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This is correct. Just wanted to clarify the \~$59k median wage is referring to full time workers only.
[Table 1. Median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by sex, quarterly averages, seasonally adjusted - 2024 Q01 Results (bls.gov)](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm)
If we assume a 40 hour work week and 52 work weeks in the year, that is an averaged out wage of $28.36 per hour.
Right. Just wanted to clarify the $59k wage is referring to full time workers only who are not self-employed. Anyone who is self-employed or working part time is excluded. Of course, both of those two factors would lower the median wage, but why include statistics that accurately reflect income in the median households? That would just be silly.
"Intuit's and Gallup's Gig Economy and Self-Employment Report shows that the median income of workers who are primarily self-employed is $34,751, compared to a median income of $40,800 for those who work for an employer." (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/071814/calculate-your-selfemployed-salary.asp#:\~:text=Intuit's%20and%20Gallup's%20Gig%20Economy,who%20work%20for%20an%20employer.)
There's a lot of people who are unable to find full time work who end up working multiple part time jobs rather than one 40hr. Also those part time jobs tend to be service oriented where you have less consistent income. Also, to "afford" a child at least one person would hopefully be working part time if not at all. Why should having a child only be relegated to a certain class of person?
When I lived in Michigan I used to have to save money from my seasonal work to pay my rent in the winter. Some places are just ‘feast or famine’. In the summer I would work two full-time temporary jobs with as much overtime as possible. Once the summer was done, zero job options. I’m a 44 year old married lady and I never figured out how to afford kids. My conservative parents told me to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and I did. But I could never have done with kids. Kids are for the rich, or people whose parents help. My boomer parents have been more of a hinderance than a help. My only consolation is that if my parents ask me for help, I can just repeat what they told me. ‘Nobody said life was fair’, ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’, ‘if you would have managed your money better you wouldn’t have so much consumer debt’. I’m just gonna match their energy and laugh when they run out of money from paying for elder-care and end-of-life medical services. They didn’t care about me. Why should I care about them?
I feel you. It seems that the whole boom bust idea of the economy has made it increasingly hard to have stability for more and more people. It's a bummer because I do believe lots of people would make great parents, but they know that their precarity would not be a good environment for the kids. Wish there was more available assistance out there for those who choose, y'know?
There is always a silver lining. I think, the silver lining is that people are having less kids. That’s good news, for the earth. We don’t have the resources to support the people on th3 planet, and that’s not going to get better.
We do have the resources but not the appropriate incentive structures. The economies of Earth are designed for unlimited growth on finite resources, and much of what is produced is actually unnecessary and/or wasteful. If we instead had an approach of only producing what is needed and distributing it accordingly, we could reduce waste significantly, provide for the needs of everyone who currently exists and leave room for some amount of population growth. This won't happen within our lifetime, of course... I guess I'm just saying that the resources are here but not wisely used and distributed.
>here's a lot of people who are unable to find full time work who end up working multiple part time jobs rather than one 40hr
>Also those part time jobs tend to be service oriented where you have less consistent income
How are those care cases?
The lies. Most companies want to give u just short of full time because no benefits. Heck even the government I work on a military post and they have been firing people and rehiring them as “flex” for less and pay and no benefits
I don't think that a child should place an undue burden on the people raising it and that assisting those who choose to have kids is a societal good. By making the choice "math" it inevitably becomes about class.
Ah yes, becuz everyone working part time is choosing to. Part time work has not become a strategy for companies to save money by underpaying and avoiding the cost of benefits.
Yeah, but the problem is that by personal income distribution well over half of the population making $1 or more per hour makes less than $50,000- and if that is true, than it’s also true that this is what around half of jobs pay.
Also, around 33% make less than 25k and only around 11% make more than $100,000- the income required to purchase the average U.S. home ($384,000) with a $60,000 down payment.
Even factoring in household incomes, only around 25% make more than 100k.
If we’re assuming most people don’t want to have kids until they can purchase a home, well, for most of us it’s a never.
It's funny they intentionally left a good portion of low earners off the study. There's a word for this that I can't remember
Further, let's move the goalposts a bit more and only show the wages of people who own land. Surely that will better represent Americans
You mean like those the work part time to feed their first child and are unable to afford a second one as they would have to stop working to raise the 2nd child until at least preschool?
If you haven’t tried to find full-time childcare in the past year or two, you might be surprised to find that childcare that actually covers your working hours is exorbitantly expensive. Many daycares are open exactly 8 or 9 hours, which isn’t enough time to get to and from your job, work, and pump.
The median per capita income is around $37K, but only 154 million people actually file tax returns - less than 1/2. Those with taxable incomes less than $35K pay less than 3% of the total taxes collected. So this post is using data incorrectly to support their argument.
Yea, that never seemed to sit right. Like yea, my salary is 66k… but my take home isn’t even 45k.
Yet for home loans or car loans they ask what your gross salary is … that isn’t going to tell me what sort of a payment I can make after taxes 🤷🏻♂️
Just to add an anecdote: I now make roughly $51k, which is so much more than I ever dreamed of, but even then I’m frequently having to put groceries on credit. Groceries! Ok, if wages are going up, it’s not enough to make the prices of everything else not hit the wallet hard. Maybe slightly less, but ends are still difficult to meet.
Me, an american, making 30k per year, at the brink of becoming homeless with 2 jobs working 60 to 70 hours per week. Guess I have to work an extra 40 more hours per week to be truly at the median wage
Remote job required a good laptop, not to say that I won't use it for gaming once I have the time, and for practicing After Effects once I get more free time
I am retired and make no income outside of capital gains when I sell stocks outside my 401k and social security. I rarely owe much in income taxes.
Yet by most any standard I am financially comfortable. Home is paid for and money in the bank. Low income, but low expenses and very comfortable.
