22 November 2010

It Pays to be Poor!


Someone Making Minimum Wage Has More Disposable Income Than Me – A Middle-Classer

Written by Daisy  //  November 22, 2010  //  Weeps And Glees  //  16 Comments
Interesting stuff. I read it this morning here, and the chart they provided as a visual (for people like me who avoid just numbers alone) was pretty damn telling.
A family of 4 on minimum wage now has more disposable income than a hard working American middle class family making $60,000 a year.
Zero Hedge reported, via Free Republic:
Tonight’s stunning financial piece de resistance comes from Wyatt Emerich of The Cleveland Current. In what is sure to inspire some serious ire among all those who once believed Ronald Reagan that it was the USSR that was the “Evil Empire”, Emmerich analyzes disposable income and economic benefits among several key income classes and comes to the stunning (and verifiable) conclusion that “a one-parent family of three making $14,500 a year (minimum wage) has more disposable income than a family making $60,000 a year.” And that excludes benefits from Supplemental Security Income disability checks. America is now a country which punishes those middle-class people who not only try to work hard, but avoid scamming the system. Not surprisingly, it is not only the richest and most audacious thieves that prosper – it is also the penny scammers at the very bottom of the economic ladder that rip off the middle class each and every day, courtesy of the world’s most generous entitlement system. Perhaps if Reagan were alive today, he would wish to modify the object of his once legendary remark.
And here’s the nifty little graphic that tells the story quite clearly:
The analyst in the article states that someone is pretty much better off working one week a month at minimum wage than working their ass off at a full-time $60K-a-year gig. Go figure.
And it reminds me of that chick I once saw at a grocery store in Atlanta – she had a Louis Vuitton purse full of freakin’ food stamps, which she used to pay for her groceries (shrimp was included, of course), and then got into her Mercedes and drove away.
Yep. I guess I’m the chump for working 60-hour weeks. Stupid me…

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