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could be that the location these folks are posting from are major cities. in nyc, manhattan, fast food is making $15 an hour , as well as other entry level work. the masses are probably making in between $28000 to $72000. one thing that is not realized is expenses and how it eats away at a salary. renting is expensive and eats up more than 30 percent of ones salary, and that is outside of manhattan! these salaries and expenses are why that $20 per hour salary still leaves one at poverty levels.
A head of house hold, in NYC 5 boros, needs to generate about $100000 in take home pay to live comfortable, somewhat "realistic" middle class lifestyle. this realistic lifestyle means owning a car, living in a comfortable home, saving money, having some luxuries, ability to vacation once a year. Its hard to live this way at $20 per hour around my neck of the woods.
Going thru the threads in the work forum it seems job 20 bucks or so per hr is poverty wages. Reality is most people don't make 20 hr out there. Are most of you 100k a year and up? 20 bucks is a good wage to me. I am not ashamed to say this. I have a feeling a lot of people posting here are bull@#$% about their wages or stuck up looking down on the masses.
What is the point of your post? To make you feel better about making $20.00 an hour?
For me, a rich person is someone who makes 150K + annually.
That's roughly 10% of the American public.
Perhaps they are over-represented in this work-employment sub-forum, but I doubt that the vast
majority are rich
I'm in the New York City metro area. No one with a gross family income of $150K a year would say they are rich. That is average adjusted gross income for many zip codes within the area. No one making $150K a year as a gross income would claim they are rich either. If you are making $75K a year, the idea of making $150K a year seems like a huge deal. It improves some things, but it isn't like you are living the life styles of the rich and famous.
"Rich" is very contextual. I live in a very expensive area of the country. I just figured out what my meager salary (on which I support a family of 5) is per hour (assuming I really only worked 40 hours a week- ha!). It's $21/hour (I'm salaried, so the reality is much less since I never work "only" 40 hours a week). Rent alone runs me $2400/month, never mind utilities and food and any other expenses. It's not a great salary compared to most of the people in my area. If I were still living in rural NM (where I used to make less than half this and lived better), this would be a fine salary.
The job market is tough. There aren't enough good jobs out there, and it does take time, smiles and a bit of luck to land them.
Don't hate the posters on this forum. Yes, some are obnoxious jerks, others are genuinely trying to help by describing how things work. I try to be among that second group by making positive, useful posts.
A friend of a friend moved to the area years ago, in a very expensive neighborhood. He was able to live there because the developer who bought it wanted to rent it for a year, tear it down and built a mcMansion. This guy who came from another state who lived in a middle class neighbor felt uncomfortable there. He and his kids complained that people were snooty to them. That isn't true though. He wanted to move out of the neighbor badly because he told his son, "You don't want to go to school here driving an old car while all your friends at school are driving BMWs and Mercedes".
That was the problem right there. It bothered him because of the wealth of others. No one was looking down at him or said a thing to him. He just felt out of place. It was also a gross exaggeration of the wealth of others there. The school parking lot wasn't packed with BMWs and Mercedes.
I don't recall anyone here looking down at anyone else on the forums claiming they were rich. I do recall people trying to offer suggestions for people to improve their situations. But if people are going to get stuck into thinking that everyone is doing better because they either got the money and job through luck or because of someone they know, then they are going to be resentful of people advising them to go to college and work hard on their own time to improve their situation and succeed.
Thank you. I have noticed this for a very long time. Many people here do seem to 1) lie about what they earn and 2) criticize or make snark comments towards people who earn lower salaries. But notice, if you ask those same posters what they do for a living, they won't exactly tell you. That's because they don't want you to know.
Statistically, only about 5% of Americans earn 100K a year or more. That means about 95% earn less. It couldn't be possible that everyone here is making a lot of money, as they claim they are.
I don't know where you are getting your numbers, but here are facts:
Quote:
One half, 49.98%, of all income in the US was earned by households with an income over $100,000, the top twenty percent. Over one quarter, 28.5%, of all income was earned by the top 8%, those households earning more than $150,000 a year. The top 3.65%, with incomes over $200,000, earned 17.5%.
Well as far as schools go, I don't know any teachers who have any time at all to post online during the day.
I do. Many I see post on Facebook are K-12 instructors and college professors and they post during the day time. Why should we care? How is that any different than someone at a corporate job spending time on the phone talking to a friend about their golf game?
I think OP has a point. Cyber world and real world are vastly different. Cyber world.... nobody eats at McDonalds, or shops at Walmart, only drinks expensive craft beers, too sophisticated for domestic beer, proudly proclaim they never speed, etc. But my favorite cyber world comment is "A million dollars really isn't a lot of money."
At one time, with a million dollars you could retire instantly and take care of your family and extended family with that. Now, a million dollars in the NYC metro area won't even allow you to buy many homes. And in Manhattan the last figure I heard is that the average home sale was $1.7M. So yeah, in this context, a million dollars isn't a lot of money. But anyone talks about retiring to a so-called cheap area like in the Midwest, there is barely a town I've seen on realtor.com that didn't have very expensive homes too. Doesn't mean you don't have to buy them, but the days of the most expensive house in a small town not being more than $80K are very over.
With a million dollars years ago, you could put it in a CD (certificate of deposit) in a bank and get 10% return on that. That's $100K a year! Now you can only get 2% on that in a jumbo CD, that's only $20K. You could retire now on $100K, but the idea of living on $20K gross income isn't attractive.
If you did visit this board you would come back with the following feedback posts:
1. Theres plenty of great paying 6 figure jobs out there
2. Its easy to quit your job and find a great one in a few weeks.
3. Everyone is getting promoted through meritocracy. Nepotism/Cronyism doesn't exist. Its some "pie in the sky" theory
Maybe its true but not from the corporate world Ive seen the past 8-10 years.
1. depends on where you live
2. depends on the skills you have and what the demand is
3. this is hit or miss. Depends on your industry, the company and your skills. Sometimes the best way to get promoted is to move to a new job.
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