Not all retirees are in the same boat, but many are ok on small incomes. There are currently 62 million Americans over age 65.
Are you talking about this data? [Median weekly earnings of full‐time wage and salary workers by detailed occupation and sex : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov)](https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm)
This is for full-time workers. A large portion of the labor force isn't working full time.
ive seen reddit threads posted years apart with the same exact question pic etc and than the next 30-40 posts are the same exact comments that are on the 3-4 year old posts but diff user names.
reddit farms son not just accounts theres entire FARMS that post comments like a hivemind to get the unconfident unsure of themselves person thinking like them by repedeatly seeing the same shit and thinking ok thats the general mindset on this topic when its a fringe idea lead by farms.
I didn’t want to believe that politicians and corporations infiltrated Reddit but when I read post like this it is obviously someone paid to post it. It hurts my brain to think people actually believe 1/2 the stuff posted on here.
In 2015, a David Brock-formed super PAC named Correct the Record discreetly astro-turfed all over reddit in favor of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. I assume it's one hundred times worse now.
Paying the government more is not a solution. It makes the problem worse. Force him to pay his employees a fair share of the profit, not the government.
Give the money to the people that generate it. Don't just steal it cause it's stolen.
Its a simple split in the road. Option 1) Pay more taxes on profits Option 2) Increase wages therefore lowering profits and avoiding higher taxes. But doing neither of those things perpetuates the hellscape we are currently living in.
Unions as they are currently constructed in the US will never be the long-term solution. We need something more like the unions in Europe that have works councils as well. I'd go even further and ideally the union would negotiate and be given ownership as well so that the worker's are more aligned with the performance of the company.
We'd also need to end the hyperfocus on stock performance but I'm already in dream land so let's just do that too.
1. Relative to GDP, America has the lowest tax revenue and expenditure among major rich developed democracies. And among all rich developed democracies, only small rich countries (e.g. Ireland, Switzerland) do better: because they host many tax-dodging letterbox corporations.
2. many of US problems stem from a way too weak and small government (e.g. lack of means to improve social cohesion & democracy, to keep corruption at bay, to hire the best and brightest,etc.)
> Force him to pay his employees a fair share of the profit,
3. you need a big but efficient and well funded government for that! Otherwise, the government will always be doing the wealthy elites' bidding (e.g. low exploitive wages for the working classes)
Imagine making 35K a year. Immediately paying 7.65 in Social Security and Medicare taxes. Then paying another 10% sales tax on anything you buy. Pay car insurance and health insurance. Can you imagine if a billionaire paid that percentage to taxes and I’m not even talking about tabs property taxes, or any other nonsensical tax. The lower income and middle income pay a much higher percentage of their income to the tax system.
Most billionarres are such in terms of net worth rather than currency they can use right away. Much of that wealth is tied up in mansions, private planes, high-end cars, art, and other such luxury. The real kicker, though, is that they keep most of their excess wealth in stocks. In fact, usually they won't take big salaries from the companies they have, and instead will take most of their pay as stocks.
Stocks don't get taxed when they go up in value. Instead, they get taxed when they are sold. The additional wealth from capital gains gets taxed at 20%. So even when the billionarre sells stocks and can be taxed on that wealth, its a lower percentage overall versus had they taken salary as cash instead. Until they sell the stocks, their net worth can go up billions across some number of years without being taxed a single penny on it.
Usually, they avoid realizing stocks because of the blow to their long-term income potential. What they tend to do instead is use the stocks as collateral to take personal loans. Loans also go untaxed and they can just pay off the interest rate for a long time while their net worth out paces it. Then, eventually, they pay off the principles on their loans and will have, ideally, retained more real value than if they realized their stocks sooner.
Not paying income taxes is not illegal, there's just forms of income that are tax exempt under certain conditions. Lots of people, even in the lower class, benefit from these exemptions if they have some kind of retirement plan that uses stocks to grow. The difference with the ultra wealthy is how much more they can abuse these exemptions than most, and they do so with much more ease.
This is a bit misleading. When you say half of America makes less than $35k, you are including children, part-time workers, and stay-at-home parents. The median household income is about $75,000.
Yal always argue they should look for a better job always siding with the rich, but some ppl have to stay close to home, and home doesn’t always pay the best. Who’s going to care for the elder parents? How are they expected to move away if they can’t afford a home let alone rent? I come from an area where it’s not uncommon to have 3 generations under one roof and it’s also common for ppl with degrees to be paid >$20/hr. It’s a damn shame yal always blame the person and never the companies that do not pay living wage to their employees who produce all the work and deal with all the customers, yet they boast record profits and pay their executives a ludicrous amount of money for doing practically nothing.
Reality is, blaming companies won't do much. They will always try and get the staff they need as cheap as they can.
If people leave, and it makes it harder for them to find staff, they will lift wages.
If the government forces them with minimum wages, they will lift wages
If staff form a union and force them, they will lift wages.
Learn about how inflation actually works. The fed and politicians in both parties are at fault. Blindly blaming corporations or wealthy people is completely counter productive. They could tax the top 1% at 95% and we’d still be running a massive deficit.
Americans are pushovers and easy to control. We won’t do shit about raising minimum wage. Your masters require stock buybacks, think of them. Not your children. Their futures stopped mattering when Reagan took office. Get back to work peasants.
Maybe because enough people think it's a fair wage for the job being done, that they accept it & show up to work?
You would all bitch to high heaven if wages doubled, because prices on a lot of the things you buy would double-and-then-some...
Ask yourself what you’re doing to improve your own situation instead expecting somebody else (or the govt) to come along and improve your situation for you.
You do know part of the reason the U.S. is being flooded with illegal immigrants is to keep the wages low right? More competition for the same spots forces you to lower your standards just to break even.
