Where do you land?
-38 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year.
-51 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.
-62 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year.
-71 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year.
The federal poverty level for a family of five is $28,410, and yet almost 40 percent of all American workers do not even bring in $20,000 a year.
If you worked a full-time job at $10 an hour all year long with two weeks off, you would make approximately $20,000.
Van down by the river, anyone?
The leaders (CEO and Chairman) of Overstock.com put their money where their mouths are. The company is holding about $10million in gold and silver coins, and 3 months worth of food for all it’s employees.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-24/overstock-holds-3-months-food-10-million-gold-employees-preparation-next-collapse
I was reading some article that pointed to a study (which I skimmed) that came to the conclusion that 20% of people in the USA had a negative net worth.
This makes anyone with ten dollars in his pocket and no debt richer than a big hunk of the population.
A mises.org article showed that the international poverty level based on income relative to the median that poverty in the USA was better off than many middle class people in europe.
The problem is the fiat system and debt. Those of us unwilling to live life on leverage are suffering. All the prices are bid up and the whole society becomes skewed and warped with all the wealth illusion.
On zerohedge a commenter had a story, which I will shorten to the basic theme: Two guys, one deeply in debt gives a 2 euro coin to a beggar and other guy says why did you do that for? The first guy says ‘he has nothing’. The second guy says well he has 2 euro more than you.
It’s an upside down world where the deeply in debt are the rich and those who may not have much, but owe nothing, are the poor.
“If you worked a full-time job at $10 an hour all year long with two weeks off, you would make approximately $20,000.” And Mexicans, Chinese, Middle Easterners all keep coming to the USA. It seems to indicate that there are worse places than the USA.
Thanks to our funny money, living debt free and modestly (at least in my part of the US) is nearly impossible. Doesn’t help over 50% of our yearly income gets taxed away too.
People once did live comfortability on $30,000 a year. Even living in a major city no less too.
Was talking with a neighbor the other day. She is moving to a less expensive condo, and just sold her single family house. She thought she would need a short term mortgage on the condo (before she would get the cash out of her house). She only needed to borrow about 20k. Even though she has great credit and was putting down 80% down on that condo, no bank would write a loan for “only” 20k. She would have had to “borrow” at least 50k. It’s an insanely stupid system, we should applaud less debt.
In my lifetime I watched banking go from a semi-legitimate institution to one where bankers sought to load people with debt they couldn’t pay. I’ve seen it done time and again.
I had some friends in the welding and machining business wanting an SBA loan to do a bit of revamping and upgrading and expanding. The SBA and hence, bankers, insisted on loaning them about ten times the amount they needed.
Now some might diss these guys as not being the sharpest knives in the drawer but they had enough sense to walk away from that ruination in the making. It was a shame they couldn’t get the small amount of money they needed and could repay so they continued to struggle along……and continued to be their own bosses.