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Exactly. People used to be able to live on minimum wage, rent used to be affordable. That's just not the case anymore.
In Tucson, AZ one can find a studio apt for under $500 a month. Working full time at $11 the minimum you could net about $1400 a month and live on that.
Minimum wage has always been entry level food service and retail jobs and unskilled labor jobs. I remember when I was in high school and early years of college back around 1982. Minimum wage was $3.35 an hour. Full time that is barely $100 a week take home. You could live on it if you were still living at home or if you were an immigrant living with 10 others in an apartment. A studio apartment at that time where I lived was about $300-$400 a month.
Read the thread. It situation has nothing to do with Fortnite subscriptions. My goodness people.....
Thisthread reminds me that there are a lot of people out here who don't understand basic finance and are just regurgitating nonsense they've been fed by rich people about why poor people are poor.
If they just did the math, they'd see the numbers don't work. And it has nothing to do with smartphones or TVs.
In Tucson, AZ one can find a studio apt for under $500 a month. Working full time at $11 the minimum you could net about $1400 a month and live on that.
Minimum wage has always been entry level food service and retail jobs and unskilled labor jobs. I remember when I was in high school and early years of college back around 1982. Minimum wage was $3.35 an hour. Full time that is barely $100 a week take home. You could live on it if you were still living at home or if you were an immigrant living with 10 others in an apartment. A studio apartment at that time where I lived was about $300-$400 a month.
Lol... Did you forget about a thing called taxes? You'd be left with less than $1000 for the month. Health insurance? Savings? Groceries? Utilities? Transportation? Did you forget about everything am adult has to pay for?
If you feel that way about min wage jobs then how about an age cap on it -- no one over 25 can work MW jobs. What do you think wild happen after this dumb law got passed?
In Tucson, AZ one can find a studio apt for under $500 a month. Working full time at $11 the minimum you could net about $1400 a month and live on that.
Minimum wage has always been entry level food service and retail jobs and unskilled labor jobs. I remember when I was in high school and early years of college back around 1982. Minimum wage was $3.35 an hour. Full time that is barely $100 a week take home. You could live on it if you were still living at home or if you were an immigrant living with 10 others in an apartment. A studio apartment at that time where I lived was about $300-$400 a month.
My Irish neighbor was one of 10 kids...all lived in the same room (house had three rooms).
I'm sure they used lots of social and church (catholic) free stuff.
He's a multi-millionaire now.
My wife and I had children before we knew anything about affording them. I happen to think that's a natural way to go, but whatever floats your boat. The great generations we are talking about (single income families) didn't wait until they had 100K in the bank and a nice house before having children.
This is a social subject and has absolutely zero to do with why wages are almost 1/2 of what they were in many places (adjusted for inflation). If we adjust for productivity, they are even vastly lower.
I agree with much of your post, but the first part is sketchy. For example getting assistance from the church was not the same as taking government handouts, and most prideful people (including the Irish) would not do it unless desperate. Even then there were cases of them paying the money back once they got on their feet.
As to the outlier of a rags to riches story, most people who take social welfare do not become millionaires unless they hit the lottery.
I do agree however that many people in the past made due with one income, not worrying about having a large sum of money before having kids. Today there are too many career oriented people, many of which are women, thus the delay in having kids.
BTW - I thought you were a female poster, yet you said my wife and I. So what gives
Luxuries to grandpa were multiple new or late model cars (when just one got to work), expensive vacations, deluxe cable packages, the interne, expensive smart phones, eating out at restaurants very frequently, etc.
This question is not specific to the US, but if capitalism brings so much wealth (and it does) why can´t families survive on a single income anymore like in the past when usually only men worked and women were not in the workforce?
The biggest reason is because the rest of the world has caught up to the U.S in terms of labor competition as well as having stable economies. 40 or 50 years ago, countries like Brazil and India were still 3rd world countries, but now they're moving to first world status. Europe rebuilt themselves after WW2, and are now competing more and getting more H1b visa's than ever before.
When you have a global economy you have more people competing for jobs. You also have more companies competing against each other. Naturally, competition for jobs brings down wages, even for skilled jobs. But also, the more companies have to compete with other companies in the global market place the more frugal they have to be with wages.
It doesn't help matters much that some countries do not play by our rules, in fact they look to subvert them at every cost. Some of them use child labor, others will allow employees to use methampetamines and other enhancers to increase work productivity. Economics is a helluva drug. People will do absurd things to get by, and everyone will always act in their own best interests to ensure their family gets fed.
The final factor here, though. Is that American's by in large are living well above their means. People who got by on a single payer salary in the American 50's and 60's never spent much money on anything except necessities.
Women entering the workforce and automation are also factors here, but only minor ones. American's once had it great, because we mostly only had to compete against ourselves for jobs which drove up wages. But now, our workers and our companies are competing against the entire globe.
How about the fact that because of public school systems being funded through property taxes means high property tax bills for homeowners, even when they never had children, but because of those high property taxes, older Americans can't afford to retire from their "high paying jobs". Maybe if after the age of 55, a homeowner could have their property tax bills frozen plus giving them a discount on those taxes once they reach the age of 65, then senior citizens could actually be able to truly retire from working.
I would love to be able to retire in five years, but not with my property taxes always increasing.
I also know more than a few older people who can't afford to retire, because they have to help out their adult children with their grandchildren financially.
I know in Forsyth County Georgia (suburb North of Atlanta), when you turn 65, you no longer have to pay the schools portion of property taxes, and that's ~75% of the bill. I knew people there whose property tax bill went from Thousands of dollars to Hundreds of Dollars.
That can't be the only place in the U.S. that does that.
Of course to get that deal, you have to be 65, and you have to move to a County that has that Senior exemption.
If I were you, I'd sell my current house, and buy one that is worth 1/3rd less to reduce property, taxes and other costs, then pile those savings in to 401K, and IRA's if you qualify for IRA's.
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