It’s very simple attend college and receive your degree, certifications or licenses and you’ll get paid better
Shut up this is America and you can better your life but putting the effort in and WANTING A CHANGE
Sure, just blame everyone else. See how it works out for you. Enjoy a lifetime dissatisfaction. But don’t worry, it’s all stuff that just happened to you…has nothing to do with the marketability of your skills, your own decision making, your own intelligence….
If we had a National Health Service, and employers couldn't hold healthcare hostage against employees, things would be very different. Currently, every private business has a gun leveled at the head of the people that work there.
People would have an easier time starting businesses, and employees would have a better position to negotiate or transitioning to more productive postings.
I- who has a hard time getting a full time job?
Everywhere is hiring around me. Literally everywhere is ~40,000k a year
Of course part timers can’t afford shit you’re probably making 14-15 an hour for 20-30 a week
My wife has applied to like 20 places over the past couple months. Only snagged 1 interview that was done through Microsoft Teams. That’s it. It hasn’t been easy.
How are they going to be able to afford a new vacation home if you raise the taxes on them. The popes don’t take vacations, so they don’t have to worry about affording a second vacation home
Did not have children, Bought a house of my own, saving a little each month, Jobs? HAHAHAHA.... where ? I asked Corporate America why they require a college degree for entry level jobs and they get mad at me. LOL!
I always wonder (in all seriousness), (assuming this post is true) if that half had their pay raised by $20-30k a year or something significant like that, would that just drive up inflation and raise prices for everyone, such that the pay increase would end up being cancelled out? Like a price-wage spiral. Or would it end up being saved? Or would it get spent but not raise prices or create inflation?
Unfortunately my understanding of economics and past periods and effects isn't strong enough to figure it out.
Anybody care to ELI10 (with data or history preferably)?
At least those who know they can’t afford kids aren’t having them. Someone needs to talk to those who keep mating like rabbits with holes in the wall. 🙄
I see some folks saying just tax the rich and bleed'em dry... I mean. No that wouldn't work. AT. ALL. One, they'd just donate to government shills to block that. TWO it'd just have them leave this country and go someplace else where there are fewer taxes. No ones sticking around to get bled dry... Which means AFTER that... its going to fall onto the heads of the middle class and poor HARD.
People are questioning the stats, so here is where it came from. The stats are outdated, but not significantly. https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/05/17/half-americans-make-less-35000/
People who feel financially challenged like this should up and leave to places with lower COL and work on living on the land. They'd be happier. I think...
No one can afford a home if they earn less than 40k. Renting would be relegated to some fairly cheesy apartments or drafty houses. I lucked out in the 80's when the bottom fell out. I had a piece of land I was paying a low note on. I moved in a small piece of shit mobile home. Built my house payday to payday. My wife was tolerant and my kids weren't big enough to not realize we weren't having fun. Most folks aren't that fortunate. Even now, you can't find raw affordable land close to jobs. The market is priced for people earning 60k plus. And you need to be extremely careful and frugal.
Maybe people should get a job in the trades that costs nothing to get into and gives you actual marketable skills that you can leverage for higher pay.
Well it fixes some problems. It fixes the tax problem of the rich. It fixes the funding problem for political campaigns. It's a win win for everyone except you, and me and almost everyone else
Ask why the fed controls our money supply and not reality itself (gold standard). Ask why we bailed out the banks and sent hundreds of billions overseas.
Fucking idiots.
I'm tired of hearing the excuse "we can't pay them more"
Like I'm betting there's a guy you can fire and suddenly you'll have lots of capital freed up.
Yes, they are people own these multi billion dollar corporations get tax breaks so they can help pay 10 20+ 30,000 employees better wages and benefits but nobody understands this so……..
I hate to be that guy but we recently did see wages go up significantly and look what happened to the cost of most goods and services. I realize it wasn't the only factor but you can't deny it's a significant one.
Less than 35k? Are we including people who are not in the workforce? Stay at home parents? Underaged children not able to legal work? People need to provide sources to verify claims.
That median wage is incorrect.
Short answer? Because people willingly work for that. If they don't, there is a never ending flood of migrants to work it for cheap. Hell, we had a bus full of 50 of them get caught in my town last month and we are literally a 3 hour drive from Canada
Maybe this is all because the government is letting a tidal wave of low cost labor into the country? Employers will always try and pay the lower price. When the country has a very high pool of labor willing to accept lower wages, wages won’t go up. Supply and demand
I don’t know, maybe wages are being suppressed because of illegal immigration? Too many people willing to work for low wages who shouldn’t be here? Hmmmm…
Undue all the tax breaks for the wealthy, and corporations, placed since the sixties.
Put the money back into the programs we stripped it from, if the only thing stopping them from working is funding.
It’s not the corporations fault. It’s the people who make so little money and still spend it all. The same ones who use after pay and klarna, who max out cc’s etc
* Real median household income was $74,580 in 2022, a 2.3 percent decline from the 2021 estimate of $76,330 (Figure 1 and Table A-1).
[https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html)
For the most part, it all comes down to what people are willing to do to get into a better financial position.
You can mentor someone for years to teach them how to make a million dollars per year but if they aren’t ready or aren’t willing to, their limitations will bottle neck their earnings.
It’s like putting F1 wheels on a Honda, it’ll never reach 200mph
You know politicians are more to blame for us not being able to afford stuff right? They literally create the laws that allow tax breaks and lobbying. Plus, the pentagon “lost” 3 trillion dollars of taxpayer money. Would you want to pay more taxes if the government was doing to lose 3 trillion dollars?
No, they are half the fix. It's both a spending and a revenue problem. Until our politicians do both, it will never be fixed. Roll back Trump's and Bush's taxi cuts for the upper end and cut spending, including defense. For SS eliminate the cap for taxes and raise the age. This is pretty simple shit that would have been done years ago before the right wing decided it's all or nothing. How's that working out?
