Could You Live on Minimum Wage?
 

My friend and I were arguing about this over the weekend. I was trying to make a case that it could be done. In fact, my belief is that the whining about this is completely overblown. Now here are the factors in place:

- You can live wherever you want.
- $6.55 an hour and 40 hours a week
- You have health insurance through your company

If I had that, I truly believe I could easily survive. Now life wouldn't be very extravvegent, but I could definitely get by.

depends on what your definition of "survive" is I suppose, but I sure wouldn't want to after watching that (back when it premiered).

and they were multiple people working multiple jobs, not even 1 job (IIRC).

So my answer is hell no.

Min Wage is 7.25 now, i believe.

Anyways, not a chance, cause you won't get 40 hours a week with almost any "shit" job these days.

-Criteria that might allow you to survive-
Rent of less than 400 dollars a month, with utilities included
Ability to walk to work or good public transportation system


I know back in like 97 I was only making about 1000 a month, and we managed. Although it was far from pretty and prices on everything were a lot lower than they are now.

13,624

as one person? Sure, you could do it. Would it be fun? Not really. With a family of 3 and say, one person not able to work? No way.

If both wage earners were making that? It'd still be far less than a picnic. But it's easier to say you could do it, when the reality is you'll likely never have to.

you can do it as long as you never get sick or have to go to the doctor, or etc sure. but once you have an event like that, you're fucked.

Two words



Fuck


No

A huge part of this depends on how much that group health plan through your company costs. A company paying minimum wage probably isn't doing a whole lot to help you there and your healthcare is very possibly 20% of your pay.

either way though, the answer is that I am 100% sure I could find a way to do it, likely with family support(ie housing) but I would be insanely unhappy about my situation.

The ability to do it long term again comes down to health. One accident, one surgery, and you're ruined, even with healthcare. Best case with a great health plan you have a deductible of $1500, and more likely the type of plan you're getting that you and a minimum wage paying company can afford has a $2500 deductible, ie 2 1/2 months salary.


When I was 21 I could have done this easily. I lived in a house with 3 other people near Ga Tech's campus, my rent was $225/mo, I didn't own a car and walked to the transit station to get anywhere, split utilities 4 ways, and yeah one could live on $12,000/year that way.


Now that I've had better, I'm sure I could do it as a matter of survival, but holy shit it would seem terrible.

If they are giving you free 100% free health care, then it's much more than just a min wage job. I mean, that's probably like 150 dollars a week or more.

I'd like to see you try and do this without any help from family or close friends. Could you survive? Yes, you would still be living, but you're crazy if you think you can have any sort of a life with that. People who make minimum wage will often need to work two of those 40 hour a week jobs to get by.

Well lets use Wal-Mart as an example. What would be the cost of health insurance for a single person at a company like that?

I'm not talking about a life, I'm just talking about surviving.

Well then sure, unless something unexpected happens that most people have the ability to overcome, you would likely end up homeless.

And this is the statement I have a problem with, unless you have walked in someone's shoes that has experienced this, I wouldn't so hastily decide that living in poverty is overblown. Sure, being in poverty in this country is better than it is in many other countries, but considering the lifestyles all of us here are used to, I'm sure it would be pretty bad.

You won't pay any income tax and you would get some money back from Earned Income Credit. You could qualify for some government assistance such as food stamps.

Now I'm talking about no cable TV, no cell phone, just bare bones living. Food costs aren't hard to keep down on your own and if you can find a way to use public transportation to get to work, you don't have to worry about a car payment or insurance.

I was extremely poor in college and was able to live on under $10,000 a year. I had a couple roommates and was able to really go cheap on food and other stuff. I'd even have enough to go out on occasion.

My thoughts are that it can be done. Certainly having major life altering events such as a major illness causes huge problems. But if you are able to avoid those, you should be able to get by. I just think we've hit a point where we expect minimum wage to afford a nice cell phone and cable TV when these should be considered luxuries.

And what happens if the bus is late or misses it's route one day and you're late for work and lose your job for that? Heat and water and power even for a small place can run quite high if you're in a cold/hot environment.

