By popular demand, one last map to examine the absurdity of the American economy.
If you saw my map from yesterday that was up most of the day, please see the corrected version below. I done goofed hard on copying a column of state names. The original post has been corrected, but I will also post my previous two maps on this post for easy comparison.
Edit: the red map, for anyone unaware, is based on current individual state minimum wages and not the current federal minimum wage
If you consider that in 1958 the average household family of four was funded 95+% by one male, then you can see clearly that the answer to that is no.
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 about 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.
It seems some people are struggling to understand just how far off the modern American worker is from the financial security that was had by the average male worker 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. Another point is that households in the 1950s had practically zero debt, in comparison to modern households which are absolutely drowning in it
Do you get what Im saying?