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Triple that and it's still a poverty wage in many parts of California.

It's great because a lot of people don't realize there's a sub minimum wage as well ☺️.

30$ in tips per month is all it takes to allow the sub minimum wage to be paid in a bunch of states.

The sub minimum wage is 2 dollars. Yup. 2 dollars an hour.

I always liked the definition of financially stable to be at a state where you can weather two major life events at the same time and not be devastating. Replace a vehicle and pay your max out of pocket for health insurance at the same time.

What we find is that so many of us are one bad day away from doom.

Yeah, the “$15 minimum wage” conversation has been going on for so long that the actual number adjusted for inflation would be well into the mid $20 range. IIRC, it would currently land somewhere around $24.75 per hour.

And if the idea of a $24.75 minimum wage makes you balk, maybe you should consider how little you’re being paid for the work you do, when compared to what the minimum wage used to cover. It used to cover enough for a single full time worker to afford housing, utilities, food, and a car. If you’re struggling to do that and you’re making in the mid $20’s, then congrats you know how it felt to be paid minimum wage when it was introduced.

The poverty line was historically measured simply by multiplying the USDA's cheapest food plan for a household to buy groceries with adequate nutrition, and multiplying by 3.

Then, in the intervening 6 decades or so, food inflation has gone up significantly slower than housing inflation, to where that simple assumption of "barely enough to eat, times 3" began systematically understating actual poverty.

Today, feeding the reference family of 4 (2 adults 20-50, 1 kid aged 6-8, 1 aged 9-11) costs $996.20 per month (as of March 2025). That's basically $12,000 per year, so the poverty line for a family of 4 is $32,150 (updated every January with September data).

Woah 16k gross? That's wild.

Maybe if rent was... Checks notes $395 a month.

Then you'd have $9,500 a year, so $790 a month to spend on everything else. Let's say you then buy only flour for sustenance.... AI said $27 per month to eat just flour.

Which leaves you with $763 a month for entertainment.

What are these people even complaining about?

Maybe don't eat golden sushi and crack cocaine for every meal Jesus

The numbers are all made up, and they've not kept track with inflation or the economy in a long time. Things like "minimum wage" simply lingered to allow those better off that sometimes have a conscience to sleep at night, thinking there is a system in place for the less fortunate. Our Federal government has been failing us longer than Mango Mussolini's presence, he is simply baring and accelerating the asshattery.

Yes, it sounds bad. But there is a bright side, too! The week has 168 hours, which means if you work four full time jobs, you can make $60k a year and you still get eight hours of sleep! /s

IIRC, the federal poverty level doesn’t account for housing, transport, utilities, etc… It basically only accounts for food. And even then, it only accounts for the cheapest of the cheap food; You’d basically be eating white rice and instant ramen every day.

Um? I'm making more than twice that and I can just barely afford rent, food, etc. I'd hesitate to call anything below $15/hr even remotely livable, and that's out in the sticks.

Poverty doesn't exist if you don't define meterics for it.

Pretty sure that's the point of project 2025, so everyone is too poor and stuck to fight the dictatorship and no one else can get ahead forcing the them to be a cog in the machine for the 1% until they're dead

The criteria must be wrong because by these metrics half of Americans are below poverty!

Linebaugh points to the influential words of August Spies, one of the convicted men, who just before his execution cried out the famous words: "There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today."

That's a powerful quote. I remember going to local May Day fairs and maybe celebrating it in elementary school. Those events definitely did not cover any of this fascinating history about worker's rights.