4 ms·

> ...or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $26,000 (in 2025 dollars) annually before taxes. I couldn't easily tell how they decided on a $26

> ...or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $26,000 (in 2025 dollars) annually before taxes. I couldn't easily tell how they decided on a $26,000 "living wage" figure but in most of the US, even double that is not Easy Street. The "True Rate of Barely Getting By" is ridiculously high in the US from what I can gather.

BLKNSLVR 1mo ago
Might need to change the labelling from 'living' wage to 'surviving' wage.
bpodgursky 1mo ago
This number is before transfers, you really cannot just look at the raw income. A family of 2 adult 2 kid making $22,500 in raw income makes more like $48,700 after refundable tax credits, SNAP, housing, etc [1]. https://www.google.com/search?q=average+us+income+including+transfers+for+26k+income&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDgzODJqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&fbs=ABfTbFVyMZGZf1hfvX9uKjN_-G8cY2oODYyTyZk24Xz37_7FQ33TJTgGUSXMPMOdfjOY7e2Q30AopdyVXXfWdu5WnLoZpdMFWVURTY5I2n8dJLm7dR0vrPXatW3_GpGBwWsVmgDyXSroLXaj4nxeWEQNyufndIirE5sDOZkwfdjAF7oMKIEHiPeRgaTwcW1Qmzu2s-ykHlrY2kDc8gtmzWKMBoLosjtSQw&aep=10&ntc=1&sxsrf=APpeQntKu90ESlBbLl3OnociVYc4_Ky8cg%3A1788325544931&mstk=AUtExfDzg-FioWra-be8ype8wHuIqcwzhMuMoPwW8eJg5yWUHQ56TBLKabq-bHRS1bQ7IaLeOSw9TO9ONLTMfjiNfijOlQm9MBGVqo5fJpZYC-ZSPDSa0gXG56n-pmJ9Pzq9zflvaooxRl8LRl8JkEpfXStuNQPrMbAzXgC49xWzF9E08CQP13JKMI5BZUTxq5nDCXM7cLN3YEUpwK_lrJD0IXH_cwjj0Uj6KVRzBb6oRQY_LQnD-FSVh__Cd4771yGqqPGdtFmq_5vXmQ&aioh=3&csuir=1&cs=0&ccb=1&hl=en-US&biw=1728&bih=963&udm=50&atvm=2&mtid=z66Xat3xGqinptQP-vKwkAM https://www.google.com/search?q=average+us+income+including+...
- ElProlactin 1mo ago
  Take a step back. A family of 4 with $22,500 in income is well below the poverty line in the US, which is ~$33,000/year. But do you think a family of 2 adults and 2 children with a "feels like" income of $50,000 is still not scraping by in the US? That's basic survival at best.
  - nostrebored 1mo ago
    As someone who grew up below the poverty line for much of my life — 2x the poverty line seemed like wealth to me. There are absolutely people getting by on “feels like” 50k a year. There are not really frills, but in terms of “have shelter and food” it can work. Not everywhere is SF.
    - ElProlactin 1mo ago
      "Have shelter and food" is surviving. That's the point. And speaking of food, the USDA says that over 47 million Americans lived in a food insecure household in 2024. That's 1 in 7 people. In the world's richest country that prides itself on being the land of opportunity.
      - Aurornis 1mo ago
        > 47 million Americans lived in a food insecure household This statistic looked suspect so I had to look it up. The study defined multiple levels of food insecurity. The big 47 million number included mostly households where eating patterns were not disrupted and people did not reduce their food intake. So most “food insecure households” actually had enough food and maintained their normal eating patterns. That’s not what most people would think of from that statistic. I do agree that we should continue working on food security for all, but if you think 1 in 7 people in the US are going hungry then you’re consuming some misleading statistics.
        ElProlactin 1mo ago
        Food insecure is defined as "lack of access to an affordable, nutritious diet". In the wealthiest country in the world. I guess I've been living outside of the US for way too long because the idea that Americans would say "actually, it's not really that bad because they're technically not starving" shows just how far the country has fallen.
        MoltenMan 1mo ago
naishoya 1mo ago
there is a cliff, such that a the 2 adults, 2 children on 22,500 gross income may have access to $48,700 after refundable tax credits, SNAP, housing, etc [linked in other comment]. However if that same household earns just $5,600 more annually nearly all of those transfers cease to be available and the total income accessible becomes $36,400. It really is a case where making more is too expensive. That's less than 110 extra pre-tax dollar per week across both adult earners, and so just about 1.35 an hour raise for each adult, or 2.70 for either one of them is a real loss of over 12,000 dollars. It takes nearly $5 an hour raise for BOTH adults at the 22,500 to become even minimally better than the loss of those transfers. There is a significant number of households in the second quartile (at or slightly above 36.4K) than in the bottom quartile, and yet those are living on less than what has been defined as the 'survivable wage' by the 48.7K number So yes, the "True Rate of Barely Getting By" is even higher than the number of households earning 26K would reveal.
- danaris 1mo ago
  And much of that assistance is not a guarantee: they'll have to jump through a number of hoops to get it, and making a single mistake on a single form, or having one non-liquid asset that's too valuable on paper, may mean they get disqualified. At best that means they need to start the process again; at worst it's all over and they cannot be considered, at least for a certain time period. It is, simultaneously, important to know about that cliff, because it's real and it causes untold hardship, and really, really dangerous to view poverty as a road to "easy money" in the way your first sentence (likely inadvertently) implies.
  - naishoya 1mo ago
    Absolutely True. I didn't mean to paper over the time and organizational cost of accessing those transfers, there is a real burden and the system is inherently opaque to the people who need it the most. My first sentence was a pure statement of 'best case' scenario if everything goes perfectly correct and completely misses the time lag for most of those benefits. Specifically any tax rebates are significantly 'after the fact' as in the middle of next year, and that is 'funds not in hand' with various for fee services offering early or accelerated access to these tax refnds, and also other short term financing 'payday loans' and 'buy now pay later' at significant costs which are unfairly borne by the group of people least able to bear those costs. The cliff is even steeper for the condition where the low income household's housing costs are capped and subsidised until the houshold crosses a threshold and then must absorb moving, first and last month's rents plus security deposit at local market rate. It takes almost nothing in terms of a minor hourly raise to functionally destroy these households monthly available cash reserves, and this discussion doesn't even touch on what happens if anything which is unavoidably expensive arises; like an automobile breakdown or serious non-covered medical event. The reality of the US in real today terms is that for the 2 adults, 2 children model household anything below about 100k is still precipitously risky in many ways. What might have looked 'doable' with a family on 50k even five years ago is nothing like the current conditions for most of the nation.

