And for Missourians who dont know, we call trashy rural dipshits hoosiers because the original trashy rural dipshits in MO came from Indiana.

Sorry again Indiana. Although modern Indiana is much better now after offloading your trashy dipshits on us back in the day

A state that is captured by the voting power of land over individuals. Missouri state government is completely beholden to the hoosiers in the boonies because there are more rural counties even though there are far less rural people. And then secondarily the rural people are propped up by dumbass McBee-wannabe suburbanites that vote conservative and wear cowboy boots recreationally.

Governor HeeHaw 2.0 is one such dumbass suburbanite who went to Chaminade in St. Louis, grew up rich, and now cosplays as the hoosier’s champion

Missouri at large is far more purple than the state government allows it to appear. It was purple for a long time and its still purple today, but a purple state that gives more voting power to land than people ultimately ends up red. Just look at our federal electoral system, its the same thing

Today’s topic is self destruction, and I aint talkin about the KRS One discussion

Im talkin bout the one-too-many ignorant suckers, lying on the mic to my sisters and brothers

Every time you listen to the radio all you hear is nonsense, they never play the bomb shit

Everything that glitters ain’t gold, and every gold record don’t glitter; that’s for damn sure

I genuinely live in an area where I can at least try to do something to get the attention of 1% type people. Thats my goal, hopefully in conjunction with other local people. Even if its as simple as having QR code stickers directing to the community around town to start. I figure the name is provocative enough in practically being an oxymoron

The community at large obviously is mostly for discussion of wealth inequality, and also ideas for stuff we could do locally would be great if anyone thinks of anything.

Also, IMO, capping net worth at $12B is hardly communism. If anything its capitalism with the bumper guards up

Either way, the average American worker who is salaried even earns less than $35/hr.

Countries with similar or slightly lower wage parity with us tend to work 30 hour weeks, have more vacation time, have universal healthcare, childcare, etc. in lieu of paying people such high wages. So they can still survive. In the US we have no supports like that reducing costs, and we also dont get paid well enough to make up for that

No, these are using the cost of living numbers for an individual. Cost of living for a family of four is over 2x higher by their same calculations.

So for two individuals making $35 an hour they would be close to affording comfortable cost of living in the cheapest state. Or it we were to make it equivalent to one individual’s income being enough for a family, they would need to be earning like 80 an hour

As I showed in my longer comment, this would make the modern minimum needed to afford average COL raising a family equivalent to a top tier income in 1958. Basically unless someone was a 1%er in 1958 they wouldnt be able to live comfortably today. That is how unsustainably far down our wages have stagnated. 47% of households make less than what it costs for one individual to live comfortably. The median income today might be at a roughly equivalent point when adjusting for inflation, but it is brutally low in comparison to what one can actually buy with what that same value of money bought someone in 1958

Yea, to afford a comfortable cost of living, as in 50% expenses, 30% discretionary, and 20% used for savings (emergency and retirement) and to pay down debts

E: Not sure why Im getting downvoted when I did not define these parameters whatsoever. This is just a reasonable calculation they did extrapolating from MIT’s barebones living wage calculations

TL;DR: skip to the graphs at the end for the meat and potatoes

SmartAsset’s calculations for cost of living in 2025 are based on a healthy financial breakdown of 50/30/20 for expenses, discretionary, and savings/debt payment percentages. Which is a level of fiscal security everyone should be entitled to IMO

Their cost of living calculations are not based on “what is the bare minimum one can survive on” where your percentages look more like 66/33/0 or 90/10/0

Really the larger thing these maps show is how all of the money has been drained away from working people over the past 70+ years. The cost of everything has accelerated, for example $35 an hour is about the amount one must make to afford the median rent or median mortgage prices in 2025, but we get screwed out of the value that our labor creates as it gets siphoned upwards. Most Americans survive on credit, which they wouldnt have to do if wages had kept up with inflation the same way that rent did since an era before neoliberal economic policy wrecked everything. If they had, then people would be making about $35 an hour. Considering we produce such massive value with our labor, it makes perfect sense. But allowing wages to stagnate is obviously beneficial to those with concentrated wealth, be it companies or individuals

If in 1958, a salary of $6,514 a year could cover the cost for a family of four then that should show you how ridiculously expensive everything has become. Modern families have two income earners and still cannot afford comfortable cost of living, which is over double what it costs for a single individual. If both of those income earners were paid at minimum $35 an hour, then families would actually be much closer to affording COL for a family of four. But they would still need additional income to reach the level of 50/30/20 comfort.

People struggle to understand just how far off the modern American worker is from the financial security that was had by the average male worker or median household in 1958. If we were to draw a direct comparison to that situation and say everyone should get paid enough to support a family of four individually, like you could back then, then everybody would have to be making like $80 an hour due to the massive inflation in costs that wages have not remotely kept up with.

