this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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In 2025, the federal minimum wage is officially a “poverty wage.” The annual earnings of a single adult working full-time, year-round at $7.25 an hour now fall below the poverty threshold of $15,650 (established by the Department of Health and Human Services guidelines). The limitations of how the federal government calculates poverty understate how far the minimum wage is from economic security for workers and their families.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago

Trump disbands DHHS

No more poverty!

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 hours ago

The federal poverty standard is horribly low. Like you're still on the brink of homeless at twice that wage.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Ain't seen nothing yet, price adjustments after tariffs gonna make middle class in great depression queues.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (2 children)

Pretty sure that's the point of project 2025, so everyone is too poor and stuck to fight the dictatorship and no one else can get ahead forcing the them to be a cog in the machine for the 1% until they're dead

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

Jokes on them.

More people who feel they have nothing to live for are more people who are willing to go to extreme measures to punish the ones who put them in that position.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours ago

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable." JFK

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 hours ago

But eggs'll be cheap, right?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 13 hours ago

President Felon will change the poverty threshold to $0.15 to prove everyone is doing excellent.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 13 hours ago

CEOs read "minimum wage" and they think "maximum wage".

It's just a branding issue. /s

[–] [email protected] 44 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

$15k a year??? That wouldn’t even cover my food let alone a shitty hotel room. Anything below $50k as a single earner is deep in poverty.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, it sounds bad. But there is a bright side, too! The week has 168 hours, which means if you work four full time jobs, you can make $60k a year and you still get eight hours of sleep! /s

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 hours ago

those are some top-tier grustle tips

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

IIRC, the federal poverty level doesn’t account for housing, transport, utilities, etc… It basically only accounts for food. And even then, it only accounts for the cheapest of the cheap food; You’d basically be eating white rice and instant ramen every day.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

What absolute dumbass thought that would be a good metric to track?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

the goal was to enforce poverty, not to resolve it. this is the system working exactly as intended

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Manipulative liars/vampires who don’t think of poor people are deserving of any kindness or luxury.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Builds strong deficiencies

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

Dont forget to thank Mr. MSG

[–] [email protected] -2 points 15 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

The solution is obviously to abolish HHS.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The criteria must be wrong because by these metrics half of Americans are below poverty!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

by these metrics half of Americans are below poverty!

I mean yeah sure, if we just throw around a random percentage, the metrics are the problem.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

For an individual supporting themselves. For anyone with a family, it's been a poverty wage for a very long time. Spoiler, more than a third of minimum wage earners have children to support.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Um? I'm making more than twice that and I can just barely afford rent, food, etc. I'd hesitate to call anything below $15/hr even remotely livable, and that's out in the sticks.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Poverty wage is not anywhere near a liveable wage. It's the federal definition for "too poor to survive without assistance." A living wage is enough to support yourself, a family, and leaves enough to find personal fulfillment. That's at least two to three times the poverty wage, depending on where you live and how many dependents you have.

FDR intended for the minimum wage to be a living wage, not a poverty wage. The oligarchs that run America prefer a minimum wage be below a poverty wage, because poor people are easier to exploit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

it gets darker and more insidious than that. america's definition of poverty is unique unto ourselves. the rest of the world views poverty as a condition in which a person is unable to do all the human things humans do. poverty wages, everywhere else, is anyone not making a living wage. but we, in our incredible exceptionalism, defined our own definition of poverty, and then refuse to acknowledge that more and more people are slipping into it.

the key to understanding why we refuse to acknowledge this is because poverty is enforced. it is always enforced. the natural order of nature is for humans to care for eachother. the greedy parasites who control us though need us to be desperate enough to keep us from realizing we provide them with comforts we do not benefit from because we're just trying to scrape out a basic living from table scraps.

[–] [email protected] 87 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

$7.25 has been poverty wages for over a decade.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

That’s been a poverty wage for at least 15 years.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, the “$15 minimum wage” conversation has been going on for so long that the actual number adjusted for inflation would be well into the mid $20 range. IIRC, it would currently land somewhere around $24.75 per hour.

And if the idea of a $24.75 minimum wage makes you balk, maybe you should consider how little you’re being paid for the work you do, when compared to what the minimum wage used to cover. It used to cover enough for a single full time worker to afford housing, utilities, food, and a car. If you’re struggling to do that and you’re making in the mid $20’s, then congrats you know how it felt to be paid minimum wage when it was introduced.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Kill all rich people.