The US Politics |OT|

[Baalzamon]

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Jumpin said:
Are some of you guys actually trying to defend the fact that Donald Trump is a pathological liar?
It is kind of sad that people believe he is an honest non-foolish man.

I think that's mostly true for most of his voting base. Which is a substantial part of the US population, after all.

Baalzamon said:

I'm going to use an age old argument (not necessarily because I FULLY agree with it, but because I want to see how you respond).

A 2 person household working full time (2,080 hours per year), at $12/hour is making $49,920 per year. So are you suggesting this is indicative of a broken economy? Because if 2 earners, at the bare minimum wage, could earn more than the average income in the majority of countries (even developed ones), I'd argue we are FAR from a broken economy, but rather a VERY wealthy economy.

I live in a metropolitan area, and while it isn't California expensive, it is very possible to not only survive, but do perfectly fine on a $50k annual income. My best friend lives on less...and will soon be having a third kid, and does perfectly fine. Has a nice house, saves for retirement, is able to pay for medical issues as they come up, etc.

Are those 49k before or after taxes? And if they are before tax, how much of it would be roughly what that household really have to spend in a year?

As an European, it's always hard for me to evaluate how well an American wage actually is since we have things like full healthcare and retirement fund plan included, but that's not necessarily true in the US. In my opinion a lower-paying wage with full benefits beats a better paying one without those.

Before Taxes...

Social Security/Medicare: Approximately $3.8k

Federal Income Taxes: Approximately $2.7k

State Taxes: Widely vary, but I'll use my own state (MN): Approximately $1.4k

Total Approximate Take Home Pay: $42.1k

Sales Tax in state are about 7.25% just for comparison purposes for most non-essential goods.

I also say "Approximate" for all of the above as this is virtually the maximum you will pay. There are many additional things, like children, retirement savings, property tax refunds (in MN) etc that could vastly reduce your taxes. My friend I referred to above is negative (actually gets money back) for both the federal and state category above.

Also excluding items offered by our state such as substantially subsidized health insurance for families making that much, child care assistance offered by federal government, etc.

The number was purely just take home pay, worst case kind of thing.