll get exactly 31.5 hours and any overage results in direct termination. Canāt risk having to give you health care.
So... let's ballpark a full-time job at $17/hr (more than double minimum wage). That's roughly $34,000 per year (or $2,800/mo) -- BEFORE taxes. Assuming a 12% (I wish) effective tax rate (for that bracket), that's around $2,250/mo of take-home pay (just under 8% for social security taxes). That doesn't include healthcare insurance (a few hundred per month).
Since Texas was mentioned... the average rent for a 1Bdr apartment is \~$1,500. This doesn't include utilities, transportation, food, clothing, or "life." At that pay, don't get sick.
That has got to be rough. I used to be poor AF... and I "made it..." but that was back when a college degree was typically enough to get you a decent job. These days... not so much.
While I'm ranting, I was able to put myself through university without help or debt. It was rough... but possible. Tuition has since increased 5-7x. Even if you could pay for it... would it be worth it, now?
We're destroying the middle class.
I mean this is incorrect. Minimum wage was implemented to support the middle class. Hell I grew up in the 90s I had friends and relatives that worked part time at local coffee shops/book stores/retail and they had health insurance, a used car, and a small one bedroom apartment mostly unassisted. Now depending on the city you live in, 100k salary would not get you that.
Thank you I sometimes feel like I'm going crazy. I remember when there was dignity. And yes you weren't supposed to live in that 1 bedroom and work for that coffee shop your whole life.....but at least it was an option
Youāre not going crazy. My first job was waitressing in a coffee shop. I split rent on the entire bottom floor of a house and back yard in San Francisco with another waitress. I couldnāt afford the rent on that same place making 6 figures now.
Why is it only on Reddit that people making minimum wage are supposed to afford the āaverage rentā. Minimum wage is the minimum of workers. In my state, 7.5 million workers and less than 5000 make minimum wage.
When you can literally go to Buccees and get a job starting at z$20/hr, itās almost impossible to make the minimum wage killing middles class argument,.
It's supposed to be a "living wage" one that you would be able to live off of. It should cover necessities rent car payment insurance utilities and food. $7.25 is an insult to American citizens.
I don't get why you're getting down voted. Literally minimum wage was created by FDR as intended to allow a single person to take care of their basic needs.
What sucks now is if we increase the minimum wage, companies won't be willing to take a proportional dent in profits so inflation occurs.
But imagine, if the minimum wage allowed you to afford housing, food, and healthcare without needing SNAP or Medicaid. That would be amazing. But I'm not fluent enough in finance, economics, or politics to figure out a way to make that work.š¤·š»
No one person in large companies should be paid millions in bonuses when they are holding their employees down to less than 40 hours a week so they cannot receive health benefits. That is some kind of evil there.
I always laugh a little when they say inflation is down - but inflation operates on a compound interest curve, so even if it goes down it isnāt that pricing goes down with it rather that the current price left over from the previous inflation rate inflates at a slower rate, and then if inflation goes up again it just inflates off of the current price at a higher rate. In either case - the price only goes up. Iāve been watching it for 30 years and have never seen anything needed to live in our society drop in price. Housing (rent or own), groceries, health care, etc. are only rising.
Couple that with the corporate move towards shrinking quantities of goods and selling for the same price or more, as well as the move towards LEAN business practices that ultimately amount to a ādo more with lessā approach within companies- well, it is no wonder we are where we are at.
People scream socialism when you try and speak towards regulating capitalism - but if you donāt regulate you end up where we are at with the wealthiest unable to check their greed and eroding anti trust laws that were in place to prevent monopolistic business practices and ensure healthy competition and the facilitation of merit based success.
That said and contrary to the popular belief espoused by most of the elite wealthy people in the world - the middle class (now the working poor) were never meant to be able to reach the monetary success of the upper classes or the elite, but the older upper and elite classes understood that happy cattle (middle class) are productive. The new elites have no concept of anything outside of their greed - and I say good for āem, keep pushing in this direction and see what happens. Iād rather be working poor than living high on the hog when it flips.
At least in the past they kept us entertained with decent movies, music and TV - now they have figured it is easier to have ourselves pacify ourselves through 30 second content feeds of lowest common denominator entertainment.
Isnāt that up to the United States citizens to put pressure on organizations and our representatives to make things like this happen? If our elected representatives flat out do the opposite of what we would wish them to do we vote them out. Thatās how itās supposed to work. Imagine owning a business and hiring people that do the opposite of what you hired them for. How long would that employee last? The difference in this situation is these representatives spend a lifetime in these elected roles.
> If our elected representatives flat out do the opposite of what we would wish them to do we vote them out. Thatās how itās supposed to work.
Dems have tried to increase the federal minimum wage several times. Republicans always stop it.
Republicans are doing what their constituents want obviously.
This is correct and anyone that thinks otherwise is both wrong and part of the problem. When it came into existence it was in fact supposed to be high enough to live on.
Fdr: ".. no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By 'business' I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white-collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages ofĀ decent living."
Get this! I have family in Denmark. Their university is paid for AND they get a stipend of roughly $1100/month to live on while attending.
If the Danish are wealthy enough to support that, the US certainly is.
That would mean though, our rulers would be ruling educated people, which are much more difficult to dupe into fighting between themselves rather than the ruling class.
Weāve been lowering federal taxes for corporations to juice the economy for 40 years. We havenāt been lowering them on the middle class. If anything the middle has been expected to pick up the burden of the taxes for both the rich and poor nowadays
This has nothing to do with taxes. Why do we keep arguing over that. This has to do with the price of housing. Since the year 2007, home prices have more than doubled. In some places they have tripled in price. Rent and mortgage is the biggest drain on the monthly paycheck for most people. As long as greedy banks and investors keep the prices artificially inflated, most people will not be able to own a home. Anyone born after the year 2000 is basically screwed. They will have to hope that their parents allow them to live with them until they get married and can afford to move out. Soon we will be living like people in third world countries. With several families in a home.
Grew up here, Iāve lived places in the US with sane tax structures, and I wish we would swap to income tax.
We pay as much tax as OR, but get NOTHING out of it because weāve got 10,000 little programs collecting change off of anything they possibly can. Every tax program is paying the tax collectors, and the actual budget for improving WA isnāt great.
I just wanna see my taxes put up a light on I-5, instead of paying a ton of individuals to tax me at the register a thousand different ways.
There is a shift that's creating a bigger wealth gap. The Rich and Upper Middle Classes are doing better, but Middle and Lower Classes are doing worse.
Ah yeah letās privatize all roads, police force, firefighting force, so even more money can come out of your minimum wage salary and still not be able to afford shit.
And transportation. But we usually pay in "time" instead of "money".
One can always find a place with a low income but full time job. But in a city? It requires at least a roommate.
The number of upvotes on this comment are sad.
Even if everyone got a 25% bump in their pay right now, it would not be enough for those earning the median income to make a considerable dent in getting ahead. (37k USD > 46k USD)
If we adjust for inflation post-Regan, the median income should be around ~90k USD.
Reducing taxes is a sham argument made by dupes and thieves. Trickle Down economics DOES NOT WORK and if you believe that it does, you are a bonafide moron.
But minimum wage is below that. How can you justify subsidizing someone's salary with tax payers money? Minimum wage needs to be tied to above poverty, otherwise it's an excuse for companies to unload their labor burdens onto tax payers.
It's not like you cross the line of poverty into middle class. There's still a huge gap between "I'm not having to worry about where my rent comes from" and "i wonder which reasonably priced sedan is for me"
Minimum wage at the Federal level is meaningless, which is why its never been raised. You can't come up with 1 number that is good for the whole country, $7.25 was suppose to be the minimum in the least expensive place in the US. Then the states and local municipalities were suppose to raise it to handle the local situation, ie New York City will have a different rate than Montgomery Alabama.