Also, it was said earlier, but most businesses will not give the minimum wage workers 40 hours, nor will they get free health insurance.

i'm not sure i get what you mean about what we expect minimum wage to afford...

you'll be eating rice and beans every night too. and lord forbid your water or power goes out in your apartment...you're screwed.

college is different than life.

That's life. There are a lot of people who take public transportation and are able to keep their jobs.

Those can be high costs but with roommates can be cut down drastically. Also living in a warmer climate would avoid having to pay for heating costs in the winter.

And you were a bachelor with roommates like you said, you also were young and healthy. You say major injury, but what if you just break your foot? There goes your job. What if you have a family?

You're right, under your circumstances if everything always goes 100% according to plan and is 100% ideal (no family, no injury, etc...) it can be done. But life generally doesn't work like that.

My sister manages a dominos, I'm fairly sure that the health plan she has access to would cost her between $150-$250/mo as a single person, I forget the exact amount. She is obviously in a better situation as a manager, but its the same plan that the min. wage staff is offered if they hang around long enough and become eligible. The plans available to her were not very good either, with $30 office copays and $2k deductibles.

Three years ago working full time at a tech company I paid less per month for better health coverage for me+spouse.

You can eat a lot more than that. Food is cheap if you play the game right.

well i was exaggerating, but eating massively unhealthy (ie off the dollar menu everyday) will result in malnutrition and health problems that will have you end up in the hospital and thus bankrupt you completely also

I just feel like our expectations for what a minimum standard of life is much higher than it needs to be. I feel like people believe that cell phones, air conditioning and cable TV should be things we all have.

i don't think so.

maybe the middle-class feels that way, but i think if you went out there and asked people living close to the poverty line they wouldn't feel those were things they should be "entitled" to or should defiantly be able to afford. I'm also not sure how you can make such a blanket generalization, especially since you clearly are not currently lacking any of those things. Upon what do you base this feeling?

I just think you're assuming everyone under this scenario everyone is a single, young, healthy, male.

Also, making what you said leaves 0 room for things to go wrong. And things do go wrong.

I think eating is overblown. I'll take the points on health care costs and such, but you can really live cheap on food and not eat that bad. I did it for a couple years and still hate paying a lot for food.

Loaf of generic bread + jar of peanut butter + jar of jelly = 10 sandwiches for maybe $5. You can buy big bags of brown rice and frozen vegetables for next to nothing. Eggs are relatively cheap and can be a quick meal for under $1. Cans of soup, beans, or veggies are relatively cheap. Generic noodles and a jar of generic pasta sauce is cheap. There are a lot of ways to eat somewhat healthy for somewhat cheap.

fair enough

loaf of bread + jar of peanut butter was one of my staples when i was working at starbucks for dinners there. throw the bread in the fridge and i've got 10 days worth of dinners right there

This is one point I agree with you on. I eat a pretty good amount of food, but you could easily eat for under $100 a month for one person and not eat unhealthy. Find a ethnic grocery store to buy fruits and vegetables from (about 1/3 t o a 1/4 the price of Ralphs/Vons), then buy cheap other stuff or clip coupons.

And even with the good amount of a food I eat, I'd say my wife and I only spend around $300 a month on food. If we had to, we could cut them down to under $200, but it would be very bare bones.

i'm generally a cheap eater too and hate paying a ton for food.

you could probably eat for like 2 weeks on a whole chicken as a single person, and if you know how to break it down...add some frozen veggies and rice in for a soup and you're good for even more

When I worked at Vons, it pained me to see how a large percentage of the people with food stamps handled spending their money.

If you have your renting a room (ie roommates), instead of a house, this can be done easily, and still live decently. If your renting an actual house, well then your screwed.

not to mention farmers markets.

We are setting up government programs for some of these things. We pay fees on our phone bills for programs like Lifeline. Our tax dollars go toward programs that help pay air conditioning bills. We've also had bills on the table to force cable companies into changing how they are allowed to bill people in an effort to make it more accessible for lower income households.

That to me is a change in what we consider bare necessities.

Also depends on location. I am in Los Angeles and even a really crappy apartment in a bad neighborhood costs $700 a month.