BLKNSLVR 1mo ago

Might need to change the labelling from 'living' wage to 'surviving' wage.

bpodgursky 1mo ago

This number is before transfers, you really cannot just look at the raw income. A family of 2 adult 2 kid making $22,500 in raw income makes more like $48,700 after refundable tax credits, SNAP, housing, etc [1]. https://www.google.com/search?q=average+us+income+including+transfers+for+26k+income&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDgzODJqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&fbs=ABfTbFVyMZGZf1hfvX9uKjN_-G8cY2oODYyTyZk24Xz37_7FQ33TJTgGUSXMPMOdfjOY7e2Q30AopdyVXXfWdu5WnLoZpdMFWVURTY5I2n8dJLm7dR0vrPXatW3_GpGBwWsVmgDyXSroLXaj4nxeWEQNyufndIirE5sDOZkwfdjAF7oMKIEHiPeRgaTwcW1Qmzu2s-ykHlrY2kDc8gtmzWKMBoLosjtSQw&aep=10&ntc=1&sxsrf=APpeQntKu90ESlBbLl3OnociVYc4_Ky8cg%3A1788325544931&mstk=AUtExfDzg-FioWra-be8ype8wHuIqcwzhMuMoPwW8eJg5yWUHQ56TBLKabq-bHRS1bQ7IaLeOSw9TO9ONLTMfjiNfijOlQm9MBGVqo5fJpZYC-ZSPDSa0gXG56n-pmJ9Pzq9zflvaooxRl8LRl8JkEpfXStuNQPrMbAzXgC49xWzF9E08CQP13JKMI5BZUTxq5nDCXM7cLN3YEUpwK_lrJD0IXH_cwjj0Uj6KVRzBb6oRQY_LQnD-FSVh__Cd4771yGqqPGdtFmq_5vXmQ&aioh=3&csuir=1&cs=0&ccb=1&hl=en-US&biw=1728&bih=963&udm=50&atvm=2&mtid=z66Xat3xGqinptQP-vKwkAM https://www.google.com/search?q=average+us+income+including+...