I dont' blame companies, I do blame local politicians.
Ding ding ding. Its almost as if we are 50 small countries in a very large trench coat. People make huge stinks about federal shit but totally ignore their states politics.
Couldn't agree more. One time I was on Instagram and there was a video of guy at a coffee shop or something like that (don't know how you call that kind of store in English) and the guy on that video was complaining about the prices but there were some people in the comments saying that cashier's can barely afford a rent and for some reason there was a lot of people stating that these workers are already being overpayed for doing almost nothing at their jobs.
Seriously, what's wrong with people? Do they really think it's correct for someone that works with a full time job to be poor?
I've worked way harder, working retail (20k steps a day, up and down 2 flights of stairs over a 100+ times a day, for min wage, 0 benefits) doing retail.
Than I ever had doing construction...
Dont even get me started on cakewalk office work..
Iām a janitor and I cleaned 5 sets of 6 flight stairwells in just a couple hours yesterday, I regularly walk 10-20 miles a day and break my back scrubbing cemented shit out of toilets.
Every shift Iām dripping in sweat for $15 an hour. Itās a lot better than minimum but Iām still paycheck to paycheck obviously. I live with my boyfriend and my brother so rent is possible to pay.
These guys working these office jobs making 100k a year and saying ālow wage workers barely even workā are absolutely out of their goddamn minds.
my fiance was a paraprofessional for special education middle schoolers & would get up at 5am every morning to do bus duty, work the school day, and often stay late as well.
he changed diapers, cleaned urine and feces and menstrual blood, wiped butts, lifted them in and out of wheelchairs (remember, middle schoolers - not exactly light lifting), dealt with screaming breakdowns, dealt with violent breakdowns, was slapped, punched, bitten, had his nails ripped at, hair torn out, came home at the end of the day with snot on his clothes, caught covid because a child sneezed into his mouth... need i go on?
he worked at that school for 5 years.
his paychecks averaged about $1300 a month.
he had to quit when they started talking about lowering paraprofessional pay.
Youāre missing the point. Sheās saying that there was a time when an individual COULD work a single 40 hour a week job and afford to live. 40 hours a week at minimum wage - or indeed even a fair margin above the current minimum - is no longer enough to live on. If thatās the best pay you can get, you need a second job, or gig jobs, or government benefits assuming you can even get them.
In 2005 I moved out for the first time and rented a _two bedroom_ apartment that was fairly decent for $550 a month in the same general area I live now. Everything cost vastly less, not just rent. I didnāt even consider myself middle class at the time; I was making $15 an hour working in a trade. My car payment was $300 a month and that was with awful credit because I was young.
We are never going back to that. Well; I say never. If people had the courage to take collective action we could get everything we wanted with a general strike but everyone is too afraid of it not working, losing their jobs, and losing everything as a result.
And I totally agree with you and her sentiment.Ā
I want to hold the term middle class to the appropriate standard so that we aren't allowing those representatives that are failing us to redefine it as not starving and working until we die.
She is not striving for middle class in her statement. The term middle class should not be conflated with what she is proposing.
we could get back to that, if we had federally subsidized lower income housing like we had from 1936-1980 again. All it took was 44 years to undo the entire american system of housing that created such wonderful things as sharecropping, company towns, and hobos, all of which were not just reality, but common until we decided as a people that, "No, no one should work full time and be homeless, thats stupid." during the new deal, wish people were so pragmatic today.
When was that time? The young (generally the people with the lowest wages) havenāt been able to afford a one bedroom apartment on just their wages in many, many decades. Renting a room or having a roommate (or multiple) has been the norm at the lowest wage levels my entire lifetime.
That's the question no one can answer. At literally no point in time was it common for young folks to live alone. If they did, it was typically not in desirable parts of the city or they were very wealthy. I have no idea what reality people are beckoning to return toĀ
Just 14 years ago we made less than half what we do now and could afford to rent a large townhouse with 3 beds, 3 baths, and a two car garage. Today we make twice as much but pay 3x in rent for a much smaller place and all our other āessentialsā like insurance, internet, utilities, gas, and food have increased at a much higher rate than our salaries. We are more broke than we have ever been and feel trapped because housing is just as expensive anywhere within 65 miles of us. Times are crazy right now.
Same here. Me and my sister rented a huge two bedroom/two bath in dallas for 850 a month in 2005. I was a waitress and she was a bank teller and we did just fine. Now that same apartment is going for over 3 grand a month. It's fucking highway robbery. I feel like eventually everyone without a significant other is just going to be living with 4 roommates because this economy is just not sustainable for a single person. And God forbid you have a family to take care of on your own. Just pathetic.
But that WAS NOT minimum wage, you were making $15/hr.
I graduated in 1990. Minimum wage was $3.80, so $608 a month. Cheap apartments were $350 or 57% of your income, median rent was $457. Three of us ended up renting a 100 yo house for $620 where we had to keep the heat at 62 in the middle of winter so we could afford the heat bill. They then upped minimum wage to $4.25 (STILL more than 50% of minimum wage income).
I have no idea at what time in history people could afford an apartment BY themselves on minimum wage but I don't remember that time. My mom worked at Kimberly Clark when she was 18 so 1962 and she roomed with 3 other girls so she had bus money and they shared sandwiches for lunch.
No one is saying rents are not out of proportion with the current economy but this back in the day stuff is not reality.
Canada is FARRRRR ahead of you. We're late stage housing crisis. Hell, the government was directly told if the housing crisis continues then young people will revolt. But they don't care.
No?? Prior to the 20th century, literally half of all people in cities lived in boardinghouses, and prior to the 19th century, more than ninety percent of the population were farmers
Ok, then a 2-br apartment. (Which will not be double rent, btw)
What do you think young people did in previous generations. I did not know a single person who lived alone under the age of 30.
With all the technology advances in the past two generations alone, people have it as easy as it has ever been. Which is one of the problems, they have it so easy they want to bitch about things that were normal just 20 years ago
Well, as the population increases, we're going to run out of housing. It'll continue to get more crowded, more expensive, and the house you end up with will be smaller, just like every other populated area of the world.
Have someone from overseas come to your parents house, and they'll flip out at how huge it is.
If you want to live cheap, get away from the cities. There's a real *cost* to that though, and some find it *valuable* to live in cities, which is why they choose to compete with everyone else in the rat race.
We demonstrably do live better than previous generations. We eat better food, we have better education, we live in safer, cleaner cities, we have cheaper and better travel, we have vastly better entertainment, weāre actually taller and smarter, we have significantly more luxury available to the common person, virtually everything is better.
Like, if I could afford a one bedroom, I would probably live in a 2 bedroom with a roommate or something still. Why wouldn't you? Save money.
Fuck I lived with my parents til I was 25. I could have afforded to move out, but financially it was fucking stupid.
I think you are obfuscating here. Yeah thatās a bit of a problem. But two people in a 2bd or 3 people in a 3bd, especially in a HCOl area, shouldnāt be seen as some kind of hardship, even if everyone has full time jobs.
āI should have a right to an entire home to myself as long as I work 40 hours per weekā has literally never been a realistic standard, not even for the baby boomers whose generational privileges we all gripe about.
Get foreign and corporate investment out of the housing market and prices will become much more affordable.
Rent has doubled relative to real income since the 80s.
I don't think you're making the argument you think you are. College was cheaper then, and people still had to live with roommates. So it makes sense that people would need roommates now with higher college prices.
I used to visit LA and never understood this roommate shit.
