living the American dream (1312 hits)
Category: Business & FinancialRating: 1.47 on 28 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by loki (View user info) at 2004-01-29 13:56:17 EST
I read a book once called "Nickel & Dimed on (not) getting by in America". The general premise was that a professional essayist decided to see if she could live for a year by working various minimum wage jobs. During that time, she worked as a waitress, Wal-mart "associate", nursing home cafeteria attendant, and maid. The book was interesting but I could tell that it was written by an essayist and not a novelist and sometimes it got a bit tiresome and dry. All in all, I'd say it's a worthy topic, but I recommend doing what I did and skimming it rather than reading it in its entirety.
I haven't really thought about it all that much lately, but then I saw the "Fuck the Poor" post of domenad's: http://www.ubersite.com/m/23959
It got me thinking about what it would be like to have to survive on minimum wage. Oh for sure, I'm not so curious about it that I'm going to quit my job. I think I suffered enough as a low wage earner in college, but I decided to run a little thought experiment on the subject to see what I could come up with. I used Charlotte because well Go Panthers, this is where I live, but I think it's probably pretty much the same anywhere.
First of all, I looked up the current minimum wage. According to the Dept. of Labor, it's cruising along at a whopping $5.15 and hour and has since Sept. 1997. I would have thought it would have some sort of built in cost of living adjustment, but apparently not. So if you assume that this person works 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year, that would be a gross income of $206 a week, $10,712 a year, or $892.67 a month.
As a general rule of thumb payroll taxes and other withholdings are about 25% of gross income so take home would be $154.50 per week, $8,034 per year, or $669.50 per month.
I got that far and thought - holy shit how it this possible?
So back to my experiment.
The first concern would be finding a place to live. Most financial planners recommend not spending more than 25% of your income on housing so ideally I would need to find an apartment for a little over $150 a month. Clearly this is going to require a roommate. I went to http://www.easyroommates.com to see what I could find. The rates ranged from $285 to $1,000 per month, a bit more than the ideal $150 budget.
The one for $285 was not actually in Charlotte so I was afraid that transportation would be a problem, but there was one for $300 in the city. The ad said it was located on Graham Meadow Drive. According to the crime incident report maintained by the Charlotte Police Dept, there were 25 reported incidents on that street in 2003 composing of 4 counts of vehicle vandalism, 4 counts of auto theft, 3 counts of residential burglary, 3 counts of larceny from auto, 2 counts of residential vandalism, 2 count of other larceny, 1 count of non-aggravated assault, 1 missing person over the age of 16, 1 hit and run, and 1 aggravated assault by knife.
By comparison the crime incident report for my street was "There were no Incident Reports for your search criteria." My street is pretty small so I widened the search criteria and it would seem that there were no reported incidents on either of the two streets leading to mine. Curious isn't it.
So with $300 a month in rent, we have $369.50 a month left.
Next I looked into the issue of transportation. Now it is possible, but difficult to navigate the city with the use of public transportation. The city has been criticized for years for this very issue. They've been looking into light rail but so far noting has been done. In fact, there is not even a city bus that runs to the airport, but it's not like we're looking to fly anywhere with our $369.50 a month. I checked and the cost of a bus pass is $44 a month. I also checked out Carmax and the cheapest car would cost about $200 a month plus insurance, gas, maintenance so we'll go with the bus pass.
This leaves $325.50 a month or a little over $81 a week for food, clothing, and any other expenses that may crop up. Insurance where I work is right at $100 a month. It's dangerous not to have any sort of health care insurance, but then again having insurance would drop that take-home amount down to $225.50 a month or $56.38 a week so I think that unless you had a health condition, most people would skip the insurance and hope for the best.
By "hope for the best" I mean go to the emergency room whenever you need so much as antibiotics thus running up the cost of healthcare for youself and everyone else in the country.
So how is this for living the American dream? A room in a high crime district, no car, no insurance, and $80 a week to cover all personal expenses.
Could you make it? Maybe, but it's not a life of luxury. You probably would not be able to afford to go anywhere for any sort of vacation and god help you if you so much as sprain an ankle or want a family, pet, new clothes or say a television. You also probably do not have a computer, internet access, health club membership, or any money for non essential recreational activities like say going out to eat or to the movies.
But fuck them right, this is what they deserve for being born to the wrong family or not having the education to get a better job.
User Reviews
Submitted by Phinch (user info) at 2004-01-29 18:53:30 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
What's gonna happen if the panthers win?
I cant wait to see that post.
Submitted by Ingsoc (user info) at 2004-01-29 18:49:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Heathcliff at 2004-01-29 16:43:35 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
You really do post every day, don't you?