Are you really going to begrudge someone on minimum wage a cell phone and cable TV? I know it's sadly unrealistic to pay absolutely everybody in this country a living wage, but I don't think anybody who works 40 hours a week should be expected to live in poverty and without any luxuries entirely. While I can grasp why you may think a cell phone and cable TV qualify as luxuries, I can't grasp why exactly minimum wage workers shouldn't be allowed any luxuries? If someone makes the minimum wage, does everybody who doesn't get to decide what is appropriate for them to spend it on?

also I'm not sure how it works in the mainland, but from my experience here in Hawaii, It's actually the minimum wage jobs that give you 40+ hours of work , and the ones that pay more that cut your hours to less.

And I look at 700 a month as Cheap! apartments / houses here are closer to 900-1000 a month for crappy places.

Often companies will give you the amount of hours right below where they have to give you benefits.

I'm willing to bet the $900 place in Hawaii is a lot better than the $700 place in Los Angeles :)

this is absolutely true, and how it works where I'm at for a lot of companies.

yea your probably right about that...

I agree with you. I was thinking when I was mowing my grass. Back in the day the poor would garden or grow food...basically try to exist. It had to suck back then, and I'm sure a lot of people died.

Now it's basically better to be poor than working poor. Poor will get all manner of breaks on everything like health care, food stamps, heating bills, electric bills, rent, and probably even transportation.

If you make like 40K as a family of 4 you're not getting any of that stuff, you have to pay for everything. Which is basically the way it should be.

Regardless, the system is fucked.

I worked at Starbucks too back in the day. Taking home a couple bagels at night was always a nice breakfast the next morning.

This is true, there are a lot of people and families out there who are working extremely hard to still barely get by (and sometimes not) and those that take advantage of government programs and are not being a functioning member of society.

I was really surprised at the "Homeless" communities on some of the beaches in Hawaii and was told some people chose to live that way, basically setting up tents and using nearby public showers and restrooms.

I was talking to the guide about it on one of our stops and he said quite a few people that have tents set up on the beach work minimum wage jobs that don't have any stress or entail any real skills and surf. Food is their only real overhead and he told me he knew a few that did quite well living like that. I found this all very interesting, as on the mainland you usually don't find people that are homeless by choice.

But in keeping with the theme of the thread, looking at the way these "beach" people as the guide called them live, it is not only feasible there but actually preferred in their situation.

I think everyone could learn a thing or two from the migrant workers who come up from Mexico and other countries every year. I rememember working in a factory in the Summer at 20 and these guys lived in a dumpy house for cheap rent. They grew a ton of tomatoes and peppers in the backyard and would basically bring in a tortilla stuffed with stuff and beans everyday for lunch. I can't imagine they were spending over $20 a week in food. They were extremely frugal and never bought a snack out of the machine or went out for fast food like everyone else.

I think the question of government funded programs, and that of minimum wage aren't all that related. I have no problem with people questioning where government money (and their tax monies by extension) goes, and whether assistance programs are necessary. On the other hand, minimum wage is not a government benefit, it's money paid for work done, usually from one private party to another. While the value of that minimum wage is determined by the government, and based on their estimation of what constitutes a 'living wage', if someone figures out how to live effectively on that money AND afford some luxuries, i certainly don't think you or I have any right to tell them what is appropriate to spend their money on, or that they're being paid too much.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be allowed luxuries. I'm just saying that I don't really think our tax dollars should be paying for it.

Well, as luck would have it, our tax dollars aren't paying minimum wage workers, their employers are. Problem solved?

If you want (a relatively teeny, tiny fraction of) your tax dollars to go somewhere other than they Air-Conditioning assistance programs, your beef is with your government, rather than advocating that poor folks working 40 hours a week should learn to huddle together like a bunch of Mexican immigrants you once knew.

That's a separate issue though, there is a difference between working for a livable wage and taking it as part of a government handout. I think that people in this country who work hard should be rewarded with a livable wage and possibly even be given additional benefits. People who don't should not be rewarded for that.

Minimum wage workers and their advocates are the ones constantly crying for more and saying that they can't possibly survive on it. And when you're as unskilled as Mexican immigrants, perhaps you should live like them too.

