Poverty Levels are UpFollow

If you make $8/hr you're actually taking home about $5 of that. You're probably not working 50 hours a week because no one wants to pay overtime for hourly wage workers, so let's call it 40 hrs/week.

5x40 = 200 x 4 = 800/month, or $9600/yr.

Underemployment is as big a problem as unemployment; we just don't have the same set of statistics to compare. But I think we can all pretty much agree that $800 a month is not going to cover rent/mortgage, food, transportation, insurance in the average market.

Samira,

How many people do you personally know that work 50+ hours and only make 800$ a month, college kids don't count. The point is people that are actually working while they may not be making what they think they're worth they are able to make enough to cover the necessities: food/shelter/clothing/transportation. You work those long hours and instead of going home to a beer and tv take a class learn something to improve your marketability. Of course this may mean you have to lay off the sauce a while.

Varus

Draco,



Dumbass most small businessmen, at least smart ones, don't just take their own money they get loans from a bank. So if the business fails they're not SOL.




Cry me a river...In any business venture the level of risk directly relates to the level of success. The point with commy bastards like you is you think the world owes you something and the government should provide it for you. That's why the U.S.A is the greatest country in the history of the world. The average person here can work his *** off and actually has the chance to pull himself up to a different social class. I lived in germany a year and you know what I saw...a real short work week, a lot of drinking, and miniature cars. And playing ball I saw quite a bit of that from city to city. Keep on calling the U.S. and capitalism a failure and keep your little cars for your little d*cks to yourselfs. I'll take my f150 and squash your little pinto wannabe.




So are you mad that someone elses relatives or family has been successful and yours were dumbasses and lazy to boot? You know how I look at the extremely wealthy? I see that they have something I want so I'll emulate the process to which they attained what they have. Jealousy over success never made anyone any wealthy.

Varus


Edited, Thu Aug 26 16:44:35 2004 by varrussword

You're the one who brought up the $8/hr figure, there, bucko. I just pointed out some of the more obvious flaws in your reasoning.

You can have that for free.

Thats not exactly true from a cost perspective.There are many other costs that are absorbed into an employee output vs input. That is why many companies that do not have cost accoutants go under because they don't know jack **** about cost analysis and pricing.

Fig,

What I posted was as general an outlay as you can get. The whole point was that people that work over 50 hours a week rarely, if ever, just make 8g's a year. People that work may spend beyond their means but no ones forcing them to buy those pacs of cigs or 12 packs of beers on a daily basis.

Varus

Draco,

You don't know what being broke is. My parents had 3 boys all within a year of each other just out of high school. While my mom's family was lower middle class my dads family came straight out of the ghetto's of LA, he was one of those kids you saw in the streets breaking sh*t during the riots back in the 60's. I've never been given anything in my life except the chance to work for what I want. I was a short white boy living in neighborhoods where stabbings and shootings were common. You know what we did to keep out of trouble, play basketball, which eventually provided the oppurtunity to get to college. The point is I don't begrudge those that have achieved a great lvl of success financially. Who cares if they inherited it or not? Wouldn't you like to think you could work your as* off so that your family never had to worry about money again? According to you everyone should begin from the same point in life. This is just doublespeak for people that are looking for an excuse to fail because they can't, or don't want to, deal with the reality that whatever they try they may fail at. As an athlete one thing I learned was to keep shooting the ball even if I missed every shot. I knew that I wasn't going to hit any if I didn't shoot it. And by the time my younger bro and I were senior/junior in high school we had built a basketball program that packed a 4000 seat stadium almost every game, ranked 4th in the state of TX at a major 4A school. I digress, the point is that no one starts off winning or being successful that's something you have to work for and once achieved you know what you're made of.

Varus

Jophed,

You are a sad little man.

Varus

I do believe that's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me.

Are we dating now?

Varus, you're an *******. And an ignorant ******* at that.

Not everyone who works hard is succesful. There's plenty of people who try and try to "pull themselves up by their boot straps," and are never able to. That's the systems fault.

Shh!

No! don't argue just listen weasle ****.

As far as your assinine arguement that they have no one to blame but themselves. That just goes to show you have no concept of the ideal of government. Government is there to protect the poeple who make it up. And that doesn't just mean military you beligerant *** pirate.

