60 bucks for a phone a month and you call that “minimum wage poor”? While just using 350 for food? The most important factor in life?
I drown in money and use a 8yr old phone and pay 7 moneyz a month for a generous contract. I would consider a 60 buck monthly budget for a stupid phone outrageously wild.
60 buck monthly phone budget is something that will sound reasonable to the policymakers. “Food budget”, however, is completely abstract and negotiable. People who never had to count what they spend on food will argue that everyone can permanently live on the cheapest food items they’ve ever heard of. Don’t forget that according to Fox News, you can eat a whole Thanksgiving dinner for $10. It’s dumb, but that’s how they think, so you have to meet them there if you want to try and get through to them and make a difference.
To be honest, I don’t have any precise clue about food prices either. Our cook buys it. If he all uses it for food or not, we don’t know and don’t check.
But I’m also aware that 10 bucks probably won’t buy shit anywhere in the capitalist world. And surely no dinner. Here (germany) you can buy 6 buns for 10 bucks. We just did and I thought i slept for 3 decades or so. It was 0.10 per bun when I was younger.
Still 60 bucks for a bit…mobile data? I pay 120 for 5x1gbit at home. And for half of it I could use a fraction of it outside? Sounds bonkers. Or maybe I’m just a cheapskate 😁
$60 is the standard price for the highest tier unlimited data plans.
Nevermind that with the ubiquity of WiFi unlimited data isn’t really necessary for most people; Most people still just assume they need that.But seriously, who needs unlimited? I have 30GB, rarely ever use more than 5GB tops. With watching jellyfin.
I may be a cheapskate, but 60 bucks for some unlimited data sounds bizzare. For tiktok-junkies maybe who spend 20h a day scrolling vids?
There are some jobs where it’s important. But then it’s something the company will buy. Individuals almost never need it.
Indeed. If needed then you probably don’t need to pay for it.
I agree. I’m on Mint getting like 2GB a month and never reach that because I barely use this stupid rectangle off WiFi.
Cachyos and opensuse here, but at least those are at home only so I don’t need mobile. The updates alone would probably fill some more gig otherwise. But still far from 30.
Whoops, I meant mint the cell service, but OpenSUSE mentioned let’s GOOOO!!! :D
Been hearing a ton about Cachy, gotta check it out! I’m trying to figure out a solid distro to put my less-techy gamers in the family on. It’s likely between Cachy or OpenSuse…slowroll or leap is the question. 🤔
Oh lol, never heard of mint in that context 😁 For gaming there’s no question I’d say => cachy. They’re always up2date and everything works. On suse I had more probs, but I don’t game on that device so I chose it because German 😁
Also pacman beats zyppr. By speed at least. It’s so fucking slow it drives me mad… And then you get paru on top. Guess I would choose cachy (or other arch-based) for nongaming too.
But I’m linux-noob for desktop…
For all my servers I use Debian mostly.
Appreciate your perspective! Thank you so much for the reply! :)
It’s called minimum wage for a reason. It’s not a career and you aren’t supposed to do it forever.
It’s not meant to be sustainable. Capitalism is about cheating your fellow men out of their munnies so you have more.
That’s why we need Scientific Socialism
It was never sustainable, it was a hack to keep people from demanding unions. There’s plenty of countries with no minimum wage and well paid workers. It takes strong unions and labor protection laws, which is why the fascists will fight it to the death.
When minimum wage was instituted in the United States, it was intended as a living wage.
That has been eroded with time, though.
It was never implemented in the first place. What was intended never happened. Probably for the best honestly. Minimum wage is a poor way to accomplish a living wage, the only advantage it has, is political expediency.
Sweden here, we have unions but no legal minimum wage.
For all the good, there’s still too many companies not unionized which mostly affects young people and foreigners with shit wages at shit jobs and with no legal minimum and far lower momentum for unionization these days these people don’t have a lot of leverage, stuck living with parents or in other shitty conditions to afford anything.
If you’re in a job with a good union it can be nice, but not all people have that luck.
I understand that since you’re working 400 less hours per year, with a months more vacation, and paid parental leave on a job that’s much more difficult to get fired on you might still have complaints.
But seriously, the tiny fractions of a problem that still exist in the Swedish labor market, wouldn’t even make rounding errors in the US. There are always going to be problems, and lots of arguments about how to fix them. Most people in the US, would much rather have Swedish labor market problems to argue about.
Rent bots have added another $100-$130 to their listing prices.
They’re as naive as someone just putting together that minimum wage en masse isn’t sustainable when it’s a punishing poverty wage. Its a shanty wage…if that.
In my area right now you cannot rent an apartment unless you show proof you have income 3x rent. So that 1200 apartment wouldn’t be possible because they make less than 3600
Even if they had an extra $500 per month somehow, it’s not enough to just survive. For one thing, if you’re human, you need to at least entertain the possibility of vacations.
Why can’t we expect people to survive AND to have a decent quality of life?
And we need to be clear that “vacations” does not mean travelling. People will do basic tourist crap in Italy and call themselves worldly, whatever. But people do need money to just exist in their own space without working for a week(longer, obviously). People can’t even be tourists in their own cities and towns.
For one thing, if you’re human, you need to at least entertain the possibility of vacations.
American media: COMMUNISSSSSSSSST!!! AHHHHH!!! UNREASONABLE LAZY MILLENNIAL!!! HANDOUTS!!!
$15/hr min wage
[laughs in Pennsylvanian]
[weeps in Pennsylvanian]
And just think, iirc 19 States still utilize federal minimum wage… So, less than half of $15/hr.
It’s not supposed to be sustainable. If you have ANY slack whatsoever you gain leverage against the oligarch class.
It’s sustainable because they tolerate it. They just do the horse bit from Animal Farm
Fight for 15 started back in, what, 2006?
By the time most places had $15, it should’ve been $25
It’s still $7.
Pretty close $24.85 adjusted for inflation for today. But even inflation indexing seems a little iffy when things like housing have been outpacing the general rate.
Where I live (not usa) minimum wage is practically $21.40
And your entire civilization hasn’t collapsed from the weight of fairly paying all those unwashed workers?!?!? Absolutely shocking. Somebody should tell our policy people! They’ll be thrilled at this news! /s
Sincerely, happy for you though lol.
There was this commercial in the 90’s, I think it was burger king. About a young guy doing his budget, it included $19/mo for gas, and it came out to “a dollar a day for lunch? More than enough!” For a 99 cent cheeseburger. That budget was laughable at the time but it’s insane today.
I just did the math and I don’t get even $15/hr.
Glad that my transportation cost is under $25 and rent is 6x less than that value.
Oh, and food costs are 1/3 of that, as long as I cook myself.But yeah, getting anything imported, would hurt the bank balance.
If your rent is that low you’re clearly not in the US. Why would people with rock bottom cost of living need higher wages? Sounds like you’re living like a king compared to bthe working class here.
Yeah.
Thanks to the income/expense situation being a little bit less unbalanced over here.
Also thanks to the relative ease there is, to get politicians to implement work reform, as compared to the US (not that any of the work reform laws would apply to me).
Answer: it’s not sustainable
The crazy part: its propped up by the ultra wealthy in a country with more guns than people. When this shit does hit the fan, the violence will be on another level.