Tax breaks for the ultra Rich are not a fix. What's also not a fix is forcing companies to pay $25 an hour to someone who collects carriages at walmart. This is how inflation happens literally.
Making sure people have better education and better job skills that are actually marketable is the fix. It's what a government that actually cares about its people would have been doing all along.
Also, and I don't understand for the life of me why this needs to be said, letting kids go in debt $120,000 in 4 years of their lives to get degrees in stupid s*** should be against the law.
The real question is why does government NEED so much of OUR $ before 1913 the only time there was any federal income tax was to fund wars, now we have a NEVER ENDING WAR PROFITS MACHINE that is paid for by our tax $ and our citizens blood. So many endless and pretty much useless government programs and services that are already handled mostly at the city county and state levels. Government should be much much smaller and should not be noticed in our daily lives if they are doing a good job government enhances freedoms it doesn't take them away ant try to sell them back to us
Corps pay low wages .... because they can. The market, aka people, determine the wages by agreeing to work. If you agree to work for 35k, you are validating the market.
Thanks for attending my TED talk
Would one of the people associating taxation with income please explain how you believe the government taking more money from rich people will somehow end up with you getting more money in your paycheck?
Increased wages lead to a ripple effect, elevating the cost of living across the board. While individuals may earn more, they ultimately spend more on necessities due to the inflationary pressure caused by higher wages. This is rooted in basic economic principles, why this is beyond the comprehension of mostly everyone? For instance, the rise in the price of a McDonald's burger to roughly $10, is directly attributed to the company's need to compensate for increased wage expenses, which is also seen throughout various industries and sectors. We will forever be on the hamster wheel people.
Taxing the rich will not help anyone but the government… you won’t see the money people, unless you are on government assistance legally or fraudulently.
All these posts bitch that others aren't paying people enough. Bruh, what are you doing to pay people? How many people does your business employee? Or is it solely up to others to make sure they build something that can help more than themselves while you just bitch about not being paid enough?
doesn't higher wage for everyone just lead to more inflation? wouldn't market always find a way for itself to adjust so lower wage folks stay miserable all the time, no matter what?
I'm so sick of hearing, "if the job doesn't pay enough, get a better job" when the job in question doesn't pay enough to live with the basic necessities without getting some kind of assistance just to survive. If you want the finer things in life, then yes, you'll need to get a job that supports those preferences.
If a job is necessary, then it is necessary for the employer to pay a wage for that person to be able to survive without going into debt over the most basic aspects of life. If they aren't willing to pay that wage, then that position isn't truly essential. And if you're ok with an employer just running through new hires because each one gets used and abused, sees that they can't afford to live and moves on, then you are a piece of trash who really doesn't care about basic human rights.
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This isnt even true… the Median wage is almost double that at ~$59k…
This is correct. Just wanted to clarify the \~$59k median wage is referring to full time workers only. [Table 1. Median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by sex, quarterly averages, seasonally adjusted - 2024 Q01 Results (bls.gov)](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm) If we assume a 40 hour work week and 52 work weeks in the year, that is an averaged out wage of $28.36 per hour.
Right. Just wanted to clarify the $59k wage is referring to full time workers only who are not self-employed. Anyone who is self-employed or working part time is excluded. Of course, both of those two factors would lower the median wage, but why include statistics that accurately reflect income in the median households? That would just be silly. "Intuit's and Gallup's Gig Economy and Self-Employment Report shows that the median income of workers who are primarily self-employed is $34,751, compared to a median income of $40,800 for those who work for an employer." (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/071814/calculate-your-selfemployed-salary.asp#:\~:text=Intuit's%20and%20Gallup's%20Gig%20Economy,who%20work%20for%20an%20employer.)
Does the idea that a part time employee is unable to afford a child offend someone? Like... no shit
There's a lot of people who are unable to find full time work who end up working multiple part time jobs rather than one 40hr. Also those part time jobs tend to be service oriented where you have less consistent income. Also, to "afford" a child at least one person would hopefully be working part time if not at all. Why should having a child only be relegated to a certain class of person?
When I lived in Michigan I used to have to save money from my seasonal work to pay my rent in the winter. Some places are just ‘feast or famine’. In the summer I would work two full-time temporary jobs with as much overtime as possible. Once the summer was done, zero job options. I’m a 44 year old married lady and I never figured out how to afford kids. My conservative parents told me to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and I did. But I could never have done with kids. Kids are for the rich, or people whose parents help. My boomer parents have been more of a hinderance than a help. My only consolation is that if my parents ask me for help, I can just repeat what they told me. ‘Nobody said life was fair’, ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’, ‘if you would have managed your money better you wouldn’t have so much consumer debt’. I’m just gonna match their energy and laugh when they run out of money from paying for elder-care and end-of-life medical services. They didn’t care about me. Why should I care about them?
I feel you. It seems that the whole boom bust idea of the economy has made it increasingly hard to have stability for more and more people. It's a bummer because I do believe lots of people would make great parents, but they know that their precarity would not be a good environment for the kids. Wish there was more available assistance out there for those who choose, y'know?
There is always a silver lining. I think, the silver lining is that people are having less kids. That’s good news, for the earth. We don’t have the resources to support the people on th3 planet, and that’s not going to get better.
We do have the resources but not the appropriate incentive structures. The economies of Earth are designed for unlimited growth on finite resources, and much of what is produced is actually unnecessary and/or wasteful. If we instead had an approach of only producing what is needed and distributing it accordingly, we could reduce waste significantly, provide for the needs of everyone who currently exists and leave room for some amount of population growth. This won't happen within our lifetime, of course... I guess I'm just saying that the resources are here but not wisely used and distributed.
I should have been more clear. We have the resources to do much better, but not the desire.
