this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2025
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From your link:
Unless you're living someplace like Martha's Vineyard, those are definitely respectable numbers - particularly for those usually on the low end of the income scale it's at the very least not "absolute dick." Never mind it says those numbers are from 2018, so they're probably going up considering the recent abomination of a budget bill that was passed having increased their budget to an absurd (practically suspicious) level.
Maybe op just values (absolute) dick way higher than you do!
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
/s
(So only the bottom 10% get paid about the national median income, 90% are above that. That's about how much one would pay a "public-"private militia to get. But it's not even a new organisation, so ofc they are paid OK-ish. And their funding just exploded like an infected haemorrhoid.)
There's a visual that's sure to help me keep to my diet...
Well, texturewise, imagine it like biting & bursting a cherry tomato in your mouth ...
Might explain why I don't like tomatoes. I may have to re-examine liking all the things made from them, however...
~$30 dollars an hour is, across the whole country broadly, just shy of a basic, liveable wage.
~$30 dollars an hour is what the minimum wage would now be, if it was still as it was originally intended to be, a wage allowing for a reasonably comfortable, non poverty existence.
If you think those are respectable numbers, you've normalized the idea of tens of millions of people living in poverty.
https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/average-rent-by-year
There ya go, 1:3 rent to income ratio means you need to make ~$60k to afford the average apartment.
Yep, ~50% increase in rent prices in 5 years.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/renter-households-cost-burdened-race.html
A household has on average ~2.6 people, so thats uh, ~55 million people that couldn't really afford rent in 2023... and those are the people who have since 2023ish been putting everything on credit, on klarna, on afterpay... you don't even want to know how bad the US looks if you take net wealth into the equation... basically, at least 25% of US households have negative net wealth, and that's obviously going to be more concentrated amongst those who can't afford rent.
And no, I'm not using the US gov's definiton(s) of 'poverty', because they are bullshit that doesn't account for what I have above described.
Also, thanks Mr. Trump, bye bye Section 8, bye bye foodstamps/EBT, bye bye Medicaid! I'm sure all those things weren't helpful or needed by anyone struggling to afford rent.
I do not live in a LCOL area (I'm close enough to NYC that a significant number of people around me commute there for their job), and at my last job, I was making ~$27/hr, and I was saving over $1000 on average every single month. That's after bills AND discretionary spending.
The definition of "livable" (which never gets concretely defined, by the way) that results in $30/hr being "just shy" of it is frankly absurd.
By the way, it doesn't fit the narrative, but the fact is that most people who live "paycheck to paycheck" aren't people who barely earn enough to make ends meet, even though the desired implication is that that's 100% of that demographic; in reality, in the majority of cases, they are people are able to save but CHOOSE not to. Reminder that 1 in 4 households earning over $100k a year live "paycheck to paycheck" in the US.
I didn't "normalize" anything. You're looking at nationwide averages when the reality can vary wildly according to specific area. In the Republican stronghold states especially there are plenty that are responsible from keeping those averages from being noticeably higher. I've got to go, so no time to research this now, but I'll wager there's plenty of areas in southern states & maybe the Bible belt where that income would be considered pretty decent.
Yes, it would be more decent in the poorer areas with even higher rates of being rent overburdened, higher rates of poverty.
You gave an average, I gave an average.
You wanna break it all down state by state, both metrics, you'll still find the same broad trend, using averages is a neat way to talk about broad trends without outputting a full 30 page comprehensive analysis.
Not in the statistical sense, no.
But your massive internalized privilege has left you bereft of a realistic frame of reference for how bad the economic situation really is for so many millions of Americans.
You've thus normalized, in your own mind, the idea of it being ok for a massive chunk of society to be in a horrendously precarious material and financial position.
I quoted a job posting from a link provided by someone else.
Wow, talk about assumptions and leaps in logic! I did no such thing, nor do I believe such things.
Whatever, you're obviously too enraged to be objective & I've gotta go.
all I know is that if I was actually interested in being a federal officer, I could be an FBI agent for the same pay but not nearly as much kidnapping duty
But are the requirements to get hired the same? I imagine/hope there's not as much expected for the "hired thug" role as for an FBI agent, but then we are talking about things under the Trump administration so I guess nothing's off the table... * sigh *