I'm down with that. I think the Earned Income Credit is a good idea that is not used enough. I'd like to see more aid taken away from non-workers and given toward those who are working and just coming up short.

Well, no matter how much and how loud they cry, the overwhelming majority of that 'more' is always going to keep coming from their employers' pockets and having absolutely no effect on your taxes, and I suppose you can continue to sweat from shouldering a massive burden that doesn't exist.

Further, I'd like a little help understanding how you think reducing the minimum wage would somehow reduce the need for poverty assistance. If you want to reduce the tax burden of the poor, then you should be advocating for a raise in minimum wage, which would give working poor the ability to afford those things themselves, and shift the financial burden onto employers/industry rather than government. What you appear to be advocating is denying poor people a living wage AND assistance, which isn't very fair or even really understandable.

I'm not angry at the minimum wage. I'm saying I don't think it's as horrible as some people say. That if you were told you'd have to survive on this and only this, you definitely would be able to.

We are able to survive on minimal things if we are forced to. I'm not advocating denying poor people a fair minimum wage. I am saying that with our backs to the wall, we could all survive on that if we needed to. That giving people crutches along the way hurts them more than just saying "you're going to have to do this on your own".

Well, that sentiment is fair enough, but where you're losing me is you appear to be directing a bunch of venom at the people doing just that. Regardless of your beliefs, welfare cases and minimum wage workers are two separate issues (that may or may not crossover in specific individual cases), and lumping those things together makes for a messy, muddled discussion.

I was just trying to point out that our idea of "necessities" have changed a lot. 10 years ago A/C, cell phones, and cable TV were luxuries. Now we have some in government calling them necessities and setting up taxpayer funded programs to get lower income people them.

I'm sitting here scratching my head trying to figure out what literally minimum wage jobs there are left in the Athens, GA area. I mean, the first thing that came to mind (and what I was going to comment on originally) was McDonald's et al but then I remember they're paying around $10 an hour here to start these days. Maybe the Wal-Mart greeters are still making min. wage, but anyway to my original thought, I'm with the original poster on this. Virtually all the low end jobs I can think that would be min. wage candidates are in the 15-25 hour per week range. The object as far as I know is to avoid having them classified as full-time employees which could trigger certain benefits eligibility with some employers, as well as (IIRC) some advantage at certain number of full-time employee tiers with regard to various state labor department filings, unemployment insurance costs, etc.

I think that's fair to say...but 10 years ago cell phones and cable TV were also completely different entities. Nowadays, you can easily have a cell phone without a land-line, conversely I'm not even sure you can watch TV without a cable box of some sort. In that regard, you and I would agree that attributing new government money to a new cell-phone assistance program could be considered luxurious, but if on the other hand were talking about diverting resources that had already long-been attributed towards 'phone assistance' to include cell phones (admittedly, I don't know much about the specifics of assistance programs), then I have a hard time getting heated up about it.

Lastly, it's worth considering who else would like the government to enact air-conditioning, cell-phones, and/or cable television assistance programs, before we condemn everybody on assistance. It's likely that at least some of those voices you hear crying out for those assistance programs are coming from the dead presidents in some politician's bank account, compliments of air-conditioning, cell-phone, and/or cable television. While those abusing the welfare/assistance program would happily welcome the offer of the government-paid cable, a company like Comcast would be twice as happy to take your tax monies, in order to give it to them.

I don't know how much cash a national cable/cell contract would offer, but I imagine it would be truly phenomenal. Being the cynic that I am, I think that kind of financial maneuvering is the driving force behind labeling things like cable and cell phones as necessities, rather than greedy welfare/assistance cheats, but that is pure conjecture and fantasy on my part, and your mileage may vary.

In LA, fast food workers, about half of the grocery store workers and I am sure many others only make minimum wage or barely above it. Ideally it would be like it is for you in Georgia everywhere and we could get rid of minimum wage. I think the argument here is very location dependant. The McDonald's worker in Georgia making $10 can probably survive alright. The McDonald's worker in Los Angeles making $8 probably isn't. That may be an issue more with the California economy right now than minimum wage being too low.