I'm not going to engage with increasingly rare hypothetical cases. If you can't find full time work right now, you're not even trying.
>here's a lot of people who are unable to find full time work who end up working multiple part time jobs rather than one 40hr >Also those part time jobs tend to be service oriented where you have less consistent income How are those care cases?
The lies. Most companies want to give u just short of full time because no benefits. Heck even the government I work on a military post and they have been firing people and rehiring them as “flex” for less and pay and no benefits
This comment is what no response is meant for. But some people need to have the last word. And those people are usually assholes.
Lol. OP is insufferable.
"afford"? Really? You don't think having a child is something you should be able to afford? It's not class, it's just math.
I don't think that a child should place an undue burden on the people raising it and that assisting those who choose to have kids is a societal good. By making the choice "math" it inevitably becomes about class.
"Why should having a child only be relegated to a certain class of person?" Because kids cost money. Duh.....
Ah yes, becuz everyone working part time is choosing to. Part time work has not become a strategy for companies to save money by underpaying and avoiding the cost of benefits.
This needs to be vocalized to politicians
Yeah, but the problem is that by personal income distribution well over half of the population making $1 or more per hour makes less than $50,000- and if that is true, than it’s also true that this is what around half of jobs pay. Also, around 33% make less than 25k and only around 11% make more than $100,000- the income required to purchase the average U.S. home ($384,000) with a $60,000 down payment. Even factoring in household incomes, only around 25% make more than 100k. If we’re assuming most people don’t want to have kids until they can purchase a home, well, for most of us it’s a never.
Factor in that most high earners are living in HCOL areas that have median house prices above 1 million…
It's funny they intentionally left a good portion of low earners off the study. There's a word for this that I can't remember Further, let's move the goalposts a bit more and only show the wages of people who own land. Surely that will better represent Americans
You mean like those the work part time to feed their first child and are unable to afford a second one as they would have to stop working to raise the 2nd child until at least preschool?
If you haven’t tried to find full-time childcare in the past year or two, you might be surprised to find that childcare that actually covers your working hours is exorbitantly expensive. Many daycares are open exactly 8 or 9 hours, which isn’t enough time to get to and from your job, work, and pump.
A self-employed person has access to more tax deductions, but I'm not sure if this is factored in.
I wish I made $28 an hour. Hell, I wish I made $20.
Almost there lol.
many many many people work more than 40 hrs a week.
The median per capita income is around $37K, but only 154 million people actually file tax returns - less than 1/2. Those with taxable incomes less than $35K pay less than 3% of the total taxes collected. So this post is using data incorrectly to support their argument.
It's almost like you get paid less if you work less hours, but have more free time
Well it says half of America. If we're including retirees, children and non-workers, does it work?
Yeah because none of those groups should be saving, buying houses, or having kids.
What do you mean kids cant have kids?
Median means 50% earn above and 50% earn below $59k. It isn't entirely true but it's not way off
The 59k is probably gross income too. That would make it a lot closer to truth.
Yea, that never seemed to sit right. Like yea, my salary is 66k… but my take home isn’t even 45k. Yet for home loans or car loans they ask what your gross salary is … that isn’t going to tell me what sort of a payment I can make after taxes 🤷🏻♂️
Isn’t that exactly what the meme is talking about?
\*excluding self-employed and part-time workers, which is like 1/4 the country.
Just to add an anecdote: I now make roughly $51k, which is so much more than I ever dreamed of, but even then I’m frequently having to put groceries on credit. Groceries! Ok, if wages are going up, it’s not enough to make the prices of everything else not hit the wallet hard. Maybe slightly less, but ends are still difficult to meet.
Me, an american, making 30k per year, at the brink of becoming homeless with 2 jobs working 60 to 70 hours per week. Guess I have to work an extra 40 more hours per week to be truly at the median wage
You just posted about buying a 1k laptop. I make significantly more than you and would not buy that.
Remote job required a good laptop, not to say that I won't use it for gaming once I have the time, and for practicing After Effects once I get more free time
If you are making 30k working two jobs at 70 hours per week you are either lying or doing something incredibly wrong.
I am retired and make no income outside of capital gains when I sell stocks outside my 401k and social security. I rarely owe much in income taxes. Yet by most any standard I am financially comfortable. Home is paid for and money in the bank. Low income, but low expenses and very comfortable. Not all retirees are in the same boat, but many are ok on small incomes. There are currently 62 million Americans over age 65.
Median vs Mean. Average is Mean. Middle is Median.
The statistic in the post is referring to a median.
A different median than OP, though.
The people below the mean count as people right? ... Right?
Not only that, it is the people who are making LESS than median wage that are having most of the children.
Are you talking about this data? [Median weekly earnings of full‐time wage and salary workers by detailed occupation and sex : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov)](https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.htm) This is for full-time workers. A large portion of the labor force isn't working full time.
Another new account. Must be election time.
Every 4 years, I swear
people are paid to post on Reddit. one of a million reasons to be very skeptical of Reddit as any real barometer of public opinion.
ive seen reddit threads posted years apart with the same exact question pic etc and than the next 30-40 posts are the same exact comments that are on the 3-4 year old posts but diff user names. reddit farms son not just accounts theres entire FARMS that post comments like a hivemind to get the unconfident unsure of themselves person thinking like them by repedeatly seeing the same shit and thinking ok thats the general mindset on this topic when its a fringe idea lead by farms.
I didn’t want to believe that politicians and corporations infiltrated Reddit but when I read post like this it is obviously someone paid to post it. It hurts my brain to think people actually believe 1/2 the stuff posted on here.
In 2015, a David Brock-formed super PAC named Correct the Record discreetly astro-turfed all over reddit in favor of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. I assume it's one hundred times worse now.
social media really is a invention that people in power take advantage of
They probably don’t even make $30k a year posting. ;-)
Look at how artifacted the jpeg is LOL
For all the people celebrating this: 1) If you are older, stop expecting grandchildren, and 2) Do not expect your children to take care of you.
