Poverty in US- What is the bare minimum someone can survive on?

[JEDI]

CNN

Who can live on $10k/year?

minimum wage = $5.15/hr = 10712/year + 2nd job (part time 4hrs) = 5k, total = $16/year.
husband + wife = $16k x 2 = $32k/year with each working 60hrs/week + work travel time. That's no way to live!

DC minimum is $6.60/hr for 2005 and $7/hr (~$14k/year) for 2006.
NY minimum is $6.00 per hour as of January 1, 2005. It will increase to $6.75 per hour as of January 1, 2006 and to $7.15 per hour as of January 1, 2007.

At $7/hr, a husband + wife can take in a combined $28k/year by just each working 40hrs/week. DC is expensive to live in. So living in a cheap town in NY in 2007 seems to give a couple the best chances to survive on minimum wage.

The 1996 welfare law set a five-year limit for benefits, which now gives reason for people to actually find a job.

1) If you follow USDA food pryamid suggestions (ie: x servings of fruit per day, y of veggies, z of wheat), how much would that cost per day at a Super Walmart grocery store?

2) Where do you think is the best place to live now (2005) if you make minimum wage?

3) Link to studies on the realistic salary needed to live in a neighborhood w/avg crime rate? (avg violent crime = 506 per 100k pop, avg property crime = 4,329/100k)

 

[Amused]

Minimum wage is a STARTING POINT. It is not meant to support a family, or even an adult for very long. The vast majority of people move beyond minimum wage quickly.

If you are in a minimum wage position for long, you have no one to blame but yourself.

 

[SchrodingersDog]

Minimun wage is just that. It's a government mandated minimum starting point so we're not competing for slave labor. Stats are skewed for a bunch of reasons. Here in Reno, NV where I live most casino workers make minimum wage or close but with tips they are upper middle class.

 

[GimpyOne]

Well, you can get by. I'm a grad student in the middle of missouri, almost exactly between St. Louis, Jefferson City, and Springfield.(just a few miles from the population center of the US and less than 2 hours to any of the above) If you know the area, you know where I'm at.

My wife, daughter and I get by on my grad student stipend and my wife's 40hr/week job with neither of us getting benifits so we are getting screwed by health insurance.(She gets about $8/hr right now, I'm stipend) We manage to live on $30K/yr. Not well, and not able to save for the future, but with benifits we could get by pretty well on that in this area of the country.

So it can be done, depending on where yo live, I'm just not sure I would like to do this permanantly.

 

[jlee]

Our family of seven lived for a while on 30-33k/yr..

 

[dullard]

I am a strong supporter of higher minimum wages. Our government gives so many jobs a yearly cost of living increase, and many employeers do as well. Yet the minimum wage workers don't have that luxury. I'm not suggesting $10 an hour or anything drastic. But it should be $7 an hour with yearly increases, right now. Yes some people will lose jobs, but studies have shown that overall the poor still net much more after adjusting for the few job losses and the minimal inflation increases.

In the midwest, you can certainly get by with $16k a year. I did it with my wife for 5 years without applying for assistance as we were both college students (no food stamps, no utility cost decreases, etc). $400 a month for 2 bedroom apartement, $300 a month for food, $50 a month for bus passes, $100 a month for utilities, $100 a month for clothes, $50 a month for supplies like toilet paper and you can survive ($12k a year). Of course people will want more, but it is livable.

Yes, in many cases it is your fault if you are uneducated and cannot qualify for a job that isn't minimum wage. But we still cannot abandon those people. And some people live in small towns where that is the ONLY job available. If you grow up minimum wage, you don't always have the money to move across the country in the hopes to find a better paying job.

 

[beer]

Yea, well, the vast majority of the poor are in rural Appalachia, the south, and the midwest, not in urban areas of cities due to the continuing gentrification of almost every major city except those in the midwest (i.e, St. Louis).

