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.
Raising minimum wage and housing would be an easy political platform to stand on but, of course, politicians are beholden to the rich.
It would be an easy platform for democrats to stand on if they hadn’t thrown away all of their credibility on the matter.
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??
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?
It’s great because a lot of people don’t realize there’s a sub minimum wage as well ☺️.
30$ in tips per month is all it takes to allow the sub minimum wage to be paid in a bunch of states.
The sub minimum wage is 2 dollars. Yup. 2 dollars an hour.
BBbbbbBbBbBUt you’re A peeec of Sshhhiiit for not supporting tipping ermahgerd some anecdote can make more with tips than a fair wage therefore fuck it all hurr durr
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.
That’s been a poverty wage for at least 15 years.
Yeah, the “$15 minimum wage” conversation has been going on for so long that the actual number adjusted for inflation would be well into the mid $20 range. IIRC, it would currently land somewhere around $24.75 per hour.
And if the idea of a $24.75 minimum wage makes you balk, maybe you should consider how little you’re being paid for the work you do, when compared to what the minimum wage used to cover. It used to cover enough for a single full time worker to afford housing, utilities, food, and a car. If you’re struggling to do that and you’re making in the mid $20’s, then congrats you know how it felt to be paid minimum wage when it was introduced.
Kill all rich people.
A living wage in #Arkansas, one of the cheapest/poorest states is between $22 and $23 per hour.
Democrats won’t, but they could campaign on 30$/hr (25$/hr tipped), and then be “reasonable” and “negotiate” down to passing a living federal wage based on the cheapest/poorest state, adjusted each year on labor day to ensure it is a living wage. (It would still exceed 15$/hr.)
I’m kind of more shocked at $16,000 a year is considered above poverty.
The poverty line was historically measured simply by multiplying the USDA’s cheapest food plan for a household to buy groceries with adequate nutrition, and multiplying by 3.
Then, in the intervening 6 decades or so, food inflation has gone up significantly slower than housing inflation, to where that simple assumption of “barely enough to eat, times 3” began systematically understating actual poverty.
Today, feeding the reference family of 4 (2 adults 20-50, 1 kid aged 6-8, 1 aged 9-11) costs $996.20 per month (as of March 2025). That’s basically $12,000 per year, so the poverty line for a family of 4 is $32,150 (updated every January with September data).
So cost of rent/mortgage is excluded.
Then the state provides a shelter, right?You can maybe wait three + years for a Section 8 voucher!
If applying for that is anything like applying for unemployment, good luck lol.
In some places, that’s on a lottery system.
The numbers are all made up, and they’ve not kept track with inflation or the economy in a long time. Things like “minimum wage” simply lingered to allow those better off that sometimes have a conscience to sleep at night, thinking there is a system in place for the less fortunate. Our Federal government has been failing us longer than Mango Mussolini’s presence, he is simply baring and accelerating the asshattery.
Woah 16k gross? That’s wild.
Maybe if rent was… Checks notes $395 a month.
Then you’d have $9,500 a year, so $790 a month to spend on everything else. Let’s say you then buy only flour for sustenance… AI said $27 per month to eat just flour.
Which leaves you with $763 a month for entertainment.
What are these people even complaining about?
Maybe don’t eat golden sushi and crack cocaine for every meal Jesus
Think of how many pieces of Avocado toast you get for $763/month: these people are living the life!
You could literally just grow your own avocados and use the unlimited flour to make your own toast, thats like infinite money. Why are poor people so stupid and useless? It’s like all they do is buy drugs and alcohol and beg the rich/moral people to pay for it and do everything for them. I can’t believe how lazy some people are.
Still /s, in case that isn’t clear enough
/s if you’re really THAT dense.
Trump disbands DHHS
No more poverty!
Poverty doesn’t exist if you don’t define meterics for it.
That’s exactly the point.
My prediction for 2026
still a whole lot of 2025 to go
$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.
the goal was to enforce poverty, not to resolve it. this is the system working exactly as intended
Manipulative liars/vampires who don’t think of poor people are deserving of any kindness or luxury.
Builds strong deficiencies
Dont forget to thank Mr. MSG
Yes, it sounds bad. But there is a bright side, too! The week has 168 hours, which means if you work four full time jobs, you can make $60k a year and you still get eight hours of sleep! /s
those are some top-tier grustle tips
$7.25 has been poverty wages for over a decade.
Triple that and it’s still a poverty wage in many parts of California.
Minimum wage in California is $16.50 though. For fast food workers it’s $20
Linebaugh points to the influential words of August Spies, one of the convicted men, who just before his execution cried out the famous words: “There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”
That’s a powerful quote. I remember going to local May Day fairs and maybe celebrating it in elementary school. Those events definitely did not cover any of this fascinating history about worker’s rights.
The YouTube link I posted used to be sang at May Day events too, but you know, "I like Ike!”
For an individual supporting themselves. For anyone with a family, it’s been a poverty wage for a very long time. Spoiler, more than a third of minimum wage earners have children to support.
Um? I’m making more than twice that and I can just barely afford rent, food, etc. I’d hesitate to call anything below $15/hr even remotely livable, and that’s out in the sticks.
Poverty wage is not anywhere near a liveable wage. It’s the federal definition for “too poor to survive without assistance.” A living wage is enough to support yourself, a family, and leaves enough to find personal fulfillment. That’s at least two to three times the poverty wage, depending on where you live and how many dependents you have.
FDR intended for the minimum wage to be a living wage, not a poverty wage. The oligarchs that run America prefer a minimum wage be below a poverty wage, because poor people are easier to exploit.
it gets darker and more insidious than that. america’s definition of poverty is unique unto ourselves. the rest of the world views poverty as a condition in which a person is unable to do all the human things humans do. poverty wages, everywhere else, is anyone not making a living wage. but we, in our incredible exceptionalism, defined our own definition of poverty, and then refuse to acknowledge that more and more people are slipping into it.
the key to understanding why we refuse to acknowledge this is because poverty is enforced. it is always enforced. the natural order of nature is for humans to care for eachother. the greedy parasites who control us though need us to be desperate enough to keep us from realizing we provide them with comforts we do not benefit from because we’re just trying to scrape out a basic living from table scraps.
Ain’t seen nothing yet, price adjustments after tariffs gonna make middle class in great depression queues.
Pretty sure that’s the point of project 2025, so everyone is too poor and stuck to fight the dictatorship and no one else can get ahead forcing the them to be a cog in the machine for the 1% until they’re dead
Jokes on them.
More people who feel they have nothing to live for are more people who are willing to go to extreme measures to punish the ones who put them in that position.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” JFK
“They sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Hosea 8:7
But eggs’ll be cheap, right?
The solution is obviously to abolish HHS.
The criteria must be wrong because by these metrics half of Americans are below poverty!
by these metrics half of Americans are below poverty!
I mean yeah sure, if we just throw around a random percentage, the metrics are the problem.
CEOs read “minimum wage” and they think “maximum wage”.
It’s just a branding issue. /s
President Felon will change the poverty threshold to $0.15 to prove everyone is doing excellent.
