I’m nothing if not productive and helpful. Yet, I’d still be in one hell of a pickle financially despite my hard work if it weren’t for falling in love with someone much higher on the payscale than me. Everyone I know is struggling. Why?
There’s obviously great wealth in America. Take a drive, and you can see it. McMansions occupy suburbia inside an outer ring of public land homeless encampments and opulent skyscrapers dot those in center cities. There is very much a Great Depression-esque divide between the rich and the poor in America.
Yet politicos brag about the economy like a bunch of tone-deaf hens clucking away in their glitzy coops. Maybe they really are clueless. Having gone from rich and respected professional to homeless gutter whore and now back to normality, I have a unique insight into how easy it is to lose perspective on what money means when you’re flush. So in that vein, I thought I’d provide a handy updated wage chart for employers for 2023 so they can get a little insight on what their “competitive hourly wage” really means to their staff. Figures based on a single wage-earner household like it used to be in the 50s, 60s and most of the 70s before the fuckery that was Reaganomics (a whole ‘nother post).
$15 an hour: congratulations not-so-good sir. Your employee is living in their car. If they are lucky enough to have one. Otherwise it’s shelter-city, and doesn’t that make late-night scheduling fun for you, you putz?
$20 an hour: Your employee is living in a mold and critter infested apartment. Unless they get sick or have a child. If they get help, aka that “welfare” you rally against, they might survive, although they’ll still likely pay everything they have on the necessities with nothing left over to save for a rainy day. If they don’t get help, it’s sedan-city.
$25 an hour: Your employee starts to see the light at the end of the tunnel. They can’t yet save for big things like downpayments, but they can put $5 or $10 toward an emergency fund each pay period. They may even enjoy dinner out as a special treat once a month, although it will also fill them with tremendous guilt bc they still worry about making rent, can’t get a mortgage and one illness or accident that puts them out of work for a mere week could lead to financial hardship.
$30 an hour: Here’s where they can finally start to have something resembling the normal, middle class life they probably knew as kids (or even if they were poor, it wasn’t as much of a helpless shitshow as it is now). Buying a home is probably out of the question in this market unless they go way out in the boonies, secure a USDA loan and have an employer who doesn’t yank the rug out from under them with return-to-office BS, but there’s enough hope to keep their faith in our unsustainable, top-heavy system to go to work with a genuine smile and decent attitude most of the time.
$35 an hour: this is really the minimum you should pay any employee who contributes to your profits if you are a decent human who cares about their mental and physical health and livelihood. It’s also fair. Everyone who works to build your profits should share in them, no? At this rate in 2023, the now-defunct American dream actually becomes an achievable goal. People could save toward a home, and if they get lucky, find one they can buy before Blackrock bids cash, giving them financial security and a means to build family wealth. They can drive a car that isn’t held together with duct tape and hope, take their kids to routine doctor appointments, even (gasp!) take a 1-week vaca once a year.
Think my math is off? It may be, but if anything, I erred on the side of conservatism. I didn’t include chronically ill people w ongoing medical bills, single parents of multiple kids or those in need of services, etc. This would be for one person experiencing life’s typical ups and downs.
— The average rent for a studio apartment is $1,700. The average 2-bedroom is $2,500.
— The average new car is $48,000.
— A dozen eggs still costs nearly $5 in many areas. If you pay $20 an hour, that’s a quarter of their hourly wage just for cheap protein.
The workers didn’t raise these prices. People with capital did.
The workers didn’t create this economy. The people with capital did.
It is therefore incumbent upon the people with capital to fix what they broke. This top-heavy economy will crash. We have seen it before. The media might ignore the Hoovervilles I see when commuting with my partner to his job on weekends, but they are real. And they are growing in size and number.
If you don’t want the next crash to make The Great Depression look like a walk in the park and quite possibly destroy the cozy capitalism you are used to, PAY YOUR DAMN WORKERS.
Rome also had a distinct set of two classes, capitalists and workers, ir patriarchs and plebes.
Rome also got too top heavy.
Rome fell.
Study history and pay your workers.