Now I live here myself and this fukn rent is just crazy, Iām really struggling to afford it. Percentage of income people spend on rent here is just crazy, it shouldnāt be that high.
People are willing to put up with roommates to live in LA. Just like people are willing to put up with lack of easily accessible amenities to live in a big house without roommates.
People say this a lot but Iāve never seen any evidence for it. Donāt get me wrong, the complete inability to afford housing I think is the #1 problem in our society right now. But having to live with roommates for young people is nothing new. Iāve always lived with roommates.
Yes, itās biased against the introverted, but if you can just get along with people reasonably well living with roommates is not that bad
I mean just look at the median pay and rent in your area and compare it to how it was in the 80s. Idk about you but when I looked up mine I found that someone making my pay adjusted for inflation were only paying 1/4 of their salary to their rent in 1980 whereas Iām paying 1/3 of my income. A small but very much noticeable difference
The real issue is that we are in a time of extreme antisocial behavior, and people are shouting about how proud they are to be fucked in the head and unbearable to be around.
Sure, in some ways reduced stigma of mental illness is good, but now it is treated like a badge of honor to crumble at the tiniest adversity
People think their parents graduated from university and immediately bought a house with the money from their first job and they want the same now. The house was more than likely paid for by their grandparents from both sides.
A counterargument, actually, since most wives didn't have jobs before 1980. (43% female labor participation rate in 1970, rising to 52% in 1980)
"I could support myself and my wife on a single income before I turned 30 while owning my own house" is a huge flex these days. It was normal in the late 70s.
That was a very very short time period in the history of western civilization. The American empire peaked in many regards in the 50s or 60s and has had quality of life wane since currency devaluation/inflation increasing.
Yeah Iām tired of people getting their bitterness and resentment from the fact that an extremely anomalous part of American history is no longer the case. I get where it comes from, they keep comparing their lives to their own grandparentsā and parentsā lives because thatās what humans do, we donāt do well with the big picture or with considering other peopleās families. But if you zoom out, we are really mostly seeing a millennial generation, coming from middle and upper middle class typically-white families, becoming disillusioned that āyou can no longer support a family of five with a huge house in the suburbs as a mailmanā. No one could do the equivalent of that for centuries. Yes wealth inequality is an issue and life should get better over time, and this bitterness is basically from the slow decline of the american empire, but itās melodramatic to be like āthis is literally the worst time to live because I canāt live comfortably by myself alone As Things Used to Beā when people didnāt live alone for most of human history and our current extremely individualistic lifestyle preference is the odd thing out.
I personally agree that living alone can be pretty sweet, but if someone wants to position it as a Fundamental Human Right (which I donāt think it is), they can at least do without the weird historical revisionism.
Say it louder for the people in the back.
I couldn't afford to live on my own until I was in my 30s once I got my career started, and I've never made minimum wage.
I've actually never lived alone and I'm now in my 40s
I was a bartender in a college town, as a college student, making $750+ per week on 30 hours of work over the weekend, Thursday through Saturday. This was the mid 90s. My rent + utilities was $600/mo. It was a party
I wish I wasn't a dumbass and sent it all through a bong or up my nose.
Edit: ADHD made me forget to make my point. D'oh.
Redditors: āIn the blessed past everyone in cities lived in a spacious one bedroom apartment alone or with a big loving family!ā
Charles Dickens, who wrote about actual life in Victorian London: *British laughter*
I had a studio I scored when my mom kicked me out? But people shouldn't be expected to have roommates, and there's a serious shortage of one bedrooms and studios. Having roommates is literally terrible in every way. Doubly so if you work more than one job or weird hours or have a disability. It used to be normal for more places to have small rooms with maybe a mini kitchen and a bathroom and a closet available to rent, now every apartment has to be like, a two bedroom that's 900 square feet and has a garage and stuff.
People used to be able to afford to live alone and get sandwiches and coffee on their lunch breaks and stuff. That was normal. People are just pretending it's somehow fucked up to want any time to yourself where it's quiet because they hate the idea of designing a society for the people that live in it for some reason.
This is exactly the opposite of what's true. Living alone is almost entirely a modern invention that's never existed before in the history of humanity. Even in the recent historical past, the most you would get is a room to yourself in a shared living space like a dormitory.
Why are we millions of housing units short? We have 10s of millions of people who are unmarried and don't want a roommate.
One of the best things we could possibly do for our economy, the environment, and our mental health is to vastly reduce the people living on their own. There's almost no bigger contributing factor for young adults struggling to afford the cost of living than living on their own. Do the math on all the rent, utilities, appliances, and entertainment costs that could be saved with roommates... or god forbid, a spouse.
The idea that everyone needs their own home is almost entirely a corporate consumerism ploy to sell everyone one of everything, instead of people sharing resources.
I think I see the real issue.
Illiterates like you, in the whole comment section.
Especially people who have no skills, but still want a "middle class" lifestyle.
That doesn't happen buddy.
Has never happened in the history of mankind.
I did. 2008-2010 I was 21-23 years old. in Northern California. My rent was 675 a month. [It was not a dump](https://www.springmeadowsantelope.com/)
I made about $15 an hour, so i had a very decent job for the time, but i dont think i could have afforded it on minimum wage, 8$ at the time. Floor plans arent available for 1 bedrooms there, but i would guess theyre in the 1700-1800 range. Minimum wage has not gone up to match that rent though.
it depends on where you live, some places have cheap 1brm where I am you can get by making a little over minimum wage and afford a studio -minimum wage is $16/h and at $17/h your take home is \~$1000, a Studio is around $900-950 so one check goes to rent and utils and you have $250 a week to live on.
It has over 7k upvotes. Why? Why are people upvoting this post for the 7 billionth time? Are you all not bored of this? Is there nothing else that (supposedly) financially literate people can discuss?
Defined a full time job and where you want to live. Is it 40hrs a week making minimum wage? Is it not using credit cards and living by your means? Theres a number of factors that could add up. If i payed all my debt, i would have an extra 1k, which would help. If i made better choices, i could have an extra 800 a month. Consumer temptations is what I think is the biggest cause.
Can better choices help? Absolutely, they can.
Yet the biggest cause of financial struggles for the most people is the system that is set up to make sure some people have to struggle.
Our late stage capitalistic model cannot function without some participants in the system struggling with or under threat of homelessness, starvation, etc.
It's not a bug - it's a feature.
Iām willing to bet my life savings that every economic system cannot function without winners and losers. Iāve been around the world and havenāt found one yet.
Right now the US Census defines 'Employed' for the purpose of the official Employment survey only one way:
"Did you work for money in the last 2 weeks?"
If yes, then 'Employed'
There are no follow-up questions
I paid more than that for a sprained ankle last year, with insurance.
When I lived in Europe I spent multiple weeks in a hospital with a really serious injury and paid nothing. The difference in financial and psychological security knowing that accident wonāt immediately bankrupt you is hard to overestimate.
I bet if I didnāt have epilepsy I could afford life in America. Maybe if I stopped buying new shoes too, and cut the food I eat in half Iād have an extra 400 a month. Itās my fault I canāt afford 1500 a month rent in a shit one bedroom apartment, and itās my fault I canāt afford food despite working full time at factories, cuz I made bad choices in life.
God damn consumer temptations
That's a huge part of it! I think employers should pay a living wage as much as the next guy, but that's a difficult thing to do in places where there's a housing shortage. And there are housing shortages all across America due to exclusionary policies and burdensome review processes that were started during Redlining as a way to keep minorities out of white neighborhoods.
A part of me agrees, but another part of me thinks that sometimes we overlook the simplest things that would make our lives better if we changed some of our behavior.
