This article just really bugs me. It reminds me of Card's novel Saints where the entire family is working 60 hours a week and they still can't afford to eat.
It's not that bad in the U.S., but this quote just floored me:
quote: Melanie Brown's family is among those in Utah often falling below the federal poverty level, which varies annually according to family size and makeup. For Brown, her husband and three children ages 9, 5 and 4, the poverty level in 2002 was nearly $21,500. (For a single parent with one child, the limit is $12,400 in annual income.)
"I work 50 hours a week. My husband works 40 hours a week," Brown said Tuesday. "It seems like we get comfortable for a couple of months and then something happens." Financial trouble for the Browns can be something as simple as a car breaking down.
quote:[Utah has] record numbers of bankruptcy filings and a rate of mortgage foreclosures that's nearly twice the national average.
This does not surprise me. You can look at all the starter castles being built all over the wasatch front, and I'm amazed at how people can afford them. Truth is, they often can't.
When we moved to Utah, because my dad was switching careers and building a small business, we lived in a house that was 1/4 the size of the one we moved from. It was the smallest house my mother had ever lived in. My dad's parents were just horrified their son would live in such a small place, but my dad pointed to the big houses on the hill and said, "You know who asks for the most help with bills? Not the people in the small homes, but the people who spend every dollar they have on a big house and then eat hot dogs three days a week."
I don't know why this is such a huge problem. I don't get it. *scowl*
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Yeah, I know. She's the example of kids-with-poverty, but the foreclosure rate is a different kind of financial trouble that didn't have an example listed.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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I'm trying to figure out how you can collectively work 90 hours a week and still make less than $21,500 a year. That works out to be a little less than $4.60 an hour. That's below minimum wage, isn't it?
Something about that article doesn't quite add up.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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All I can think of is lots of consumer debt. The article never mentions what their expenses are.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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Maybe she just started to work 50 hrs, or maybe one of them was unemployed last year.
Maybe she doesn't always work 50 hours per week.
Why is she paying $300 a month for health insurance? Chip is $50 (sometimes it's free), and they also have a program for adults that is just like Chip.
But, in all seriousness, shouldn't a family that works full time bring in more than $24K?
[ September 10, 2003, 12:55 PM: Message edited by: Sweet William ]
Posts: 524 | Registered: May 2003
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I figure that unemployment had to figure in there somewhere. If the writer was going to put a specific example in his article, it would have been nice if he'd been actually specific, rather than taking the emotional immediacy of a struggling family and discarding the supportive facts.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Yeah, but the emotional thingy is what works best for crusty old fools like me. Why give us facts when you can just play on our heartstrings.
The woman must be working for the LDS church, because I think that's the only place left in Salt Lake that still pays minimum wage. McDonalds pays like $8 an hour. The husband works at some pizza joint (KaCHING!!!!)
Posts: 524 | Registered: May 2003
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But seriously, I make 24k and I have a hard time living on that as a single person. I've no idea how a family of five can live on 21k.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Well, as a manager, she could be salaried. And with the new laws about overtime, since she's management, she wouldn't get overtime. Also, it said her recent promotion, so she is now working 50 hours a week. And it also said the often fall below the poverty line. Maybe now that she is a manager, they aren't.
I read yesterday that the average cost of housing in this country was $790 a month. And to make rent, (based on some formula they have about how much of your salary should be spent on housing, I'm assuming) they said that a person would need to make $15 an hour to be able to afford the average housing costs. Unfortunately, they pointed out, Federal Minumum Wage is $5.15.
Oh, and we pay $250 a month for health insurance just for my son.
Oh, and I also read a thing about . . . Oh, hell, I'll find it and quote it.
Okay, got it.
quote: Take a look at the new book "The Two-Income Trap" by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, published by Basic Books. Comparing the early 1970s with the early 2000s, the authors report that a typical family with only the husband working earned $38,700 30 years ago, and after fixed expenses like shelter, food, transportation and taxes, had $17,834 to spend for tuitions and other incidentals. Now, with both husband and wife working (if they're lucky) and earning $67,800, the fixed expenses total $50,755 and $17,045 is left to pay for everything else. (That's all in constant dollars.)
That might be part of the problem. Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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