That article concludes with stating that 'government donations are at an all-time low.' These people that voted for Bush reaffirmed his mandate to continue cutting social services. The midwest and south was Red America; the poorest Americans voted Bush back in. They get what they had coming for buying into that bullsh!t. So, my growing disdain for the complete lack of competence the average American has in managing their financial matters leaves me with no sense of pity whatsoever. I'll take my tax cuts, and social security cuts because I can manage my own affairs just fine, even though I voted Blue, I have no problem with Bush exploiting the poor since it leaves people like me to benefit financially.

 

[FoBoT]

just depends on where you live and what you consider "bare minimum"

since people in 3rd world countries routinely get by with much less than the poorest in the US, like living in cardboard boxes, etc, i think we have it pretty good here

you don't need a car, TV, xBox, etc, etc, etc to "survive"

 

[Coquito]

Please don't abandon me.

/rolls stock "feed the hungry" footage.

/cue single tear from eye.

 

[judasmachine]

here in rural TX you can have your own place, food, and a car on 10 to 12K. the panhandle of TX is one of the cheapest parts of the country to live in. i once rented a two bdrm apartment 1100 sq. ft. for 450/month.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: beer
Yea, well...

Could you please stay civil while the thread is in off topic? We don't want to politicize this thread and force it to move into the P&N forum.

 

[EmoHawk]

omg talk about kicking you when your down. I can't believe how harsh the us gov is, I live in Jersey in the Channel Islands (UK) and the minimum wage is £5.15 about 10$ an hour. I can't imagine getting out of bed let alone working for £2.50 an hour. Whats the cost of living like?
Average weekly shopping, rent, electricity etc bill?

 

[phreakah]

daddy..... are we poor?

 

[beer]

Originally posted by: dullard

Originally posted by: beer
Yea, well...

Could you please stay civil while the thread is in off topic? We don't want to politicize this thread and force it to move into the P&N forum.

This has EVERYTHING to do with politics! Look at social services under Carter and Clinton, and then look at the chunks that Reagan and Bush Jr. cut. It's a strongly positive correlation and to ignore it is to ignore the underlying reasons why the cutting of social services has impacted the number of poor.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

It depends on the area. I got three friends that are sharing a single apartment because they can't afford an apartment's rent. They don't have a car. Thier fridge is usually empty. And they do make a bit more than minimum wage. Atleast one of them is going through school.

Now, I have a cousin in SF who pays $1100/mo for rent on a studio apartment. He makes $40k/year, and drives an '87 Volvo with 350k miles. He's above poverty, but about 60% of his income goes to rent on a tiny apartment. If he made $30k, he probably would be considered poverty for the area.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Oh, compare this to a guy that lives in ohio that said he paid $45k for his house 4 years ago. When houses cost $45k, $30k is far from poverty.

 

[DnetMHZ]

No offense to anyone, but I wouldn't get out of bed for minimum wage.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: beer
This has EVERYTHING to do with politics!

Then create a separate thread in P&N and flame away there. This thread is our opinion about what income is sufficient to live. It isn't a blame X or blame Y thread for why we are in this situation.

 

[ILikeStuff]

I was pondering whether linking the minimum wage to the inflation rate was a good idea or not. That way, if the value of the dollar goes down, the high school dropouts could still afford to survive, but then two things occured to me. If that was done, wouldn't it promote runaway inflation and the cost of everything would go up to make up fotr the increased wages which would cause the wages to go up, ad infinitum (well, ok, until the economy collapsed upon itself). Also, as Amused said, Minimum wage is a starting point. If you try to make a career out of minimum wage jobs, that's your own fault. Plan for your future and improve yourself.

 

[FoBoT]

you can buy a livable 2 bedroom house in the town i live in for $25k

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Originally posted by: FoBoT
you can buy a livable 2 bedroom house in the town i live in for $25k

For that amount, I could get by with a three year mortgage.