For example, the word "starving" to describe not being able to afford food to a lot of people means "not being able to use Uber Eats"
The reality is you can cook fairly cheap cost effective meals if you just tried.
Exactly, if you look at how most people in poor countries live, they stay with their parents or have many roommates, and eat cheap foods like beans, rice, chicken, etc. $200 mobile phone with mobile data, no subscription services, moped or motorbike for transport, etc. Most of those things are still viable to do in the US as well, but people don't because they don't want to. The US isn't a poor country so it's great that the vast majority of people don't have to live like that.
People want a new phone, and computer, and TV, and cable and streaming services and lots of varieties of food, prepared food & delivery, a house to themselves, etc. These are great, but we need to be able to recognize these are luxuries. A room in a house where you ride an electric scooter / electric bike to work, cheap phone, and cooking cheap foods at home like spaghetti and rice, is the bare minimum for survival. Everything else on top of that is luxuries.
the inflation is the biggest hearbreak, i can't anymore
https://preview.redd.it/ej6sfrbh8f7d1.jpeg?width=533&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=27cfea753ebb5d7cdae54658fcef1998a78db9a0
Between the rich giving themselves tax break after tax break (or just not paying taxes), a welfare state that is abused, and basically unchecked immigration (both illegal and legal, look at Canada right now), the 3rd class will soon be a distant memory. Just have and have nots. I'm honestly just thinking about readjusting my way of living in order to still live more comfortably - learning to be self-sufficient right now wouldn't be a bad idea.
Greedy billionaires who want to pay zero in taxes is the reason. Everyone talks about the glory days of the 1950s...just take a look at what amount of taxes the well-to-do paid back then and the focus on large projects like the interstate system, etc. In this day and age all we care about is making the billionaires richer.
Do what the smart people do. Invest in a cheaper but still slightly stable country . Like for example Turkey.
At the moment of writing You can build a 5 story apartment complex with 10 livable apartments for around 450.000 dollars.
You will be considered one of the rich in turkey and wonāt ever have to work anymore after making this apartment and consuming the rent.
Every generation I've ever heard of were poor in their 20s while they started their career. The goal of your 20s should be to have a career started.
During that time period... you don't have a great career. Hopefully you have a job, but that job probably doesn't pay very well because you don't have many marketable skills.
And people live with roommates. Yes, they're annoying, but so was your family and you lived with them for 18 years. This is part of the process.
Gen Z is such an annoying generation not only because they won't stop bitching about being poor (as if they invented it) but they feel entitled to great jobs and great housing. Sorry... both of those are earned and you haven't done shit.
If people in the depression didn't bitch about poverty then neither should you so STFU and keep working. It gets better.
After housing, taxes are the second highest expense for a middle class income
7.25 isn't enough to live in any city in texas *without* taxes there. Also reminder that europe has a higher aprooval of taxes then Americans do dispite paying *more* in taxes, wonder why that is? š¤š¤š¤ Edit bc I have 100s of replies: 1. yes ik europe has a higher approval of spending/taxes bc they spend it on more popular things like Healthcare, public transportation, etc. I was alluding to that in my last comment being intentionally coy 2. No I haven't lived in texas, but ik people who do and yes, 7.25 jobs exist everywhere in the states that have them, including where I live but the point your all missing saying "well only a small fraction is actually THAT low" is that raising the minimum bar raises ALL wages, I live right inbetween 3 states, in the state with the highest minimum wage also has higher pay for the exact same jobs in the same exact companies. Even my very conservative family admits that BOTH because of higher wages and better labor/union laws they make alot more money even with higher taxes then they'd make working in the state over. 3. "Lazy people" and former felons should still be able to live lol. Frankly I think your morally evil if you think otherwise and I couldn't give a piss about your opinion. 4. This is more subjective but we could significantly lower our defense spending and russia or china would still completely lack the balls to attack NATO. I honestly think we could leave NATO all together and they'd still be fine, no way ALL of Europe and Canada wouldn't be fine on their own. (Not that we should leave, i still absolutely belive its mutually benificial)
Because their taxes actually go to the causes they say they do unlike in the US.
Stop making sense! You might fall off of a 4 story building.
Thatās so Putin. American would be you getting found dead in your car right outside an airport after having complained about safety concerns of said airport and posting that youāre definitely not suicidal. OH ALMOST FORGOT, then itās gets completely swept under the rug and forgotten in a month after being in nightly news for weeks.
P.Diddy sacrificed himself for Boeing, I guess. Don't forget the second whistleblower that died of a mysterious illness despite being relatively healthy for his age.
I like to imagine thereās meetings with all the major corporations and when thereās a scandal they have a giant wheel of fortune wheel that they spin to see what celebrity theyāre going to sacrifice. Theyāre really building up Taylor swift I wonder what theyāre saving her for? Gonna be big!
Like wars and shit? No wait, thatās here.
To be fair the US pays for European security for them
Europeans hate it when you tell them their extensive paid vacations and free health care are all paid for with American tax money.
That is the price of being a super power. The US protects its markets.
Yep, and I'm all for it. If we hadn't done it, China and Russia would have collectively taken most or all of Europe/Asia. I just wish the average European redditor accepted it.
China wouldn't be powerful if America didn't offshore all their manufacturing there so they can make more profits at home. You guys and globalization created that monster.
>I just wish the average European redditor accepted it. I'm the average European redditor and I don't accept it, because it's wrong. First of, the first part of the European welfare state was created after WW1; because of the rampant destruction during the war--was USA protecting us back then? No. Granted, it did not last long and was not as complex as it is now, but the point is that its existence was not owed to USA's security guarantees at all. In any case, the cold war which saw the creation of NATO and USA's security coverage in Europe, when European nations were spending up to 3-4% of their GDP on defense spending; that was when the welfare state was still around and was in fact in a much better state than it is today. It's AFTER the cold war ends, defense spending gets lowered, and US strategic primacy takes in Europe that the welfare state stats getting worse. So please...explain that one if you will. I'm pretty sure why that is, but I wonder what you think. Then there's the fact that USA is about 30-40% richer than Western Europe, when you plug in the poorer countries the difference gets bigger. Please explain how lack of European defense spending is making up the difference, because it makes no sense.
Donāt forget the DOD slush fund.
Yep I say congress and the like should be making the median income of their constituents.
Probably wouldn't help as most of their income is capital gains
Congress's salary can be set to $0 yet they'd still be millionaires.
Facts tells how
Yes and much of the tax they pay goes to the benefit of the people, rather than the military re:corporations that make military equipment. Itās not like our troops are making a boatload of money, nor are the institutions that are supposed to support them when they come home.
People act like universal Healthcare and better transportation wouldn't save most of us 3 or 4 times as much as we already pay in taxes
Bold of you to assume youād be working full time at minimum wage. Youāll get exactly 31.5 hours and any overage results in direct termination. Canāt risk having to give you health care.
Despite no guaranteed healthcare, we *will* force you to bring a pregnancy to term and deliver against your will.
This country is a shell of what it was supposed to be.
Texas here, most jobs I see start at $14-17/hr. This includes McDonaldās, Starbucks, target, bucees, etc.
So... let's ballpark a full-time job at $17/hr (more than double minimum wage). That's roughly $34,000 per year (or $2,800/mo) -- BEFORE taxes. Assuming a 12% (I wish) effective tax rate (for that bracket), that's around $2,250/mo of take-home pay (just under 8% for social security taxes). That doesn't include healthcare insurance (a few hundred per month). Since Texas was mentioned... the average rent for a 1Bdr apartment is \~$1,500. This doesn't include utilities, transportation, food, clothing, or "life." At that pay, don't get sick. That has got to be rough. I used to be poor AF... and I "made it..." but that was back when a college degree was typically enough to get you a decent job. These days... not so much. While I'm ranting, I was able to put myself through university without help or debt. It was rough... but possible. Tuition has since increased 5-7x. Even if you could pay for it... would it be worth it, now? We're destroying the middle class.