Households in the 1950s had practically zero debt, in comparison to modern households which are absolutely drowning in it. Americans right now hold, collectively, over 1 trillion dollars in just credit card debt. On average each American holds over $6k in credit card debt, which would be over 10% of the average salary earner’s income ($61k). Again, just on credit card debt and nothing else. In 1950, all debt owned by the average household equated to only 2% of their income. Two percent. And people were way worse off financially in 1950 than they were by 1958

Even if the federal minimum wage were $35 per hour, on average people working for that wage would still be unable to afford to live comfortably at 50/30/20 without working a second job. Meanwhile, real actual minimum wages in nearly 10 states are still at $7.25 an hour. Let that sink in for a second. There are people close to getting paid literally 5 times less than what it costs to live anywhere near a base level of comfort. That doesnt even go into agriculture, where the federal minimum wage is even lower

Our economy is massively fucked. Were long past a crossroads point where, in order to reach a point of sustainability, we either have to pay people more or have legitimate social services like universal healthcare and childcare. Continuing down the same path is doomed to fail just based on simple logic. All of the people’s money has disappeared into the pockets of the 1%, who provide nothing with their hoarding. They create something of value by spending, but their hoarding massively outweighs their spending and will only continue to do so without intervention

47% of households, not individuals, are below the amount of income for one individual to live comfortably.

In 1958, about that same percentage of households were below an inflationary equivalent income, but the difference was that at $5k-$6k a year they were affording COL for their entire household. Being below the median of income was not such a crushing situation as it is today.

Only 1 in 44 American households made over the equivalent of $170k today, in the ultra wealthy category. Thats 2% of them. Probably 20% of households today make an excess of $170k, with a handful of them hoarding an insane amount well beyond what a household that makes $170k a year could ever feasibly hope to earn.

$170k is still $7k shy of comfortable cost of living for a family of four in Mississippi, and about half of what it costs in Hawai’i, Cali, Mass…

Therefore, most people making the equivalent of a top tier bracket income in 1958 would not be able to afford the average cost of living at basic financial security in 2025. You would have to practically have been a 1%er back then just to be comfortable today

Even the richest guy in 1958, J Paul Getty, was worth only $1B. The equivalent of a “meager” $12B or so today. Elon Musk has $433B and hes not even lonely up there.

If we capped net wealth at $12B and took away everything else above that point, there would still be 812 more billionaires than in 1958, and the US would immediately have $5T to begin rectifying the massive dysfunction in our economy

Thats only half of the story. Most of these medical workers are making over 2x what the average service worker is trying to survive on. The fact that they make that much when so many other people dont is part of what keeps their wages deflated. Theyll say if you dont like making $35 an hour then go flip burgers for $17

If medical workers “cant survive” on $35/hr then obviously the average person is well beyond fucked, but the average person is expected to survive on half that much. And so long as there is a cycle of people attempting to make it on <$20/hr wages then no one is gonna raise wages for skilled work

What is the point of having a union if youre going to let union members drop dead on the shop floor?

They dont realize that teenagers dont even have jobs anymore mostly

TIL im “vibeliving”

The world of online jobs is basically the same enshitification as online dating.

In the hypothetical sense you have the opportunity to find more jobs than at any time in the history of employment. But employers also have to field more (and mostly unqualified) applicants than ever before.

So they can find more potential employees, and you can find more jobs, but ultimately the end user experience 9/10 times is just getting buried under a 10,000 person stack of other applicants. You may be the best person for a job, but not even get an interview because the person on the other end of the machine doesnt have time to actually look through that stack.

And then worse yet, job search companies capitalize on knowing they create a demoralizing atmosphere and use that to push products on people. Resume help, professional career guidance, etc etc. Job search companies, like dating companies, dont really want any of their end users to find that much success. They want you to keep applying to jobs. Its the same reason why they dont do more to trim down unqualified applicants for employers. They sell companies on virtual interview bullshit and the like instead. Solutions that just make everything worse

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America was built on treating the worker badly. Most of the first people that came here were either slaves or indentured servants. Chinese people got exploited to build the railroads, and then banned from being citizens in the country. Now we have prison slavery and wage servitude. There are a million and one examples, but exploiting the worker is as American as apple pie.

The only thing that has ever really improved in American labor is actual safety standards for work environments, equipment, etc. We do a great job of prioritizing that. But actual workers are viewed as expendable, and many of the largest employers are just meat grinders even if they offer half-decent benefits. Walmart is a good example of that

Aldi is also widely regarded as a place that treats workers well, albeit below a co-op level of good. But considering its a German company its no surprise that they tend to have above average pay and benefits for workers.

The best move for Amazon would probably have been to start their own model of wage-slaver grocery mart