Okay, first off, here's why we subsidize heating and cooling bills for the poor: because the poor tend to not have a lot of money. Since they don't have a whole lot of money lying around, they pick and choose what they pay for, and mostly what they tend to pick are tangible things where they can see the material benefit of their money immediately. Generally speaking, it's shelter, then food, then transportation, then electric and finally phone service. Poor people who are unhappy with life may bump entertainment above transportation, and this is why we call unhappy poor people stupid.

And they are stupid, because when their electricity gets turned off, because of the bill juggling thing, they lose the ability to regulate their environment. Since said environment has been engineered to be climate controlled from the inside, we don't really build shelter so much anymore to mitigate extremes of temperature - especially the buildings we tend to let unhappy poor stupid people live in. So if they can't regulate their climate, and their home isn't doing it via engineering, they tend to wind up cold, or hot, or wet. And they get sick. And when they get cold, or wet, or hot, they go to the hospital. And we let them into the hospital, because generally speaking, doctors cure the sick. They even cure poor unhappy stupid sick people who can't pay for it, because otherwise the poor unhappy stupid people would rot in the streets.

And if they cure the poor, your tax dollars, or insurance dollars, or co-pay dollars, will end up paying for it, because the doctors need to make a living lest they become poor. And unhappy. And eventually sick. And if they don't cure the poor, your tax dollars will pay for it, because breathing in the fumes of dead poor stupid people will make YOU sick. Particularly if they die next to your air conditioner. And if YOU get sick, then you'll have to go to the hospital, and your tax dollars, insurance dollars, or co-pay dollars will pay to get YOU well.

Bottom line is, poor people die from not having AC. They're stupid and it sucks, but we've pretty much decided as a society that the pennies from our tax bill that go to keeping the air on is worth not seeing the news footage of a dead senior citizen wheeled out of a tenement.

Now, I had a nice post all lined up to write about what living on $10 a day (after shelter and bills) for years at a time is really like, but I've got work in five hours and should get some shuteye.

So I don't lose my job and become poor, you know. :)

There's a great book that I read on this topic. It's called Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Man, when I was in grad school I was pulling in about 1k per month and working about 70 hours a week. Sucked. Lived with roommates, ate lots of PBJ, kept the thermostat at 78 in the summer. Anyone CAN live like that, but it's hard bringing chicks home to bang when your roommates are lying around.

I've never had AC in a home, I didn't know its considered a necessity now.

I stress about money like everyone esle, but it's important to keep in mind that happiness is just about the same for everyone: Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy? | Video on TED.com

You should also keep in mind that much of the world lives on a dollar a day according to the UN.

I took care of a family of four while making $6.65 an hour back when I first got married. My wife had moved out to Oklahoma and didn't have a job for a few months, and I had a very low paying job at a television station in town.

Yes it sucks, but it can be done, and without government assistance. Of course, living in a town like OKC where the housing is cheap helps quite a bit.

But you live in a place that has a constant breeze. Try living in a place that has unbearable humidity and no breeze in the summer (Greenville, SC- where I grew up).

If you are lucky enough to find a minimum wage job that will give you full time (I don't see that much in retail, usually if you are minimum wage, you are part time, and your hours are the first to get cut during slow times), you make $6.55/hour ($7.25 starting July 24th) or $262 a week. That will get you about $1135 per month. The starting rate for an apartment here is about $500/month. That leaves you with about $600/month for food, heat, transportation, and clothing.

Could you do it? probably
Would anyone ever want to do it? probably not
Could you survive? Well, that is a loaded question. I could survive on $0 a month by stealing from grocery stores, eating out of garbage cans, and living under over-passes.

If you are creative enough, you can SURVIVE on any income, or no income. The question is not very good in my opinion.

The question should be, why do people make minimum wage? and, Why do we give assistance to the people making minimum wage?

Why do people make minimum wage?
People make minimum wage, because as a society, we NEED people to make minimum wage. Without cheap labor, the price of products would soar. Which would lower the buying power for all. Do you think McDonalds would have a dollar menu if everyone made $40k a year? Not everyone can be in a skilled position. Even if everyone was educated for such, some people would still have to flip burgers, mop floors, and work on farms.

Why do we give assistance to the people making minimum wage?
First and foremost, because of the reasons listed above, not everyone can be a freaking doctor. While we reward those that excel in our country, it really isn't too much to ask everyone to chip in some change and help pay for someones heat or phone. If we start buying the poor Lexus and Plasma Televisions, I can see the bitching, but phone, heat, power, food are basics in my mind. Also, by providing those things to the poor, I like to think that it keeps them happier and more productive at work, which in turn keeps my value meal price down. It keeps them healthier, which makes it so I don't have to subsidize their costly hospital visits. And hopefully it keeps them well off enough to not steal things from grocery stores and from work, which in turn also keeps my food prices low and lowers the amount of cops I need looking for these thieves, which keeps my property taxes low. All of these benefits for some change that gets taken out of my check every payday.

Also, Lifeline provides qualified consumers with a discount on monthly charges for their primary home phone line, even if it’s a cell phone. Thats right from the Lineline.gov website. Its not like they are paying the entire bill or getting data plans and blackberrys for people. They are getting a discount on their PRIMARY phone line, and if that happens to be a cell phone, they get a discount on the service. And by the way, if you happen to get some OT on that minimum wage full time job, and that puts you over $14,621 for the year, you are no longer eligible for the program.

How long ago was this? $6.65 ain't what it used to be.

Tell that to the 739 people that died in Chicago in July of 1995 due to heat. On average, 400 Americans die of heat every year, which is higher on average than the number of people that die from tornadoes, earthquakes, and floods combined. 6,200 Americans are hospitalized every year due to heat, most of those are (you guessed it) poor, uninsured or elderly. I would imagine that we are picking up those hospital bills.

On a macro economic level, we're all impacted by a raise in the minimum wage.

By raising the minimum wage, you increase the wage rates of unskilled work above the level that would be established by market forces. Those who have jobs that paid near the minimum wage will enjoy the increase in pay. Those who don't have jobs will find less unskilled jobs available as they have been replaced with higher-skilled workers/machines and/or those jobs have been eliminated because the marginal revenue they bring to the table is less than their pay.

This may also explain why it's hard to find minimum wage jobs that pay a full 40 hours/week.

Do you personally know McDonald's workers who are making that much, or are there signs saying that they're hiring at that wage? When I was in fast food years ago we once had a sign up saying we were hiring and would pay "up to $7.00/hour" (min wage was probably still $5.25 at that point). Since I was making less than the $7.00/hr that the sign was offering, I asked my GM why new people would be making more than me. His reply was, "If Jesus himself applies, we might give him $7.00. Anyone else, it's not happening." So, in other words, don't trust the signs, especially if they include the phrase "up to".

The median household income is around 50K, I guess that means 25K per person roughly (since all their statistical magic tricks basically means the stat represents two people, or 1.8 peoples, who knows).

Its hard to find the mean, probably because it is just plain embarrassing.

If any of you are sure you can live on minimum wage it is easy enough to find out, set aside a minimum wage for your living expenses and put everything else directly into savings (or paying down debt). No reason the wealthy can't 'live like a Mexican' as well and further increase their wealth, you would even have the luxury of benefits most likely.

Any of us could survive, and many can probably even have a decent life on such a budget, but to act like it would be easy is stupid.

Minimum wage and related social programs for poverty are not the things draining your 401k, or raising your prices at the store, or causing your taxes to go through the roof like all the pundits would tell you... its a relative drop in the bucket for economic effect. Its the guys in fancy suits who are fucking up the economy, draining the public welfare funds (corp welfare spending measured against all social spending would be a fun statistic to calculate), and in general leading the country into the gutter. Its just fun to point at the lower class and rabble rouse.

I'm not big on waste or massive programs with huge numbers floating around, but to focus on the big pile of money that helps millions (with maybe a fraction as exploiters and worthless individuals)... while ignoring the big piles of money that help dozens (every one an exploiter and worthless individual)... that I find offensive more than some mother not even trying to find a job anymore to feed her kids and living off the system. We have built a system where people can not earn their living easily, so they go down whatever path of least resistance they can find (see massive unemployment, concentration of wealth and new business investment in fewer hands, and employers constantly seeking for the best way to screw their employees to save another million to waste on CEO golden parachutes).

Hmm it seems my AC comment came off as smug, I didn't mean it that way at all. I just honestly didn't realize it was a necessity.

Apparently you have never lived in a hot climate, or are only thinking of young healthy people. We have older people die every year around here because of heat in their home.

Wow. RM may be on the highest horse I've ever seen at FOFC.

At this very moment? No. Have I known them over the past few years? Yes.
And no, most of the ones I've seen here don't use the phrase "up to". It's odd here I think, because of the shortage of quality workers (even fast food quality) in spite of the availability of college students & that's who ends up with those jobs here. I can only think of a couple of places that seem to use high school kids at all & I suspect those are still min wage places.

But I really didn't mean to put any focus on that sidebar, I really only intended to comment on less than 40 hour for min wage jobs that seems common around here, the relative lack of true min wage jobs in the area was something that just sort of hit me while I was posting.

I know it can be done, because I did it when I was a lot younger and had fewer skills. It helps a lot if:

1) You're single,
2) Have little or no debt,
3) Can use public transportation or walk to most necessary places,
4) Live where the rent is cheap,
5) Aren't fussy about food, and
6) Don't care much about the finer things in life.

I'm surprised no one mentioned one obvious solution to high rental costs - living with the parents.

As for the EITC, if you're working full-time at the minimum wage, single, with no kids, you'll actually make too much for qualify for it. The EITC is mostly for family units with children.

I can buy that, I imagine there are a few places in the country where it isn't. But I can assure you that Georgia ain't one of them ;)

I bet he's getting a nosebleed.

Speaking as someone who has BEEN HOMELESS.

THe system and economy in this country does not allow for the survival of a single healthy male on minimum wage ON THEIR OWN.

If you are between the ages of 18 and 45 you do not qualify for government assistance unless you are physically or mentally disabled. So you get NOTHING from the government, no health care not foodstamps no fiscal assistance in any way.

If you have children you get money thrown at you and are therefore NOT LIVING ON MIN WAGE. Period.

Single women are also in the group with kids, they are given assistance albeit at a lower level than those with children.

I've read this thread and every time someone posts a position saying you CAN live on it I see all sorts of stipulations, "living at home" "living with roomates" "family of four, oh yeah we got government assistance too"

With those benefits, sure, anyone could survive on minimum wage. But you're not really living on that wage now are you?

In this nation, under THIS economy, minimum wage is almost impossible to live on and have anything resembling a normal existance.

Survive? Probably, but live? no. Not by any acceptable standard. I find the comparison to migrant workers an interesting one, but if you look closely it doesn't fit either, they live in groups in hovels Americans wouldn't and possibly COUldn't live in due to regulations on substandard housing. They don't drive, which Americans could do without, but doing so also strictly limits the radius of your job search.

Its easy to sit back and say "sure you COULD, it would SUCK but you could" when in reality *in THIS country* its simply not feasible to do so and remain a viable healthy human being.

:lol:

+1

My workers from Nicaragua, although we pay them well over minimum wage (like $10-12/hour) essentially live on less than minimum wage because of the money they send back to Nicaragua. They live pretty frugally. But it does help that I provide them with free housing, so they don't have to worry about that. There's a specialty grocery store in my small town that caters to Latinos and we've had some in the past have their own gardens (with an occasional marijuana plant sprouting up at times around the property)

Marijuana on your property?

Nooooo? Really? :p :D

If my employees are going to smoke I'd rather have them grow their own :)

and maybe share

kudos to you for paying them better and providing housing.

don't underestimate the value of that - housing is (obviously) the #1 expense for everybody

It actually makes life 10X easier for me. Somebody didn't show up for work? Their house is 20 feet away. I need an extra hand with something? They are right there. Likewise, it cuts transportation costs. 6 guys share one car which is really only used to get groceries.

My management style sort of fits into the old school philosophy from Latin America where the boss isn't just somebody that bosses you around everyday but also is almost like a father figure. A lot of times they actually expect you to help mediate disputes and help with problems that have nothing to do with work. I figured it'd be much easier for me to adjust to their culture then for them to adjust to mine. They aren't the type that will stay in America anyway, so they don't need to assimilate.

A bit off topic, but something I thought I'd share nonetheless.