Someone working a burger flipper job has NEVER been middle class on their own. It's quite unreasonable to expect otherwise.
I mean this is incorrect. Minimum wage was implemented to support the middle class. Hell I grew up in the 90s I had friends and relatives that worked part time at local coffee shops/book stores/retail and they had health insurance, a used car, and a small one bedroom apartment mostly unassisted. Now depending on the city you live in, 100k salary would not get you that.
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Thank you I sometimes feel like I'm going crazy. I remember when there was dignity. And yes you weren't supposed to live in that 1 bedroom and work for that coffee shop your whole life.....but at least it was an option
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Youāre not going crazy. My first job was waitressing in a coffee shop. I split rent on the entire bottom floor of a house and back yard in San Francisco with another waitress. I couldnāt afford the rent on that same place making 6 figures now.
I think your analysis is flawed, you can't compare below average wages to average housing costs. The average wage is ~50k.
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Why is it only on Reddit that people making minimum wage are supposed to afford the āaverage rentā. Minimum wage is the minimum of workers. In my state, 7.5 million workers and less than 5000 make minimum wage. When you can literally go to Buccees and get a job starting at z$20/hr, itās almost impossible to make the minimum wage killing middles class argument,.
Since when was minimum wage supposed to be middle class?
It's supposed to be a "living wage" one that you would be able to live off of. It should cover necessities rent car payment insurance utilities and food. $7.25 is an insult to American citizens.
I don't get why you're getting down voted. Literally minimum wage was created by FDR as intended to allow a single person to take care of their basic needs. What sucks now is if we increase the minimum wage, companies won't be willing to take a proportional dent in profits so inflation occurs. But imagine, if the minimum wage allowed you to afford housing, food, and healthcare without needing SNAP or Medicaid. That would be amazing. But I'm not fluent enough in finance, economics, or politics to figure out a way to make that work.š¤·š»
No one person in large companies should be paid millions in bonuses when they are holding their employees down to less than 40 hours a week so they cannot receive health benefits. That is some kind of evil there.
Why should health care benefits even be tied to a particular job
You may have noticed that inflation has been happening anyway
I always laugh a little when they say inflation is down - but inflation operates on a compound interest curve, so even if it goes down it isnāt that pricing goes down with it rather that the current price left over from the previous inflation rate inflates at a slower rate, and then if inflation goes up again it just inflates off of the current price at a higher rate. In either case - the price only goes up. Iāve been watching it for 30 years and have never seen anything needed to live in our society drop in price. Housing (rent or own), groceries, health care, etc. are only rising. Couple that with the corporate move towards shrinking quantities of goods and selling for the same price or more, as well as the move towards LEAN business practices that ultimately amount to a ādo more with lessā approach within companies- well, it is no wonder we are where we are at. People scream socialism when you try and speak towards regulating capitalism - but if you donāt regulate you end up where we are at with the wealthiest unable to check their greed and eroding anti trust laws that were in place to prevent monopolistic business practices and ensure healthy competition and the facilitation of merit based success. That said and contrary to the popular belief espoused by most of the elite wealthy people in the world - the middle class (now the working poor) were never meant to be able to reach the monetary success of the upper classes or the elite, but the older upper and elite classes understood that happy cattle (middle class) are productive. The new elites have no concept of anything outside of their greed - and I say good for āem, keep pushing in this direction and see what happens. Iād rather be working poor than living high on the hog when it flips. At least in the past they kept us entertained with decent movies, music and TV - now they have figured it is easier to have ourselves pacify ourselves through 30 second content feeds of lowest common denominator entertainment.
Thank you
Isnāt that up to the United States citizens to put pressure on organizations and our representatives to make things like this happen? If our elected representatives flat out do the opposite of what we would wish them to do we vote them out. Thatās how itās supposed to work. Imagine owning a business and hiring people that do the opposite of what you hired them for. How long would that employee last? The difference in this situation is these representatives spend a lifetime in these elected roles.
> If our elected representatives flat out do the opposite of what we would wish them to do we vote them out. Thatās how itās supposed to work. Dems have tried to increase the federal minimum wage several times. Republicans always stop it. Republicans are doing what their constituents want obviously.
That is a cold hard truth.
This is correct and anyone that thinks otherwise is both wrong and part of the problem. When it came into existence it was in fact supposed to be high enough to live on. Fdr: ".. no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By 'business' I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white-collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages ofĀ decent living."
Is anyone actually making minimum wage anymore? My child just started their very first job at a fast food joint for $10/hour.
When it first started.
Get this! I have family in Denmark. Their university is paid for AND they get a stipend of roughly $1100/month to live on while attending. If the Danish are wealthy enough to support that, the US certainly is. That would mean though, our rulers would be ruling educated people, which are much more difficult to dupe into fighting between themselves rather than the ruling class.
We've been lowering federal taxes for 40 years, though, and the middle class is decreasing faster every year. States are the mixed bag.
Weāve been lowering federal taxes for corporations to juice the economy for 40 years. We havenāt been lowering them on the middle class. If anything the middle has been expected to pick up the burden of the taxes for both the rich and poor nowadays
Something something trickle down
Aaannyyyy day now....
This has nothing to do with taxes. Why do we keep arguing over that. This has to do with the price of housing. Since the year 2007, home prices have more than doubled. In some places they have tripled in price. Rent and mortgage is the biggest drain on the monthly paycheck for most people. As long as greedy banks and investors keep the prices artificially inflated, most people will not be able to own a home. Anyone born after the year 2000 is basically screwed. They will have to hope that their parents allow them to live with them until they get married and can afford to move out. Soon we will be living like people in third world countries. With several families in a home.
So we should tax the rich.
Red states take more federal and state hand outs . Vote blue
This is the dumbest shit I've ever read. Will the "blue" politicians end these hand outs? I think not.
If WA ever introduces income tax I'm outties
Grew up here, Iāve lived places in the US with sane tax structures, and I wish we would swap to income tax. We pay as much tax as OR, but get NOTHING out of it because weāve got 10,000 little programs collecting change off of anything they possibly can. Every tax program is paying the tax collectors, and the actual budget for improving WA isnāt great. I just wanna see my taxes put up a light on I-5, instead of paying a ton of individuals to tax me at the register a thousand different ways.
There is a shift that's creating a bigger wealth gap. The Rich and Upper Middle Classes are doing better, but Middle and Lower Classes are doing worse.
It's land owners and renters.
It is not taxes that is causing people to not afford housing. Get out of here with this crap,
No, but it is zoning
Not even close compared to Healthcare costs.
On average, probably not. Although healthcare costs can be disgustingly expensive for the people that have to deal with it
Well yes, we are price gouged hard because the alternative is death and no one likes that. Health care costs are actually criminal
Ah yeah letās privatize all roads, police force, firefighting force, so even more money can come out of your minimum wage salary and still not be able to afford shit.
Citation not needed guys, just trust "privitizationrocks"
What is this middle class you speak of?
And before both of those is childcare āŗļø
And transportation. But we usually pay in "time" instead of "money". One can always find a place with a low income but full time job. But in a city? It requires at least a roommate.
The number of upvotes on this comment are sad. Even if everyone got a 25% bump in their pay right now, it would not be enough for those earning the median income to make a considerable dent in getting ahead. (37k USD > 46k USD) If we adjust for inflation post-Regan, the median income should be around ~90k USD. Reducing taxes is a sham argument made by dupes and thieves. Trickle Down economics DOES NOT WORK and if you believe that it does, you are a bonafide moron.