 

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth

Originally posted by: FoBoT
you can buy a livable 2 bedroom house in the town i live in for $25k

For that amount, I could get by with a three year mortgage.

but you can't get a job (in town) that pays more than about $10/hr

the only people that make more than about $40k-$50k are the owners of the large businesses (like the bank) and people that drive 40 miles each way into Kansas City where the wages are more "normal"

 

[veggiefrog]

Originally posted by: EmoHawk
omg talk about kicking you when your down. I can't believe how harsh the us gov is, I live in Jersey in the Channel Islands (UK) and the minimum wage is £5.15 about 10$ an hour. I can't imagine getting out of bed let alone working for £2.50 an hour. Whats the cost of living like?
Average weekly shopping, rent, electricity etc bill?

BUT....
I live in York (UK), and minimum wage here is £4.10/hr for workers aged 18-21 and £4.85/hr for those 22 and older. Sure sounds alright, but when you consider that sales tax is 17.5% and if u make over a piddling 4K a year they start deducting taxes (and dont get me started on the amount of taxes they take out of your pay).... and while i might make more thanks to the shite exchange rate, the cost of living is also higher.

here, if i want to call my friend who lives down the street, i have to pay for it. the price of clothes in an avg store is outrageous (i mean, £40 for a friggin miniskirt?! not like it's much material!). it costs my bf around £40-50 a week to fill his tank and he's only got a ford escort using the cheapest petrol. where i'm from, people consider a dryer a luxury (not a necessity like in the US). my bf's cousin had to wait months for his bday before his parents would buy him a gamecube, whereas in america, we decided we simply wanted one and bought it w/in the week. prices of things here compare to there seem to be as if the £ sign and the $ sign have just been switched.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: ILikeStuff
If that was done, wouldn't it promote runaway inflation and the cost of everything would go up to make up fotr the increased wages which would cause the wages to go up, ad infinitum (well, ok, until the economy collapsed upon itself).

Studies have shown that increases in minimum wages have only a small effect on inflation. Here are some numbers for a typical minimum wage job that I had 5-8 years ago so the numbers will vary slightly today:

[*]Labor: I worked at Arby's making about minimum wage. Today that is $5.15*1.0765 = $5.54 an hour including required payroll taxes. I typically made about 200 sandwiches an hour. So I cost 2.8 cents per sandwich. Of course there is also one person who takes the order as well. So double that: 5.6 cents in minimum wage labor per sandwich. Then lets say there was another 5.6 cents per sandwhich in management but that management won't get a raise with a minimum wage increase.

[*]Materials: Roast beef averaged about 49 cents per ounce after cooking. A regular roast beef has 3 ounces, so that is $1.47 in beef. Buns cost 10 cents each and lets say the wrapper was 1 cent (guessing here). So materials were $1.58 per regular roast beef.

[*]Price: Arby's sold them for $1.89 a piece.

[*]Profit: $1.89 - $0.056*2 - $1.58 = $.198 per sandwich. Of course fixed costs weren't included but that would vary dramatically from location to location.

Lets pretend the minimum wage doubled to $10.35 an hour. The profit would now be: $1.89 - $0.056*3 - $1.58 = $.142 per sandwich. The restaurant could theoretically take the hit and still earn money. Or they could pass on the full cost: 5.6 cents per sandwich. So the sandwich would go up to $1.95. It went up $1.95/$1.89 = 3.1%. So a 100% increase in minimum wage caused a maximum 3% increase in inflation at this business.

See how the effect is small? Minimum wage going up 3% would cause 0.1% increase in the cost of the sandwhich if the full cost was passed on to the consumer.

Maybe the cost passed on will be greater than my calculations. But even if I'm off by a factor of 5, a 3% increase in minimum wage would still be minimally impacted on the consumer. Other businesses are more labor intensive. But still in any practical business you can come up with, inflation increase will be less than the minimum wage increase even if the full labor costs were passed onto the consumer. Thus your spiriling doomsday senario just won't happen.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Originally posted by: FoBoT
but you can't get a job (in town) that pays more than about $10/hr

the only people that make more than about $40k-$50k are the owners of the large businesses (like the bank) and people that drive 40 miles each way into Kansas City where the wages are more "normal"

I drive 25 miles to my job, and houses here are 10x that.