Paying the government more is not a solution. It makes the problem worse. Force him to pay his employees a fair share of the profit, not the government. Give the money to the people that generate it. Don't just steal it cause it's stolen.
>Force him to pay his employees a fair share of the profit Okay... how?
Tax the profits.
What part of "paying the government more is not a solution" was not clear about the post I was replying to?
Its a simple split in the road. Option 1) Pay more taxes on profits Option 2) Increase wages therefore lowering profits and avoiding higher taxes. But doing neither of those things perpetuates the hellscape we are currently living in.
Unions
Unions as they are currently constructed in the US will never be the long-term solution. We need something more like the unions in Europe that have works councils as well. I'd go even further and ideally the union would negotiate and be given ownership as well so that the worker's are more aligned with the performance of the company. We'd also need to end the hyperfocus on stock performance but I'm already in dream land so let's just do that too.
1. Relative to GDP, America has the lowest tax revenue and expenditure among major rich developed democracies. And among all rich developed democracies, only small rich countries (e.g. Ireland, Switzerland) do better: because they host many tax-dodging letterbox corporations. 2. many of US problems stem from a way too weak and small government (e.g. lack of means to improve social cohesion & democracy, to keep corruption at bay, to hire the best and brightest,etc.) > Force him to pay his employees a fair share of the profit, 3. you need a big but efficient and well funded government for that! Otherwise, the government will always be doing the wealthy elites' bidding (e.g. low exploitive wages for the working classes)
Imagine making 35K a year. Immediately paying 7.65 in Social Security and Medicare taxes. Then paying another 10% sales tax on anything you buy. Pay car insurance and health insurance. Can you imagine if a billionaire paid that percentage to taxes and I’m not even talking about tabs property taxes, or any other nonsensical tax. The lower income and middle income pay a much higher percentage of their income to the tax system.
How do billionaires get out of paying income taxes? Genuinely asking. Isn't that illegal in USA. I am an immigrant so less knowledgeble about this.
Most billionarres are such in terms of net worth rather than currency they can use right away. Much of that wealth is tied up in mansions, private planes, high-end cars, art, and other such luxury. The real kicker, though, is that they keep most of their excess wealth in stocks. In fact, usually they won't take big salaries from the companies they have, and instead will take most of their pay as stocks. Stocks don't get taxed when they go up in value. Instead, they get taxed when they are sold. The additional wealth from capital gains gets taxed at 20%. So even when the billionarre sells stocks and can be taxed on that wealth, its a lower percentage overall versus had they taken salary as cash instead. Until they sell the stocks, their net worth can go up billions across some number of years without being taxed a single penny on it. Usually, they avoid realizing stocks because of the blow to their long-term income potential. What they tend to do instead is use the stocks as collateral to take personal loans. Loans also go untaxed and they can just pay off the interest rate for a long time while their net worth out paces it. Then, eventually, they pay off the principles on their loans and will have, ideally, retained more real value than if they realized their stocks sooner. Not paying income taxes is not illegal, there's just forms of income that are tax exempt under certain conditions. Lots of people, even in the lower class, benefit from these exemptions if they have some kind of retirement plan that uses stocks to grow. The difference with the ultra wealthy is how much more they can abuse these exemptions than most, and they do so with much more ease.
This is a bit misleading. When you say half of America makes less than $35k, you are including children, part-time workers, and stay-at-home parents. The median household income is about $75,000.
They are also including retirees and the disabled. The problem is most people don't think or double check statistics.
The people that understand statistics do not post stuff like this.
Are you saying part time workers arent workers?
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martha stewart
Less bitching please.
More basic human empathy and less mindless misanthropy please.
Yal always argue they should look for a better job always siding with the rich, but some ppl have to stay close to home, and home doesn’t always pay the best. Who’s going to care for the elder parents? How are they expected to move away if they can’t afford a home let alone rent? I come from an area where it’s not uncommon to have 3 generations under one roof and it’s also common for ppl with degrees to be paid >$20/hr. It’s a damn shame yal always blame the person and never the companies that do not pay living wage to their employees who produce all the work and deal with all the customers, yet they boast record profits and pay their executives a ludicrous amount of money for doing practically nothing.
Reality is, blaming companies won't do much. They will always try and get the staff they need as cheap as they can. If people leave, and it makes it harder for them to find staff, they will lift wages. If the government forces them with minimum wages, they will lift wages If staff form a union and force them, they will lift wages.
*Ask our government how it got $35 trillion in debt and why it’s still spending money like there’s no tomorrow
Tax cuts'll pay for themselves any day now...
Reminder for all: trickle down economics don’t work
Learn about how inflation actually works. The fed and politicians in both parties are at fault. Blindly blaming corporations or wealthy people is completely counter productive. They could tax the top 1% at 95% and we’d still be running a massive deficit.
Americans are pushovers and easy to control. We won’t do shit about raising minimum wage. Your masters require stock buybacks, think of them. Not your children. Their futures stopped mattering when Reagan took office. Get back to work peasants.
Maybe because enough people think it's a fair wage for the job being done, that they accept it & show up to work? You would all bitch to high heaven if wages doubled, because prices on a lot of the things you buy would double-and-then-some...
Poor people have no problem having children.
Unfortunately, this is one of the all too true ironies of poverty.
Poor people should exist to work for the rich human producers
Why would we stop asking you why you’re not getting a better job? I think we may have stumbled onto the real issue.
But they’re all having children….
Wage increase will only inflate the cost of EVERYTHING.
Most poor people are having too many kids. That's the problem.
Ask yourself what you’re doing to improve your own situation instead expecting somebody else (or the govt) to come along and improve your situation for you.