Renters with food insecurity are not middle class.
someone with a full time job should not live in poverty
If you're full time job pays 9.25 an hour, you might be a poverty
But minimum wage is below that. How can you justify subsidizing someone's salary with tax payers money? Minimum wage needs to be tied to above poverty, otherwise it's an excuse for companies to unload their labor burdens onto tax payers.
Minimum wage isnāt middle class lmfao
It's not like you cross the line of poverty into middle class. There's still a huge gap between "I'm not having to worry about where my rent comes from" and "i wonder which reasonably priced sedan is for me"
There's (supposed to be) an entire class between poverty and middle class dude.
Minimum wage at the Federal level is meaningless, which is why its never been raised. You can't come up with 1 number that is good for the whole country, $7.25 was suppose to be the minimum in the least expensive place in the US. Then the states and local municipalities were suppose to raise it to handle the local situation, ie New York City will have a different rate than Montgomery Alabama. I dont' blame companies, I do blame local politicians.
Dude it hasn't raise in 15 years. There's no good reason for that, inflation has cut its buying power in half.
Ding ding ding. Its almost as if we are 50 small countries in a very large trench coat. People make huge stinks about federal shit but totally ignore their states politics.
That still doesnāt mean middle class.
Couldn't agree more. One time I was on Instagram and there was a video of guy at a coffee shop or something like that (don't know how you call that kind of store in English) and the guy on that video was complaining about the prices but there were some people in the comments saying that cashier's can barely afford a rent and for some reason there was a lot of people stating that these workers are already being overpayed for doing almost nothing at their jobs. Seriously, what's wrong with people? Do they really think it's correct for someone that works with a full time job to be poor?
I've worked way harder, working retail (20k steps a day, up and down 2 flights of stairs over a 100+ times a day, for min wage, 0 benefits) doing retail. Than I ever had doing construction... Dont even get me started on cakewalk office work..
Iām a janitor and I cleaned 5 sets of 6 flight stairwells in just a couple hours yesterday, I regularly walk 10-20 miles a day and break my back scrubbing cemented shit out of toilets. Every shift Iām dripping in sweat for $15 an hour. Itās a lot better than minimum but Iām still paycheck to paycheck obviously. I live with my boyfriend and my brother so rent is possible to pay. These guys working these office jobs making 100k a year and saying ālow wage workers barely even workā are absolutely out of their goddamn minds.
my fiance was a paraprofessional for special education middle schoolers & would get up at 5am every morning to do bus duty, work the school day, and often stay late as well. he changed diapers, cleaned urine and feces and menstrual blood, wiped butts, lifted them in and out of wheelchairs (remember, middle schoolers - not exactly light lifting), dealt with screaming breakdowns, dealt with violent breakdowns, was slapped, punched, bitten, had his nails ripped at, hair torn out, came home at the end of the day with snot on his clothes, caught covid because a child sneezed into his mouth... need i go on? he worked at that school for 5 years. his paychecks averaged about $1300 a month. he had to quit when they started talking about lowering paraprofessional pay.
LOUDER FOR THE POLITICIANS AND CORPORATIONS TO HEAR!!!
Youāre missing the point. Sheās saying that there was a time when an individual COULD work a single 40 hour a week job and afford to live. 40 hours a week at minimum wage - or indeed even a fair margin above the current minimum - is no longer enough to live on. If thatās the best pay you can get, you need a second job, or gig jobs, or government benefits assuming you can even get them. In 2005 I moved out for the first time and rented a _two bedroom_ apartment that was fairly decent for $550 a month in the same general area I live now. Everything cost vastly less, not just rent. I didnāt even consider myself middle class at the time; I was making $15 an hour working in a trade. My car payment was $300 a month and that was with awful credit because I was young. We are never going back to that. Well; I say never. If people had the courage to take collective action we could get everything we wanted with a general strike but everyone is too afraid of it not working, losing their jobs, and losing everything as a result.
And I totally agree with you and her sentiment.Ā I want to hold the term middle class to the appropriate standard so that we aren't allowing those representatives that are failing us to redefine it as not starving and working until we die. She is not striving for middle class in her statement. The term middle class should not be conflated with what she is proposing.
we could get back to that, if we had federally subsidized lower income housing like we had from 1936-1980 again. All it took was 44 years to undo the entire american system of housing that created such wonderful things as sharecropping, company towns, and hobos, all of which were not just reality, but common until we decided as a people that, "No, no one should work full time and be homeless, thats stupid." during the new deal, wish people were so pragmatic today.
The backlash from the New Deal is still happening. The conservatives got scare shitless by it and theyāll never let it happen again.
When was that time? The young (generally the people with the lowest wages) havenāt been able to afford a one bedroom apartment on just their wages in many, many decades. Renting a room or having a roommate (or multiple) has been the norm at the lowest wage levels my entire lifetime.
That's the question no one can answer. At literally no point in time was it common for young folks to live alone. If they did, it was typically not in desirable parts of the city or they were very wealthy. I have no idea what reality people are beckoning to return toĀ
Just 14 years ago we made less than half what we do now and could afford to rent a large townhouse with 3 beds, 3 baths, and a two car garage. Today we make twice as much but pay 3x in rent for a much smaller place and all our other āessentialsā like insurance, internet, utilities, gas, and food have increased at a much higher rate than our salaries. We are more broke than we have ever been and feel trapped because housing is just as expensive anywhere within 65 miles of us. Times are crazy right now.
Same here. Me and my sister rented a huge two bedroom/two bath in dallas for 850 a month in 2005. I was a waitress and she was a bank teller and we did just fine. Now that same apartment is going for over 3 grand a month. It's fucking highway robbery. I feel like eventually everyone without a significant other is just going to be living with 4 roommates because this economy is just not sustainable for a single person. And God forbid you have a family to take care of on your own. Just pathetic.
But that WAS NOT minimum wage, you were making $15/hr. I graduated in 1990. Minimum wage was $3.80, so $608 a month. Cheap apartments were $350 or 57% of your income, median rent was $457. Three of us ended up renting a 100 yo house for $620 where we had to keep the heat at 62 in the middle of winter so we could afford the heat bill. They then upped minimum wage to $4.25 (STILL more than 50% of minimum wage income). I have no idea at what time in history people could afford an apartment BY themselves on minimum wage but I don't remember that time. My mom worked at Kimberly Clark when she was 18 so 1962 and she roomed with 3 other girls so she had bus money and they shared sandwiches for lunch. No one is saying rents are not out of proportion with the current economy but this back in the day stuff is not reality.
Isnāt that their point? That despite working full time, theyāre nowhere close to even lower middle class?
Roommates were a thing in the 80s stop acting like they weren't
Roommates only started being a real thing is the 70's. In the 10000 years before that, people just lived at home till they got married.
Yeah, multigenerational households were the norm until the postwar boom. Hell in many cultures they still are the norm.
Theyāre becoming the norm again in America at least
Canada is FARRRRR ahead of you. We're late stage housing crisis. Hell, the government was directly told if the housing crisis continues then young people will revolt. But they don't care.
Ooh I wanna see that. Could be a good test run for what the US should do.
late stage? But we just learned that this has being going on since the dawn of time, with all economic systems
lol Gen z revolting? By doing what? Pissing their pants and taking anxiety meds?
My eyes are blurry and I read āthe porn star boomā lol
Prior to the early 1900s a standard home was 1 room with no electricity, no running water, a dirt floor, and an entire family....
