In 2025, the federal minimum wage is officially a “poverty wage.” The annual earnings of a single adult working full-time, year-round at $7.25 an hour now fall below the poverty threshold of $15,650 (established by the Department of Health and Human Services guidelines). The limitations of how the federal government calculates poverty understate how far the minimum wage is from economic security for workers and their families.
Better cut the top tax bracket and corp taxes some more
I mean, it’s just a matter of time before it starts trickling down, right?
Right??
Where does that threshold come from though? Like is it adjusted accordingly with inflation or is it just a made up number from 1993?
Because seeing the effects of the tariffs this number should’ve doubled in the past months.
The federal poverty standard is horribly low. Like you’re still on the brink of homeless at twice that wage.
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.
It’s like 70% or something of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. It’s crazy, but we all keep voting in the same group of assholes who haven’t changed a thing in decades. So frustrating.
Edit: The first site I saw (I have no idea if it’s credible or not) says “seventy-seven percent of workers in America would experience financial difficulty if their paycheck were delayed a week” - source
What’s even more disturbing is when you think of how much savings would be needed to weather the storm. If your car is totalled and you had to find something, one of the adult loses their job and you have to cover a month or three of life. We are talking tens of thousands of dollars.
But maybe even worse is how quickly that can be replaced. If shit hits the fan and you survived, how long are you vulnerable? Two years? A decade of saving?
When you look at the top 10% of society there just aren’t that many problems that could cause them to be homeless in 24hrs.
Tfw I might not have a job in 2 months and this will be me :D. I have some savings to get me through for a bit, but not very long. If I do end up getting laid off and any other major event happens at the same time, I will be absolutely fucked.
Would you pay for an insurance to help you weather the storm?
$7.25 has been poverty wages for over a decade.
How should it be possible to leave poverty behind with minimum wage? It’s the minimum. Only people without work can have less.
It’s unfortunate but those who make the least are inevitable the ones who are poor. Not calling it poor is misleading.
“No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
THAT was the actual reason the minimum wage was established in the first place. And businesses have been fighting against it ever since - through a combination of lobbying (bribing) politicians and propaganda designed to convince people that those who earn the minimum wage “deserve” to suffer.
Instead of replying to each comment, one big reply here.
Minimum wage works for jobs where people are underpaid because they outcompete each other and drive prices down. It’s essentially a forced union for unskilled workers which is fair because they don’t have the mental capacity to organize themselves.
But listening closely to Roosevelt, ‘any right to continue’ means that those businesses that don’t supress the wages cease to exist. This ends poverty because those people become unemployed and thus don’t count as low income anymore.
As long as there are illegal immigrants who earn less than legal residents, the minimum wage is not really the minimum wage. To be fair, illegal immigrants go to California, New York and Florida while states without own mimimum income laws are mostly southern states.
The real probelm is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour
If there were enough jobs, there would be no competition to go below the poverty line.
Additionally, the main problem must be the housing market. Create cheap housing and huge parts of the income don’t go to rent. It’s almost funny that the cheap workers who work in construction cannot build cheap housing for themselves, thanks to zoning laws.
Overall, why should minimum wage work if it would be ridiculous to do that for comfortable wages? If there were a law prohibiting any job that doesn’t pay enough to own a house with pool, we wouldn’t expect that everybody would own such a house. We would expect that the majority of people would be unemployed. Why should that be different for lowpaying jobs?
Minimum wage works for jobs where people are underpaid because they outcompete each other and drive prices down. It’s essentially a forced union for unskilled workers which is fair because they don’t have the mental capacity to organize themselves.
Can’t tell if centrist or republican.
What’s wrong with that analysis?
Nothing, if you’re either a centrist or a republican.
And if I am not?
If not you should reexamine which political label you have chosen for yourself and see if it actually matches your contempt for all who earn wages.
because they don’t have the mental capacity to organize themselves.
Fuck off
Yeah I stopped reading there. So condescending.
$15k a year??? That wouldn’t even cover my food let alone a shitty hotel room. Anything below $50k as a single earner is deep in poverty.
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.
What absolute dumbass thought that would be a good metric to track?
probably economists and politicians, transit is hard to quantify a minimum of because walking is a technical option in many situations.
This is America. Walking is almost never an actual option.
if you have enough time it is though, it’s just that the poor don’t have time.
With most states having their own minimum wages higher than the federal one, how relevant is this really?
Thank you for the response from the Democratic Party.
Fuck workers in red states. They deserve it for being outnumbered.