ElProlactin 1mo ago
Take a step back. A family of 4 with $22,500 in income is well below the poverty line in the US, which is ~$33,000/year. But do you think a family of 2 adults and 2 children with a "feels like" income of $50,000 is still not scraping by in the US? That's basic survival at best.
- nostrebored 1mo ago
  As someone who grew up below the poverty line for much of my life — 2x the poverty line seemed like wealth to me. There are absolutely people getting by on “feels like” 50k a year. There are not really frills, but in terms of “have shelter and food” it can work. Not everywhere is SF.
  - ElProlactin 1mo ago
    "Have shelter and food" is surviving. That's the point. And speaking of food, the USDA says that over 47 million Americans lived in a food insecure household in 2024. That's 1 in 7 people. In the world's richest country that prides itself on being the land of opportunity.
    - Aurornis 1mo ago
      > 47 million Americans lived in a food insecure household This statistic looked suspect so I had to look it up. The study defined multiple levels of food insecurity. The big 47 million number included mostly households where eating patterns were not disrupted and people did not reduce their food intake. So most “food insecure households” actually had enough food and maintained their normal eating patterns. That’s not what most people would think of from that statistic. I do agree that we should continue working on food security for all, but if you think 1 in 7 people in the US are going hungry then you’re consuming some misleading statistics.
      - ElProlactin 1mo ago
        Food insecure is defined as "lack of access to an affordable, nutritious diet". In the wealthiest country in the world. I guess I've been living outside of the US for way too long because the idea that Americans would say "actually, it's not really that bad because they're technically not starving" shows just how far the country has fallen.
        MoltenMan 1mo ago

naishoya 1mo ago

there is a cliff, such that a the 2 adults, 2 children on 22,500 gross income may have access to $48,700 after refundable tax credits, SNAP, housing, etc [linked in other comment]. However if that same household earns just $5,600 more annually nearly all of those transfers cease to be available and the total income accessible becomes $36,400. It really is a case where making more is too expensive. That's less than 110 extra pre-tax dollar per week across both adult earners, and so just about 1.35 an hour raise for each adult, or 2.70 for either one of them is a real loss of over 12,000 dollars. It takes nearly $5 an hour raise for BOTH adults at the 22,500 to become even minimally better than the loss of those transfers. There is a significant number of households in the second quartile (at or slightly above 36.4K) than in the bottom quartile, and yet those are living on less than what has been defined as the 'survivable wage' by the 48.7K number So yes, the "True Rate of Barely Getting By" is even higher than the number of households earning 26K would reveal.

danaris 1mo ago
And much of that assistance is not a guarantee: they'll have to jump through a number of hoops to get it, and making a single mistake on a single form, or having one non-liquid asset that's too valuable on paper, may mean they get disqualified. At best that means they need to start the process again; at worst it's all over and they cannot be considered, at least for a certain time period. It is, simultaneously, important to know about that cliff, because it's real and it causes untold hardship, and really, really dangerous to view poverty as a road to "easy money" in the way your first sentence (likely inadvertently) implies.
- naishoya 1mo ago
  Absolutely True. I didn't mean to paper over the time and organizational cost of accessing those transfers, there is a real burden and the system is inherently opaque to the people who need it the most. My first sentence was a pure statement of 'best case' scenario if everything goes perfectly correct and completely misses the time lag for most of those benefits. Specifically any tax rebates are significantly 'after the fact' as in the middle of next year, and that is 'funds not in hand' with various for fee services offering early or accelerated access to these tax refnds, and also other short term financing 'payday loans' and 'buy now pay later' at significant costs which are unfairly borne by the group of people least able to bear those costs. The cliff is even steeper for the condition where the low income household's housing costs are capped and subsidised until the houshold crosses a threshold and then must absorb moving, first and last month's rents plus security deposit at local market rate. It takes almost nothing in terms of a minor hourly raise to functionally destroy these households monthly available cash reserves, and this discussion doesn't even touch on what happens if anything which is unavoidably expensive arises; like an automobile breakdown or serious non-covered medical event. The reality of the US in real today terms is that for the 2 adults, 2 children model household anything below about 100k is still precipitously risky in many ways. What might have looked 'doable' with a family on 50k even five years ago is nothing like the current conditions for most of the nation.