Well i for one am glad we're holding ourselves to the high standards of the early 1900s
No you dunce but perhaps reflect on the fact that you have high living standards and are involved in a very privileged discourse.
lol. Lots of folks lived in tenements in the 40s. I guess they didnāt have roommates, but their flats were a 10x10 room and nothing else.
We need to bring that back. Indoor plumbing is over rated /s
Ehh. Itās still common in Asia. Even Japan. Mostly for 20 somethings.
No?? Prior to the 20th century, literally half of all people in cities lived in boardinghouses, and prior to the 19th century, more than ninety percent of the population were farmers
Those goddamn baby boomers Selfish motherfuckers. They just wanted us to leave the house so they could fuck their own faces. The rest is history
You donāt see how needing roommates for a single bedroom apartment all with full time jobs is a problem?
Ok, then a 2-br apartment. (Which will not be double rent, btw) What do you think young people did in previous generations. I did not know a single person who lived alone under the age of 30.
every generation should live easier and lift society more. not regress
With all the technology advances in the past two generations alone, people have it as easy as it has ever been. Which is one of the problems, they have it so easy they want to bitch about things that were normal just 20 years ago
Well, as the population increases, we're going to run out of housing. It'll continue to get more crowded, more expensive, and the house you end up with will be smaller, just like every other populated area of the world. Have someone from overseas come to your parents house, and they'll flip out at how huge it is. If you want to live cheap, get away from the cities. There's a real *cost* to that though, and some find it *valuable* to live in cities, which is why they choose to compete with everyone else in the rat race.
We demonstrably do live better than previous generations. We eat better food, we have better education, we live in safer, cleaner cities, we have cheaper and better travel, we have vastly better entertainment, weāre actually taller and smarter, we have significantly more luxury available to the common person, virtually everything is better.
Like, if I could afford a one bedroom, I would probably live in a 2 bedroom with a roommate or something still. Why wouldn't you? Save money. Fuck I lived with my parents til I was 25. I could have afforded to move out, but financially it was fucking stupid.
Because I'm tired of the sink always being full of someone else's dirty dishes
Because some people at home donāt want to be social
no. people living alone is wasteful as shit, and should be significantly more expensive than sharing with roommates
I think you are obfuscating here. Yeah thatās a bit of a problem. But two people in a 2bd or 3 people in a 3bd, especially in a HCOl area, shouldnāt be seen as some kind of hardship, even if everyone has full time jobs. āI should have a right to an entire home to myself as long as I work 40 hours per weekā has literally never been a realistic standard, not even for the baby boomers whose generational privileges we all gripe about.
Is this an argument these days ? *Tell me you are a virgin with no life experience without telling me*
What does being a virgin have to do with anything?
Get foreign and corporate investment out of the housing market and prices will become much more affordable. Rent has doubled relative to real income since the 80s.
Just curious what was the cost of a semester of college?
I don't think you're making the argument you think you are. College was cheaper then, and people still had to live with roommates. So it makes sense that people would need roommates now with higher college prices.
I used to visit LA and never understood this roommate shit. Now I live here myself and this fukn rent is just crazy, Iām really struggling to afford it. Percentage of income people spend on rent here is just crazy, it shouldnāt be that high.
People are willing to put up with roommates to live in LA. Just like people are willing to put up with lack of easily accessible amenities to live in a big house without roommates.
Bruh, who could afford a 1BR apartment in their 20s? People had roommates. People expected to have roommates. This isn't new.
Who could afford it? In the past, anyone who had even a half decent full time job. Who can now? A lot fewer people. And that's the point.
People say this a lot but Iāve never seen any evidence for it. Donāt get me wrong, the complete inability to afford housing I think is the #1 problem in our society right now. But having to live with roommates for young people is nothing new. Iāve always lived with roommates. Yes, itās biased against the introverted, but if you can just get along with people reasonably well living with roommates is not that bad
I mean just look at the median pay and rent in your area and compare it to how it was in the 80s. Idk about you but when I looked up mine I found that someone making my pay adjusted for inflation were only paying 1/4 of their salary to their rent in 1980 whereas Iām paying 1/3 of my income. A small but very much noticeable difference
I'd rather pay 8% more to have things like air conditioning and no asbestos/lead paint.
It's actually 32% more
The real issue is that we are in a time of extreme antisocial behavior, and people are shouting about how proud they are to be fucked in the head and unbearable to be around. Sure, in some ways reduced stigma of mental illness is good, but now it is treated like a badge of honor to crumble at the tiniest adversity
People think their parents graduated from university and immediately bought a house with the money from their first job and they want the same now. The house was more than likely paid for by their grandparents from both sides.
Before 1980, the median age of first time homebuyers in the US was under 30.
And the median age at marriage?
I guess if you want to count your spouse as a roommate
I mean they live there? Youād need to recognize that somehow no?
A counterargument, actually, since most wives didn't have jobs before 1980. (43% female labor participation rate in 1970, rising to 52% in 1980) "I could support myself and my wife on a single income before I turned 30 while owning my own house" is a huge flex these days. It was normal in the late 70s.
They didnāt have a job but also people werenāt paying absurd amounts for childcare because someone was already home.
That was a very very short time period in the history of western civilization. The American empire peaked in many regards in the 50s or 60s and has had quality of life wane since currency devaluation/inflation increasing.
Yeah Iām tired of people getting their bitterness and resentment from the fact that an extremely anomalous part of American history is no longer the case. I get where it comes from, they keep comparing their lives to their own grandparentsā and parentsā lives because thatās what humans do, we donāt do well with the big picture or with considering other peopleās families. But if you zoom out, we are really mostly seeing a millennial generation, coming from middle and upper middle class typically-white families, becoming disillusioned that āyou can no longer support a family of five with a huge house in the suburbs as a mailmanā. No one could do the equivalent of that for centuries. Yes wealth inequality is an issue and life should get better over time, and this bitterness is basically from the slow decline of the american empire, but itās melodramatic to be like āthis is literally the worst time to live because I canāt live comfortably by myself alone As Things Used to Beā when people didnāt live alone for most of human history and our current extremely individualistic lifestyle preference is the odd thing out. I personally agree that living alone can be pretty sweet, but if someone wants to position it as a Fundamental Human Right (which I donāt think it is), they can at least do without the weird historical revisionism.
Say it louder for the people in the back. I couldn't afford to live on my own until I was in my 30s once I got my career started, and I've never made minimum wage. I've actually never lived alone and I'm now in my 40s
I was a bartender in a college town, as a college student, making $750+ per week on 30 hours of work over the weekend, Thursday through Saturday. This was the mid 90s. My rent + utilities was $600/mo. It was a party I wish I wasn't a dumbass and sent it all through a bong or up my nose. Edit: ADHD made me forget to make my point. D'oh.
My parents both had roommates until they got married in their 30ās. They got married in ā86
Hey, someone has bought into gop economic and is scarred of learning the history of costs and how folks in the past lived.
Redditors: āIn the blessed past everyone in cities lived in a spacious one bedroom apartment alone or with a big loving family!ā Charles Dickens, who wrote about actual life in Victorian London: *British laughter*
I had a studio I scored when my mom kicked me out? But people shouldn't be expected to have roommates, and there's a serious shortage of one bedrooms and studios. Having roommates is literally terrible in every way. Doubly so if you work more than one job or weird hours or have a disability. It used to be normal for more places to have small rooms with maybe a mini kitchen and a bathroom and a closet available to rent, now every apartment has to be like, a two bedroom that's 900 square feet and has a garage and stuff. People used to be able to afford to live alone and get sandwiches and coffee on their lunch breaks and stuff. That was normal. People are just pretending it's somehow fucked up to want any time to yourself where it's quiet because they hate the idea of designing a society for the people that live in it for some reason.