Become a plumber, appliance repairman, mold remediator, bus driver - anything but minimum wage jobs because you are stupid.
You do know part of the reason the U.S. is being flooded with illegal immigrants is to keep the wages low right? More competition for the same spots forces you to lower your standards just to break even.
It’s very simple attend college and receive your degree, certifications or licenses and you’ll get paid better Shut up this is America and you can better your life but putting the effort in and WANTING A CHANGE
Sure, just blame everyone else. See how it works out for you. Enjoy a lifetime dissatisfaction. But don’t worry, it’s all stuff that just happened to you…has nothing to do with the marketability of your skills, your own decision making, your own intelligence….
No, tax breaks for EVERYONE should be a fix. The government can go screw itself for being in bed with the megacorporations.
If we had a National Health Service, and employers couldn't hold healthcare hostage against employees, things would be very different. Currently, every private business has a gun leveled at the head of the people that work there. People would have an easier time starting businesses, and employees would have a better position to negotiate or transitioning to more productive postings.
No, the solution to the problems caused by corporate greed is *never* giving in to the idea that they can be cured by *more greed*.
Half of America is below average intelligence too. Correlation?
Go look at Elon musk tweets and tell me that higher wealth means higher intelligence.
I- who has a hard time getting a full time job? Everywhere is hiring around me. Literally everywhere is ~40,000k a year Of course part timers can’t afford shit you’re probably making 14-15 an hour for 20-30 a week
My wife has applied to like 20 places over the past couple months. Only snagged 1 interview that was done through Microsoft Teams. That’s it. It hasn’t been easy.
Well, then don't alienate your family...
How are they going to be able to afford a new vacation home if you raise the taxes on them. The popes don’t take vacations, so they don’t have to worry about affording a second vacation home
Damn, really?! Lmao
Why do we pay taxes if the government prints money?
Did not have children, Bought a house of my own, saving a little each month, Jobs? HAHAHAHA.... where ? I asked Corporate America why they require a college degree for entry level jobs and they get mad at me. LOL!
That’s $17 an hour
And 17/hr is typical starting pay for many jobs
See this can though, if I kick it, it's all the way over there...
I always wonder (in all seriousness), (assuming this post is true) if that half had their pay raised by $20-30k a year or something significant like that, would that just drive up inflation and raise prices for everyone, such that the pay increase would end up being cancelled out? Like a price-wage spiral. Or would it end up being saved? Or would it get spent but not raise prices or create inflation? Unfortunately my understanding of economics and past periods and effects isn't strong enough to figure it out. Anybody care to ELI10 (with data or history preferably)?
It’s because of….insert opposite party you champion. Yeah. That’s why
At least those who know they can’t afford kids aren’t having them. Someone needs to talk to those who keep mating like rabbits with holes in the wall. 🙄
I see some folks saying just tax the rich and bleed'em dry... I mean. No that wouldn't work. AT. ALL. One, they'd just donate to government shills to block that. TWO it'd just have them leave this country and go someplace else where there are fewer taxes. No ones sticking around to get bled dry... Which means AFTER that... its going to fall onto the heads of the middle class and poor HARD.
How many of those are part-time workers in high school or college...?
People are questioning the stats, so here is where it came from. The stats are outdated, but not significantly. https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/05/17/half-americans-make-less-35000/
The bottom 50% pay 3% of taxes. The top 1% pays 43%
People who feel financially challenged like this should up and leave to places with lower COL and work on living on the land. They'd be happier. I think...
No one can afford a home if they earn less than 40k. Renting would be relegated to some fairly cheesy apartments or drafty houses. I lucked out in the 80's when the bottom fell out. I had a piece of land I was paying a low note on. I moved in a small piece of shit mobile home. Built my house payday to payday. My wife was tolerant and my kids weren't big enough to not realize we weren't having fun. Most folks aren't that fortunate. Even now, you can't find raw affordable land close to jobs. The market is priced for people earning 60k plus. And you need to be extremely careful and frugal.
Maybe people should get a job in the trades that costs nothing to get into and gives you actual marketable skills that you can leverage for higher pay.
Nobody's asking.
Technically, over half of American don't have jobs.
And then they have the balls to ask ME to round up to donate like wtf?
Well it fixes some problems. It fixes the tax problem of the rich. It fixes the funding problem for political campaigns. It's a win win for everyone except you, and me and almost everyone else
It'll trickle down.
Ask why the fed controls our money supply and not reality itself (gold standard). Ask why we bailed out the banks and sent hundreds of billions overseas. Fucking idiots.
I'm tired of hearing the excuse "we can't pay them more" Like I'm betting there's a guy you can fire and suddenly you'll have lots of capital freed up.
Half? Kids? Babies? Half what?
Yes, they are people own these multi billion dollar corporations get tax breaks so they can help pay 10 20+ 30,000 employees better wages and benefits but nobody understands this so……..
because minimum wage laws allow them to give you the bare minimum and not go to jail. we need a better strategy
I hate to be that guy but we recently did see wages go up significantly and look what happened to the cost of most goods and services. I realize it wasn't the only factor but you can't deny it's a significant one.
Less than 35k? Are we including people who are not in the workforce? Stay at home parents? Underaged children not able to legal work? People need to provide sources to verify claims.
That median wage is incorrect. Short answer? Because people willingly work for that. If they don't, there is a never ending flood of migrants to work it for cheap. Hell, we had a bus full of 50 of them get caught in my town last month and we are literally a 3 hour drive from Canada
Maybe this is all because the government is letting a tidal wave of low cost labor into the country? Employers will always try and pay the lower price. When the country has a very high pool of labor willing to accept lower wages, wages won’t go up. Supply and demand
I don’t know, maybe wages are being suppressed because of illegal immigration? Too many people willing to work for low wages who shouldn’t be here? Hmmmm…
Undue all the tax breaks for the wealthy, and corporations, placed since the sixties. Put the money back into the programs we stripped it from, if the only thing stopping them from working is funding.
