Poverty in America

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Comments

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

That's not even getting into the fact that $18,000 for a family of three is not even liveable in many areas. Where I live, you're lucky if only $12,000 a year goes to rent. Put transportation, food, clothing, health care on top of that, and that remaining $6,000 a year isn't going to stretch very far. Heaven forbid something unforeseen comes along like a medical emergency or a car repair. And forget ever having anything left over for any form of leisure or relaxation. Vacations are for the productive rich people, not the cogs, who apparently should just work day in and day out silently and be good little producers until they die.

Ah, the American dream.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Don't forget that to earn 18K of take-home pay, they probably need a job that pays them 25K a year, a full 10 grand over a full-time MW job.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Kristof had a nice column on the lost American dream.

~ ~ ~

“Equality of opportunity — the ‘American dream’ — has always been a cherished American ideal,” Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel-winning economist at Columbia University, noted in a recent speech. “But data now show that this is a myth: America has become the advanced country not only with the highest level of inequality, but one of those with the least equality of opportunity.”

[...]

* The top 1 percent in America now own assets worth more than those held by the entire bottom 90 percent.

* The six Walmart heirs are worth as much as the bottom 41 percent of American households put together.

* The top six hedge fund managers and traders averaged more than $2 billion each in earnings last year.

-- Nicholas Kristof at The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/opinion/kristof-its-now-the-canadian-dream.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0)

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

But I was just informed, by a very reputable source, that someone working at a McDonalds is overpaid if they get $5/hour. It's terrible what those nasty labor laws are doing to our markets!

[mylaptopisevil.livejournal.com]

But those minimum wage jobs are for teenagers (who are possibly working to supplement their parents both having minimum wage jobs...)! Don't they know they should go the job tree and pick a fresh jobbie that is a little higher up?

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Wall Street and corporate profits are at or near all-time highs, so the Job Creators should be creating so many jobs they're just falling from the trees, right?

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I'm growing increasingly convinced that the GFC was a manufactured crisis to soften up the population of rich, western nations for income redistribution to the wealthy. They caused the problem, benefitted most from the problem and essentially got off scott free. If they didn't cause the last one you can bet their working their butts off to work out how to cause the next one.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Nice graphic.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

[mudryikot.livejournal.com]

Is the take-home pay for someone on minimum wage in US affected by the number of dependents?

[moonchylde.livejournal.com]

You can take more deductions with more dependents, but the effect is minimal.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Only in terms of taxes taken out.

MW, full-time, with ZERO dollars removed for taxes, is 15,080/year.
That's 40/hours a week, 52/weeks a year.

That's federal MW, some states have higher MW, but for fast (and somewhat sloppy) math, assume full-time workers work 2000 hrs a year. So 10/hr would only raise pre-tax income to 20K/year, for full-time workers (meaning takehome might be around 17K)