Submitted by vergedor (user info) at 2004-01-29 15:25:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
OH I forgot!
GO PANTHERS!
Submitted by vergedor (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:57:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I guess the bottom line here is that if you are willing and able, you can make it in the USA if you use all the community ressources at hand and work hard.
Some people will always find ways and reasons to not succeed and not contribute. These people are generally the cause of their poverty and misery and just want to leech away at society.
Other people are victims of circumstances or some kind of disasters and should be treated with dignity, respect and generosity because they are willing to work hard and contribute at their level of skill and knowledge.
Others just don't know any better because they were born is misery and had their brains beaten up growing up. Compassion is needed for those people, otherwise they just turn against society.
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:57:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Smoky, Here are your charts, tables and graphs: http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2002tbls.htm#1
See I think that there should be a minimum standard of living for someone working good, honest work and yes 40 hours a week should be the work week. I think we've all worked more than that, but we're talking about quality of life not just living. What I think is that if someone is willing to work full time they should be able to afford:
1. a house as in own a home, not a palace but something like the shotguns we build through Habitat for Humanity
2. a car - here again not a porche, but damnit you should be able to drive a Honda
3. healthcare - do I really have to explain why, I will point out that preventative healthcare is the easiest way of reducing healthcare costs
4. a nice vacation every year - This doesn't have to be the French Riviera but by all means, take the kids to Disney at least once and to the beach or something every year
5. enough money to eat a healthy diet - cheap foods are just not as healthy, it's sad but true
6. a little money left over at the end of the week to go to the movies once in a while
I do not think that this is unreasonable. If you work full time, you should not need government assistance to get housing or free computers, you should be able to save up for it and buy it yourself.
As for internet access being free - where did you get that? I got stuck waiting for my Jeep to get fixed and hung out in the library. I got bored reading my book and asked about internet access - there was time available at 3:00 THE NEXT DAY. This is not exactly convenient.
As for Venedor's comment - yup that's exactly how it goes. That or this act of pilfering from the cash register. Honesty should be rewarded. We're the richest most powerful country on the fucking planet, people working full time should not be below the poverty level.
ps. yes yes we know I'm a hippie - deal
Submitted by domenad (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:54:32 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
My reply was too long to post here. Please check front page for it. That is, if you are interested.
http://www.ubersite.com/cgi-bin/message_get.cgi?message=1075406054458710918
Submitted by Deisangua (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:52:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Financial gravity pulls like Jupiter.
Hospitals, for example, often (one might even say routinely) charge the uninsured up to 5 times the amount they would charge the insured for a medical service. So if you can't afford it, it will cost you more.
The same thing applies to things like credit and loans. If you can afford to pay off more of your card purchases or loan, then the interest will hurt you less. If on the other hand, you can only afford the most minimum of payments, you end up paying more in the long run. With credit checks, if you don't have good credit, it can be very difficult to get approval any number of things. Which means you have to check around. Which means your credit drops.
Hell, your credit will falter just for someone taking a look at it. Talk about a light-aversion problem. Don't open the box, unless you want to hear your credit scream in agony. You credit abuser, you.
Point is: the further down you are, the more likely falling becomes.
Submitted by volklcess (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:51:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This is how trailer parks and Sun Valley, Nevada came into existence (if you've never heard of Sun Valley, NV, try doing a search on it. They used to have a sign at their city limits boasting themselves as "The Biggest Trailer Park in the World"). After reading this, I appreciate my decent income *much* more.
:-)
Phoenix
Submitted by jimbo (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:48:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Made me think. Ow! Ow!
Submitted by William_Q_Percy (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:48:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
what can you get for donating sperm or eggs, smoky?
Submitted by TwEE (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:48:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by William_Q_Percy (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:46:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
verg,
I know how you feel about the government loan thing. I've had to work my way through University so far, too. Its hard, but its not killing me. Thankfully my school is also in my hometown so I can still live at home. If I had to be out on my own, I would be properly fucked by now.
I'm the first person in my family to go to University, and now I am working an internship job where I make more than my mother.
I find that depressing, but I am sure it makes my mom happy that I'm doing well for myself.
Submitted by smokymtcsw (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:44:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Loki my point is that you have nowhere indicated in your data why someone is working only 40 hours a week. Also I know lots of people who make minimum wage, but they are all teenagers. Does anything about what you have researched indicate that these are adults?
Submitted by smokymtcsw (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:41:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
You also probably do not have a computer, internet access, health club membership, or any money for non essential recreational activities like say going out to eat or to the movies.
But fuck them right, this is what they deserve for being born to the wrong family or not having the education to get a better job.