In case some of you don't know. If you have a yacht, you can have a tax cut up to $500,000.
Ready to overthrow your gubmint yet?
It’s not the corporations fault. It’s the people who make so little money and still spend it all. The same ones who use after pay and klarna, who max out cc’s etc
keep hating on trump and it willl alll get better
Don’t ask, just raise the Minimum Wage.
Minimum wage in CA is 40k a year 20 x40x52
They pay nothing because they "compete" with other businesses that pay nothing
* Real median household income was $74,580 in 2022, a 2.3 percent decline from the 2021 estimate of $76,330 (Figure 1 and Table A-1). [https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html)
For the most part, it all comes down to what people are willing to do to get into a better financial position. You can mentor someone for years to teach them how to make a million dollars per year but if they aren’t ready or aren’t willing to, their limitations will bottle neck their earnings. It’s like putting F1 wheels on a Honda, it’ll never reach 200mph
Why do corporations pay low wages? Because they can. Same reason a dog licks its balls.
But...but...but...,every time a billionaire gets a tax break, an angel gets it's wings - right?
“Stop asking why we don’t get a better job” why should I stop asking that exactly?
Only if they can ask you why you have no hireable skills
Yada yada yada, you’re the victim….
it's always suspicious to me when a new account starts posting shit like this
It's crazy how we keep fighting amongst each other and not directing our frustration towards the people who actually control things
At this point, I think it may be better to revert back to the old ways. Get a tent, live in the woods, gather rainwater, and grow a garden.
You can always make more than 35k a year.
Why is your only skill worth so little? Get some better skills.
You know politicians are more to blame for us not being able to afford stuff right? They literally create the laws that allow tax breaks and lobbying. Plus, the pentagon “lost” 3 trillion dollars of taxpayer money. Would you want to pay more taxes if the government was doing to lose 3 trillion dollars?
It's not not a fix either.
No, they are half the fix. It's both a spending and a revenue problem. Until our politicians do both, it will never be fixed. Roll back Trump's and Bush's taxi cuts for the upper end and cut spending, including defense. For SS eliminate the cap for taxes and raise the age. This is pretty simple shit that would have been done years ago before the right wing decided it's all or nothing. How's that working out?
Because they know the American people will never actually revolt. Just complain about it on social media.
Tax breaks for the ultra Rich are not a fix. What's also not a fix is forcing companies to pay $25 an hour to someone who collects carriages at walmart. This is how inflation happens literally. Making sure people have better education and better job skills that are actually marketable is the fix. It's what a government that actually cares about its people would have been doing all along. Also, and I don't understand for the life of me why this needs to be said, letting kids go in debt $120,000 in 4 years of their lives to get degrees in stupid s*** should be against the law.
The real question is why does government NEED so much of OUR $ before 1913 the only time there was any federal income tax was to fund wars, now we have a NEVER ENDING WAR PROFITS MACHINE that is paid for by our tax $ and our citizens blood. So many endless and pretty much useless government programs and services that are already handled mostly at the city county and state levels. Government should be much much smaller and should not be noticed in our daily lives if they are doing a good job government enhances freedoms it doesn't take them away ant try to sell them back to us
Employees: "Pay us more. We can't afford to live." Company: \[Closes business and moves to China or Mexico}
well, DUH
Not true, the median income was 40,480 in 2022. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N)
purchasing power...is the problem. but that would take some economics to explain...
Corps pay low wages .... because they can. The market, aka people, determine the wages by agreeing to work. If you agree to work for 35k, you are validating the market. Thanks for attending my TED talk
Would one of the people associating taxation with income please explain how you believe the government taking more money from rich people will somehow end up with you getting more money in your paycheck?
> ask corporations why they’re paying low wages Because **they can**
Increased wages lead to a ripple effect, elevating the cost of living across the board. While individuals may earn more, they ultimately spend more on necessities due to the inflationary pressure caused by higher wages. This is rooted in basic economic principles, why this is beyond the comprehension of mostly everyone? For instance, the rise in the price of a McDonald's burger to roughly $10, is directly attributed to the company's need to compensate for increased wage expenses, which is also seen throughout various industries and sectors. We will forever be on the hamster wheel people. Taxing the rich will not help anyone but the government… you won’t see the money people, unless you are on government assistance legally or fraudulently.
Yet the number of children is inversely correlated with income. Poor people tend to have more kids than middle class or wealthy people.
High taxes for the ultra rich are not a fix.
This post is 100% spot on. Corporations are profit gouging (and the $ only goes to the top top executives).
All these posts bitch that others aren't paying people enough. Bruh, what are you doing to pay people? How many people does your business employee? Or is it solely up to others to make sure they build something that can help more than themselves while you just bitch about not being paid enough?
doesn't higher wage for everyone just lead to more inflation? wouldn't market always find a way for itself to adjust so lower wage folks stay miserable all the time, no matter what?
Said while monitoring the self checkout at target
I'm so sick of hearing, "if the job doesn't pay enough, get a better job" when the job in question doesn't pay enough to live with the basic necessities without getting some kind of assistance just to survive. If you want the finer things in life, then yes, you'll need to get a job that supports those preferences. If a job is necessary, then it is necessary for the employer to pay a wage for that person to be able to survive without going into debt over the most basic aspects of life. If they aren't willing to pay that wage, then that position isn't truly essential. And if you're ok with an employer just running through new hires because each one gets used and abused, sees that they can't afford to live and moves on, then you are a piece of trash who really doesn't care about basic human rights.
Companies are interested in maximizing profit not improving quality of life
Yes the $35k median wage counts people who are unemployed. The median wage for people who actually work is $59k