If I were not in London, or the south of England I could certainly live on the UK minimum wage, but I would not want to try.

The current minimum wage is $18,123, assuming a 37.5 hour week. (which seems to be the standard in the public sector). The cost of living seems to be a fair bit higher in the UK, but this is offset somewhat by the free healthcare.

I think we've finally gotten to your point here. If your definition of surviving is living like a poor Central American family, then yes, you can survive on minimum wage.

I think a lot of your assumptions are wrong. In my days of minimum wage jobs, we never got benefits like health insurance (I challenge you to find a minimum wage job that does). Insurance for a woman in child-bearing years will be twice the costs (if not more) for a man the same age. It's easily $300-400 a month. If you're making minimum wage, that's a third of your salary right there. Plus, I was usually kept from working 40-hours a week because 40-hour a week jobs can be classified as full-time and in some cases may require the employer pay benefits.

Yes, there are programs that you can qualify for to help you pay for things. The Lifeline discount will get you $10 a month discount toward phone service. Don't need a phone? A minimum wage job usually means needing to be on call or available at a moment's notice. I had a job where I wasn't required to be on call, but anyone who didn't answer their phone when they were needed didn't have a job for long.

Great story about making $10,000 a year in college and getting by. Very impressive. Where did you go to school? Our local community college is about $2-2.5k a year, so if you were able to afford a four-year college without mom and dad paying the bills or one of those tax-payer-subsidized scholarships that's pretty impressive. Congratulations.

This is where your relativism falls apart. Why do you assume Mexican immigrants are unskilled just because they are working unskilled jobs?

You missed one important fact about your poor college experience. It was an amazing opportunity which you sacrificed (lived less well) as an investment in your future.

Without making a claim about immigrants rights, I'm just willing to bet many of those "unskilled Mexicans" would love to have the opportunity to be a poor college student.

Your "overblown" comment makes me feel that you are trying to minimize the poor experience so that you should not be responsible for your neighbor.

Also, here's a pretty good article about how the poor pay more:
The High Cost of Poverty: Why the Poor Pay More - washingtonpost.com

This was 20 years ago, but in high school I started at minimum wage as a grocery store clerk/cashier. I can't imagine 16 year olds bagging groceries or getting carts from the parking lot are making much more than minimum wage (at least to start, after a while they throw a dime or quarter raise at you)).

I honestly don't remember the last time I saw a 16 year old doing either of those things. Once in a blue moon I see an 17 or 18 year old doing it, but here that's mostly that's the domain of 50+ or non-student late teens/early 20's.

As a side note, I was just talking the other day about how few kids I see working at 16 anymore & relatively few (that I know) working in high school at all. Even in families that could use the spare income (yes, there are plenty of those in private schools too) the demands on the students don't really seem to leave time for it unless they do zero extracurricular, which in turn allegedly hurts their college applications.

Minimum wage isn't really that much lower then what a lot of college graduates with liberal arts degrees get.

Somethere in the last 15-30 years the sense of entitlement about standard of living has outpaced the actual growth of the economy.

Our parents (and grandparents) just didn't spend like we do. Lower middle class people go out to eat at restaraunts at lunch and buy new cars and have cable TV and high-speed internet. It's out of control.

The biggest threat to the working poor was the housing boom - aside from that, minimum wage is completely do-able. But you can't have cable, internet, eat at restaraunts, buy anything that's not a necessity, and you might have to crowd a bunch of people into a tiny living space. It sucks, but any expectation of more that just doesn't make sense for America in 2009, or any time in this country's history except for the last few decades where everyone decided to pretend they had more then they did.

Um, what?

Care to back that up with some facts?

40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year @ 7.25 per hour is:

$15080

The only way degreed people make that is if they end up flipping burgers. If they take entry level but career track jobs, they've got to make 30, don't they?

About 5-7 years ago, I lost the ability to tell the difference between a late teen and early 20s person, let alone a 16 and 17 year old. At our local Kroger, the front end and parking lot is staffed almost completely with teens. You have a few young/middle age women on cash register or running the front end and a couple of older guys kinda runnign the show as far as the baggers/cart guys, but they are all fairly young looking to me.