honestly this is ragebait and now i will take it. in this hypothetical you can find a 15$/hr entry level job with no qualifications in somewhere that is not a "megapolis", have no pre existing medical condition, no accidents, no emergency medical expenses, no disabilities, no previous debt, no liabilities like taking care of family AND that still requires a second person and you working overtime 8 hours a week every week.

this entry level job somehow gives you full paid maternity leave and a flexible working schedule and has enough growth prospects to promote you to manager in JUST ONE YEAR almost doubling your salary, but you'll still be making less money while having another person taken care of.

im not american but sure it's probably a better place to live in than a huge portion of the world, but this is not even fantasy, this is simply mocking people for being poor. how many people do fit in with all the requirements for this hypothetical? like surely you gotta recognise that not everyone is a young couple with a clean slate, right? right????

Oh yes the totally existing convenience stores that offer $15 an hour and overtime. Definitely not closer to $10 an hour maxing out at 35 hours to avoid paying benefits.

Oh it's 'the bell curve' nazi

My local grocery store is still hiring at $11 an hour for skilled workers and $7.25 for non. In what universe is a gas station paying $15 an hour???????????

So the manager is allowed to have children and nobody else. Good system.

Not even demanding, but requires working 6 days a week?

He also boasts "I haven't worked fewer than 48 hours a week in about 60 years." link

Has he even done wage labor for a day in his life?

This guy is so old, born in 1943, he’s not even a boomer. He’s silent gen. Why do these people, not just go sit down somewhere, and yell at the tv?

THIS is capitalism’s “economists”? one that does calculations without taking taxation into consideration and then does further calculations based on hypothetical promotions and hypothetical wages for those roles? i know economics is a soft science but come the fuck on, you have to be a LITTLE more concrete than that no? and why does this dude think people should be working 50hrs a week? the 40hr work week was invented when one person was at home taking care of the housework. now, in his defense of this bullshit system, his solution is BOTH those people do a nearly combined 100 hours of labor per week, while nobody is taking care of the home, in hopes that one of them will be promoted so that the other can— not even stop working entirely to take care of the home, but just work LESS and still take care of the home and also somehow raise a kid while doing all this. again, to try to pretend the system that HE grew up in where ONE person working LESS than he’s proposing we do could afford to take care of a family and have savings while the other parent is at home keeping everything in order and raising the children

i hate these pig pieces of shit so much because they present these “solutions” to try and gaslight uninformed people into thinking we arent a far cry from capitalism’s supposed “glory days” that THEY grew up in and benefitted from meanwhile if you actually think even the tiniest bit about what he’s saying and apply just a little bit of historical analysis you see right through it and see what a dishonest piece of shit he is for trying to paint this as something anything other than dystopian

how about its the most basic human function to have a child and if your economic system doesnt permit people to do that then the system needs to be killed and if you disagree then so do you?

Easier than it was in the fabled 1950s

where a family of four or five could own a house, and a car, and want for nothing... with a stay-at-home parent and on one 'gas station' income

I love the subtle use of "48hr weeks" like someone didnt sneak in an extra day's work somewhere

This is a completely realistic scenario, and not even demanding (the husband could easily continue to work 48 hrs a week). And it's been done ~~with jobs at convenience stores~~ entirely in my imagination.

The American economy would shit itself if it were possible to simply be a quiet family that works retail jobs and raises a kid on 1 and a half incomes. Every aspect of American life for lower income people is presumed to have debt involved. Credit cards, home loans, medical debt, car payments. Those are how the gears turn and it's what the capitalist class wants. They don't want stable, financially independent workers. They want debt slaves who live off payday loans.

Maybe it is possible to live like Dr. Racist is suggesting, but it would involve a series of implausible circumstances to the point it's not worth considering. It would be a family who somehow has no debt, a stable living circumstance, an assumed promotion after one year, no medical emergencies, no accidents, no layoffs, no sudden natural disasters, nothing. It would be threading a needle every single day, for the rest of their lives. Getting a royal flush every day.

I make pretty much the hypothetical couples combined income, live in a low cost of living rural area, and its extremely tight to support a wife and kid on that.

Theres a lot of small stuff that help make it work, like my wife doesn't have to work which avoids daycare costs or just the logistics of both parents having to go to work. We have a mortgage rather than rent which makes the cost of housing a bit lower.

All of that is just to say, even if we ignore the unicorn convenience store jobs, it still doesn't really work out unless you have like 3 or 4 other life circumstances that also work in your favor. I'm struggling with this and im in a specialized job that requires experience and knowledge (and even then I'm payed above average for my area). It's wild how out of touch some of these ghouls are.

Putting gas in cars for people used to be a job and people could make okay money doing it. He probably thinks that's still a thing, because it was a thing when he was not so old. He's probably also has cognitive issues at 82 years old on top of being stupid as fuck.

I hope Charles Murray is eaten by gila monsters

When you think about it, everything us easy if you make up an acontexual scenario and treat it as fact.

Expect nothing less from the Bell Curve guy

A combined income of $75k isn't enough to live off of and save for retirement. It's practically a poverty income once you have kids.

If this is the same scumfuck I think it is the only thing I wanna hear from this decrepit creature is the screams as its being vivisected

Remember, this is the same guy who will call you an “out of touch elitist” because you don’t fly into a violent rage and shout intents of genocide at anyone who isn’t a heterosexual white man

promoted to store manager or higher (convenience and fast-food store chains are desperate for workers they can promote) and makes $25/hr

I mean this is all bullshit but I'm gonna focus on this point in particular, even if you're lucky enough to be the one person who gets promoted to store manager (have fun with that fucking job lmao), at least 6 people who've been promoted to that level at a "convenience/fast-food store" level of establishment have told me their wage and it was not $25/hr. Try $16-$18, asshole.

why would anyone care what this stupid asshole has to say? pointless

he's stipulating that they have to work 6 days a week, but he's leaving overtime out of the calculation. Is it because he doesn't think there should be overtime? Or is it so he can get to the number

$74,880

for some reason?

Lol, lmao

My favorite part of this is it's about the same amount abbvie sets for it's cut off range for their drug assistance. Cause totally cool to make that much joint and still be able to pay $1200 a month for one of their meds

https://youtu.be/wbq571QME2Y