dumbthingswhitepplsay:

hamburgerjack:

karnythia:

sonic-hip-attack:

ignatius-m:

Which meant that I could buy 5 gallons of gas for an hour’s work, ignoring tax taken out of my paycheck, etc.

I could buy a cheap fast food meal for about 3.16USD, a bit more than a half hour’s work.

Not going to say how much I get paid now, but let’s call it 12USD/hr for the sake of mathematical simplicity.

Gas is something like 3.50USD a gallon, so it takes 17.5USD to buy five gallons of gas. “Cheap” fast food meals run about 5.65USD now (smallest size available of whatever the cheapest thing is).

I get paid more than twice what I used to when I first started working about 14 years ago, but it takes me more hours at work to earn five gallons of gas than it did when I started working. The price for a cheap-o fast food meal has gone down for me slightly even though it is still pretty damned pricey.

Very little has actually gone down except our real buying power.

For a fast food employee to be making the equivalent entry level pay that I was making 14 years ago on the basis of gas prices, the minimum wage would have to be 17.50USD/hr.

Most client-facing IT workers I know are making less than that.

I remember when you could rent a studio/1 bedroom apartment (depending on locale) & afford food & utilities on minimum wage, or just above. You weren’t going to live high on the hog or anything, but I was making $6 an hour and doing fine. Now? You can’t live independently on minimum wage. You have to have a roommate & you’re probably still struggling.

Not probably. Everyone I work with has a roommate or lives with their parents, or a spouse. No one is “making it”.

The only people I know making it are over 35, got a rich someone somewhere, or white men.

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• Reblogged from: Of the Castle Julius