Internet and computers are free in most communities. If they had a real job and could prove they would be responsible in making payments they could get a home from Habitat for Humanity. For easting out they could go to several different soup kitchens, or they could go to a restaraunt and they could ask for a JOB because anyone working 40 hours a week gets ZERO pity from me. When we have a large caseload I do not have time to diddle on the computer and 75-80 hours is the norm. Saturday? Working...Sunday? Also working.
Health club membership? What is wrong with pushups and situps and running? George Foreman was poor so when he started training for the heavyweight crown he went around and chopped logs. I bet you could make money doing that, oh wait I know you can because after a pine beetle tore through our area I worked with a friend and we sawed down and chopped up pine trees. We made mainly cords of hardwoods for firewood, and another time we planed hardwoods into boards. That job was fun and involved many pieces of equipment I have never heard of or seen since, like a thing to turn the log that had a swinging hook, and another poker like implement.
If you need more money work on the weekend! Also you can get 25 dollars every two weeks donating blood.
Submitted by vergedor (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:39:44 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice research.
I remember our "fuck the poor" guy said that you could get an education for free to get decent jobs. This, to me, implies and suggests that there exist indecent jobs, ie. minimum wages job. Jobs that I would rather not do, jobs ideal for young students that do not have monthly bills, food or rent to pay.
There should not be indecent jobs. If someone works 40 hours a week for 50 weeks per year, shouldn't they deserve enough money to pay for decent housing, transportation, clothing, food, a few christmas and birthday gifts and a small vacation whatever the job is?
I found myself in this situation at 20: working 35 hours a week at minimum wage while going full time to university. I had 2 roommates to share the rent. Still, I was always struggling to pay for everything. I could not party all the time because I was too busy working and studying and I did not spend my money on drugs, alcohol or prostitutes or other expensive bad habit. I was poor, it was depressing, frustrating and I could not get better paying jobs that would let me stay full time in school. I did not have access to government loans to help me study because they told me my parents were rich enough to pay for me. That's funny because my parents told me they did not have enough money to pay for rent and food for me.
So it was a choice between living in constant hunger, frustration and fatigue or going back to my parents house. I did not do either. I threw out a roommate and replaced him by 60 marijuana plants. I created my owm job. I did not get involved in a gang or organized crime, just sold my production to friends at 15$ a gram. I had about 160 friends at that time.
See how unfair salaries or working conditions lead to indecent living conditions that lead to black market and crime! 5 years later, I got caught just as I was getting out of the growing business into regular decent legal jobs. I did 2 months of prison in the community, which is like saying that I felt no consequences whatsoever except being banned from the USA for several years.
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:39:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
According to the kids at the US Dept of Labor, over 2.7 million Americans earn at or below minimum wage or roughly 3% of all hourly workers.
The question is not can you make it on $10 an hour, that would be above minimum wage wouldn't it. My hope is that even Wal-mart would have some sort of merit increase and that people are not stuck in those jobs forever, but clearly there are a large number of people out there trying to make it on the pathetic sum of $5.15 and hour.
Here, cause I like numbers and bullet points: http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2002.htm
Phinch, I am rather a demon of research. I'd say that 90% of my graduate school work and probably around 30% of my current job involve data mining. I'm working on a fun filled project right now to compare the pension costs for my company with the costs of all of the S&P 500 companies. I can make me some purdy graphs out of all of this stuff.
Submitted by voodoocheese (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:38:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
When I was working shit mall jobs and stuff in high school, the pay, as expected, was crap- but i felt like I actually accomplished something at the end of the day- even if it was just cleaning the gunk inside the mochafreeze machine. Now I work at a stupid office where I sit on my butt for 8.5 hours a day and do nothing except read ubersite stuff and play gamerival- and they keep giving me raise after raise.
The only feeling of accomplishment I have is that of petty theft.
Perhaps, the man is just trying to keep me down?
I have a friend who moved to my town 6 months ago- it wasn't until two weeks ago that she got her electric turned on. She gets minimum wage- if that. I guess it's a good thing we live in the sub-sub-tropics.
Submitted by William_Q_Percy (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:38:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
But Loki, you forgot the compelling argument of the "Fuck the poor" post that you can easily upgrade your life by learning SQL programming at the local library. I can only imagine how THAT fucking job interview would go.
Submitted by Phinch (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:30:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
yummy tidbits for my mind to chew on.
you do like to research don't you?
Submitted by smokymtcsw (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:29:29 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Loki I thought about getting an extra job on the weekend and realized why I most dislike the premise of your story, I could easily make 10 dollars an hour to check IDs at the bar next door to me, but I realize that is only limited hours, so only 160 dollars a week. I looked at other jobs, and as a waiter I could make 300 dollars a weekend easily. Further there are an incredible number of jobs for 40 hours a week that do not require a college degree that pay in the 9.50 range, including being a telemarketer. If you are physically fit you can get paid over 10 dollars an hour in any major city working construction. If you apply yourself for a few years you can move up as a plumber, or an electrician, or a driver of large equipment, and instead of digging ditches with your hands, you can do more and make over 20 dollars an hour. I think people who complain all the time are usually people who are stupid. The last time I had a job that paid minimum wage I was 14, and since then I have worked construction (framing, building decks, building stackstone and block walls etc.) landscaping, as a waiter, as a resident assistant, as a pizza delivery guy, as a manager of a restaraunt and as a D.J. All of these jobs offered varying degrees of difficulty, and various amounts of money. I know not everyone is physically able to work those jobs, but that is the exception, not the norm. Most people who whine about not having enough money are not working enough, and they are not looking for more opportunities enough. The story of immigrant success in America is not a story of self selection bringing doctors from Russia who of course can succeed in urban environs where others have failed. It is the story of men like the lost boys of Sudan, who come to America with only 1 thing, an incredible work ethic, and survive while learning to deal with foreign things like running water, cars etc. In that time they also learn English, work 2-3 jobs and save money so they can pay for more school to get a better job. I am grateful for men like that, and I am saddened by the continued propagation of the myth that you cannot get by in America if you work hard.
By the way, I helped a guy I worked construction with make a budget. He made his payments on his trailer and fed and clothed his family (wife and two kids) on 22 grand a year. He also paid for car insurance and gas (although he carpooled to save money) and had a comfortable life despite dropping out of school in 9th grade. Now those prices are rural TN for everything he was paying for, but people who speak of poverty from ivory towers make me want to vomit. The jobs in that book the lady were working were stupid. Diner waitresses get paid less than any other waitresses (including at places like Chilis) because the clientele is poor and the food itself is cheap. I always give my IHOP or Waffle House lady 3-4 dollars but I think I am the exception. She went out and got jobs that no one has as their full time means of support and then whined about how she could not live on it...boo hoo.
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:25:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
That 25% is really just a rule of thumb. I'm including FICA, Federal & State withholdings in that. It might be a little less though. I also didn't include any cost for utilities so it probably evens out. Basically, my point is that this isn't living, it's camping.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:23:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
If you lived in the UK the govt would supply a house, you would get benefits (ie cash) and the bus would be free.
If you were a somalian.
Submitted by potatomanjack (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:21:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
It doesn't make a huge difference here, but I think that level of income would put you in the minimum tax bracket which in turn means you only pay 10% income tax. It doesn't change all that much, but it does make a difference.
Your point is still made though, not making a lot of money sucks.
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:16:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Yea I know I know WTF I'm not reading all of that.
I also think it should be noted that not only are private sector jobs being outsourced to foreign countries, but government jobs as well. I heard a lovely story on that liberal rag NPR about this. (ok it's a radio not a rag but the expression seems to fit) The story was about a woman who had been a stay at home mom for several years. Her husband developed an allergy to some sort of chemical they used at his job so he had to leave. She was trying to get food stamps to feed her family and was told that the call center was in India. She was upset about it because that type of job was something that she could have done. Here she is looking for a job and the government is shipping them overseas. It's ridiculous.
I have some "fond" memories from college when I was working for a little more than the minimum wage and still never had money. I had an old Jeep that seemed to need about $100 in repairs a month. Most of the time I rode my bike because I couldn't afford gas for the Jeep. Cereal for breakfast, a pack of crackers and a coke for lunch and delicious Ramen noodles for dinner - now that's living. I should have sold drugs.
Submitted by firefly (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:13:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by TaK (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:08:47 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow loki you just pretty much summed up my predicament as of now. The sad thing is that I make three dollars more than the current minimum wage.
Submitted by great_ceezers_ghost (user info) at 2004-01-29 14:07:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
I lived for two years and actually got married on just about minimum wage. I had a car. Although the car was a beat to shit Geo Prism, the apartment was in Gary, In, but the ring costed $4500 and i saved about 2000 besides for my 'nest egg'. I lived off Ramen noodles and eggs. I had no insurance, car or health. This lifestyle was incentive enough to find a better way to live. So i got a job at a gas station and skimmed from the register until i had enough to pay a few months rent and go to school while working part time. Because i was so broke, the gov't payed for my associates degree. This is not an existance i would wish on anyone else. My wife still thinks i was a little crazy.