The point is that in a country this rich, NO ONE should be living in poverty. Not even "lazy liberals." And especially not their children who CANT WORK CAUSE THEY'RE TOO YOUNG. You monkey fluck *** monger.

If you can't see that this country has some serious issues with its wealth distribution then you're an even bigger moran then I thought when I first found this site.

The problem isn't people getting rich, that's fine, the problem is that this country is turning into a cast society where the poor are raised in such a way that it is near impossible for them to succeed, and even if they have oportunities, the education in poor areas doesn't prepare them to take advantage.

Seriously. Do you think its possible that EVERY SINGLE poor person also happens to be lazy? You idiot.

As far as you being such a beacon to society, while it was a couple years ago I seem to remember basketball players in College, and most of them were pretty stupid, and they actually didn't have to work because everything was provided for them. You mean to tell me you played basketball and they didn't give you a bunch of **** for free? and you didn't get free room and board? and they didn't find a cush high paying job for some alumni while you attended?

You have no real perspective on this issue Varus, I can tell by the stupid **** you say that you're full of it.

Lets say I make 8 dollars and hour

Don't you think that's a little optimistic considering your skill set?

BS. Do you live in California? A bit less then two years ago, I was renting a 2bd/2ba condo in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in San Diego (one of the most expensive places to live in the country), for 1350/month. That's at the very low end of that 1200-2000 scale you listed. Unless you're going to tell me that rentals in Del Mar are at the low end?

You can *easily* find appartments to rent for 600/month for a 1br, or 900ish for 2br. You just wont live in the best part of town. If you want, I'll grab a paper tomorrow and start reading off listings for you. Those numbers are probably the range if you live in the "best" neighborhoods in the most expensive parts of town. They are not a minimum at all.

Guess what? If you're making minimum wage, you can't afford to live in the most expensive part of town. Shocker, I know.



Where did you learn math? First off, there are 40 hours in a week, and 52 weeks in a year. That means that before taxes *one* person making minimum wage will earn $10,712. Not two people. One.

Someone making minimum wage pays nowhere near 30% of their income in taxes. IIRC from when I did earn that much, they usually took out about 700 in taxes during the year, and I usually got a couple hundred of it back. The real federal tax rate at that bracket is probably closer to 5-8%.

2 people making minimum wage would then be making somewhere around 20k after taxes. You can certainly afford a 2br place, and an old beater, and the cheap insurance and registration that comes with an old beater, on that much money.

You'll live in a crappy neighborhood, and have a crappy car, and not a whole lot of luxuries but you *can* manage with that much. It wont be comfortable, but then again, that's *minimum* wage. It's amazing how many of my friends (and myself) managed to get buy earning near minimum wages at various jobs when we were in our early 20s, and not one of us starved to death! Yup. It's a miracle. Alert the media...


The problem is that minimum wage is not intended to be a "career wage". You aren't supposed to be supporting a family on 5.15 an hour. I'm not going to get into a discussion about uneducated people with minimal job skills getting pregnant and trying to raise families (cause that would be a whole nother topic all by itself), but that's usually where people are starting from when they talk about minimum wages being too low.

Minimum wage is the amount of pay a high school kid should expect to make when he starts a new job. It's something that you pay totally unskilled people who can't do anything more tasking then standing in front of a fry-o-lator and waiting for a timer to tell them when to do something. I'm sorry, but if you can't develop any skills more valuable to the workplace then that, then what the heck do you expect?


And if your ***** is about a lack of jobs for people who do have skills, then address that point. Raising minimum wage doesn't fix that problem. It just masks it. If our objective is to provide opportunity for people, then making the minimum higher doesn't really do it. It just makes the value of "mediocre" a bit higher is all.



As to the poverty levels. I'm curious. Were the article and the chart mentioned later from the same source? It's just that I've seen a lot of different methods of measuring poverty. Some based it on relative cost per living and include numbers of people supported (like the chart). Others just take a blanket look at the economy as a whole by taking a number 20% lower then the median income and declaring all incomes lower then that to be below the poverty line. Which was used in the "poverty rate went up" calculation would be useful to know.