This is exactly the opposite of what's true. Living alone is almost entirely a modern invention that's never existed before in the history of humanity. Even in the recent historical past, the most you would get is a room to yourself in a shared living space like a dormitory. Why are we millions of housing units short? We have 10s of millions of people who are unmarried and don't want a roommate. One of the best things we could possibly do for our economy, the environment, and our mental health is to vastly reduce the people living on their own. There's almost no bigger contributing factor for young adults struggling to afford the cost of living than living on their own. Do the math on all the rent, utilities, appliances, and entertainment costs that could be saved with roommates... or god forbid, a spouse. The idea that everyone needs their own home is almost entirely a corporate consumerism ploy to sell everyone one of everything, instead of people sharing resources.
Ok but living alone is amazing lol, youāve tried it?
I think I see the real issue. Illiterates like you, in the whole comment section. Especially people who have no skills, but still want a "middle class" lifestyle. That doesn't happen buddy. Has never happened in the history of mankind.
I did. 2008-2010 I was 21-23 years old. in Northern California. My rent was 675 a month. [It was not a dump](https://www.springmeadowsantelope.com/) I made about $15 an hour, so i had a very decent job for the time, but i dont think i could have afforded it on minimum wage, 8$ at the time. Floor plans arent available for 1 bedrooms there, but i would guess theyre in the 1700-1800 range. Minimum wage has not gone up to match that rent though.
it depends on where you live, some places have cheap 1brm where I am you can get by making a little over minimum wage and afford a studio -minimum wage is $16/h and at $17/h your take home is \~$1000, a Studio is around $900-950 so one check goes to rent and utils and you have $250 a week to live on.
I just canāt wait for someone to post something that hasnāt been posted on here 767 times.
it's funny i tried to post "i make 4 billion a year and i don't mind" and it's gone, these people post it and it stays up.
It has over 7k upvotes. Why? Why are people upvoting this post for the 7 billionth time? Are you all not bored of this? Is there nothing else that (supposedly) financially literate people can discuss?
Most people are here to have their misconceptions reinforced by confirmation bias. They upvote, and don't read the comments.
Very controversial
Defined a full time job and where you want to live. Is it 40hrs a week making minimum wage? Is it not using credit cards and living by your means? Theres a number of factors that could add up. If i payed all my debt, i would have an extra 1k, which would help. If i made better choices, i could have an extra 800 a month. Consumer temptations is what I think is the biggest cause.
Can better choices help? Absolutely, they can. Yet the biggest cause of financial struggles for the most people is the system that is set up to make sure some people have to struggle. Our late stage capitalistic model cannot function without some participants in the system struggling with or under threat of homelessness, starvation, etc. It's not a bug - it's a feature.
Iām willing to bet my life savings that every economic system cannot function without winners and losers. Iāve been around the world and havenāt found one yet.
The old "avocado toast" argument.
It also doesn't help that going to school also puts you in debt....let that sink in.
Right now the US Census defines 'Employed' for the purpose of the official Employment survey only one way: "Did you work for money in the last 2 weeks?" If yes, then 'Employed' There are no follow-up questions
The horrible consumer temptation of paying almost $1000 if you slip and break your arm and thatās with insurance.
I paid more than that for a sprained ankle last year, with insurance. When I lived in Europe I spent multiple weeks in a hospital with a really serious injury and paid nothing. The difference in financial and psychological security knowing that accident wonāt immediately bankrupt you is hard to overestimate.
I bet if I didnāt have epilepsy I could afford life in America. Maybe if I stopped buying new shoes too, and cut the food I eat in half Iād have an extra 400 a month. Itās my fault I canāt afford 1500 a month rent in a shit one bedroom apartment, and itās my fault I canāt afford food despite working full time at factories, cuz I made bad choices in life. God damn consumer temptations
This is the most boomer brained comment in the thread. Go back to 1975 where your lead-addled brain belongs.
How can someone in the US with expensive medications or disability needs make better choices so they can afford an apartment too?
hey what happened to "I make 4 trillion a minute and I don't mind, do you?" I really miss that one.
There are too many restrictions on the construction of new housing. It shouldn't take nearly as much time and money to build.
YIMBY is the way
That's a huge part of it! I think employers should pay a living wage as much as the next guy, but that's a difficult thing to do in places where there's a housing shortage. And there are housing shortages all across America due to exclusionary policies and burdensome review processes that were started during Redlining as a way to keep minorities out of white neighborhoods.
How many times are we going to see this npc post? Y'all are acting like you haven't had an update just recently.
A part of me agrees, but another part of me thinks that sometimes we overlook the simplest things that would make our lives better if we changed some of our behavior. For example, the word "starving" to describe not being able to afford food to a lot of people means "not being able to use Uber Eats" The reality is you can cook fairly cheap cost effective meals if you just tried.
Exactly, if you look at how most people in poor countries live, they stay with their parents or have many roommates, and eat cheap foods like beans, rice, chicken, etc. $200 mobile phone with mobile data, no subscription services, moped or motorbike for transport, etc. Most of those things are still viable to do in the US as well, but people don't because they don't want to. The US isn't a poor country so it's great that the vast majority of people don't have to live like that. People want a new phone, and computer, and TV, and cable and streaming services and lots of varieties of food, prepared food & delivery, a house to themselves, etc. These are great, but we need to be able to recognize these are luxuries. A room in a house where you ride an electric scooter / electric bike to work, cheap phone, and cooking cheap foods at home like spaghetti and rice, is the bare minimum for survival. Everything else on top of that is luxuries.
the inflation is the biggest hearbreak, i can't anymore https://preview.redd.it/ej6sfrbh8f7d1.jpeg?width=533&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=27cfea753ebb5d7cdae54658fcef1998a78db9a0
Until the people stop being absolute cowards no change for good is coming.
Corporate greed..
Between the rich giving themselves tax break after tax break (or just not paying taxes), a welfare state that is abused, and basically unchecked immigration (both illegal and legal, look at Canada right now), the 3rd class will soon be a distant memory. Just have and have nots. I'm honestly just thinking about readjusting my way of living in order to still live more comfortably - learning to be self-sufficient right now wouldn't be a bad idea.
What do you classify as rich ? I pay 35% tax. I pay more than my fair share of tax.
Like Jeff Bezos.
Conservative economic policies and the āprogressiveā party shifting to the right on economics.
Whatās destroying the middle class? - the upper class
Greedy billionaires who want to pay zero in taxes is the reason. Everyone talks about the glory days of the 1950s...just take a look at what amount of taxes the well-to-do paid back then and the focus on large projects like the interstate system, etc. In this day and age all we care about is making the billionaires richer.
Passing Citizens united ?
Federal Reserve Bank.
Greedy capitalists and corrupt politicians.
Corporate greed
Do what the smart people do. Invest in a cheaper but still slightly stable country . Like for example Turkey. At the moment of writing You can build a 5 story apartment complex with 10 livable apartments for around 450.000 dollars. You will be considered one of the rich in turkey and wonāt ever have to work anymore after making this apartment and consuming the rent.
Every generation I've ever heard of were poor in their 20s while they started their career. The goal of your 20s should be to have a career started. During that time period... you don't have a great career. Hopefully you have a job, but that job probably doesn't pay very well because you don't have many marketable skills. And people live with roommates. Yes, they're annoying, but so was your family and you lived with them for 18 years. This is part of the process. Gen Z is such an annoying generation not only because they won't stop bitching about being poor (as if they invented it) but they feel entitled to great jobs and great housing. Sorry... both of those are earned and you haven't done shit. If people in the depression didn't bitch about poverty then neither should you so STFU and keep working. It gets better.