Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Middle Class American - Endangered Species

Middle Class American - Endangered Species 





This image may be obvious in the demise of the middle class, but to put this into perspective, there are only 112 waking hours in a given week. Including weekends, mind you. If you want healthy sleep, of course. So you can have one full day of rest if you literally work every single other waking hour of every day and don't eat.

Assuming you don't work more than those 88 hours. Of course now you're thinking, 'But that's such a waste of profit potential'. and you'd be right, but don't worry, here at Satan Corp Inc. we're hard at work perfecting the ProleHarness 2000, sporting a state of the art feeding tube, saline IV and amphetamine administering system to cut down on that wasteful human dignity.

Just think, that for a 2 bedroom apartment, it's on minimum wage and I assume it's adjusted to each state minimum wage. But maybe it isn't. I don't know how the market 2 bedroom apartment rent is weighted and calculated either, so it could be a hell of a lot flawed in that sense.

I did get into an argument about the fast food walkout and being sympathetic to their demands but that $15 an hour was being too high. Especially they were a bank teller and weren't making that much, but it was a more skilled position... in reality it's not. I ran some hypothetical numbers at them about less than 30 hours a week at $15 per hour and factoring payroll taxes and income taxes and whatever else, that it's about $1300 a month in the most expensive areas in the country. It seems pretty difficult to imagine anyone being able to make it in the U.S. who isn't well off to begin with.

This goes without saying that it always bugs me when people act like "THEY shouldn't make more, when I only make  [x amount]", because it's like, they're so close to getting the problem, but missing it entirely. The other problem about the recent data picture, with the min wage if it kept up with inflation/productivity charts thing is that I'm making really good money, able to afford a comfortable place to live, drive my decent used car around and keep it serviced as well as have medical insurance and what not. And I make less than the "productivity" number.

Perhaps we should just abolish the god damn wage system already. There's no reason what so ever to pay people according to time of all fucking things.

No comments: