The price of living the American dream is approximately $130,000. Repeat that number to yourself as you affix your jaw back into its socket.
According to USA Today, that price tag includes the essentials (groceries, median house expenses, one car, two children, etc.), extras (entertainment, one summer family vacation, going out to eat) and taxes/investments (401k, kid’s college, etc.). These add up to $58,491, $17,009, and $54,857 respectively. Still think trying to become a teacher is smart?
Sadly, the average American household pulls in about $50,000 a year—around 40% of the American dream. However, those who work for a minimum wage only get to achieve about 12% of the American dream, as a full-time worker only makes around $15,000 a year.
How depressing is that? These people can barely afford the essentials and, not too shockingly, they’re not happy about it.
Workers of fast food joints like Burger King and McDonalds recently went on strike opposing their abysmal pay rate, and insisting that the corporate giants pay them double the current minimum wage. This would up their pay to about $15 an hour.
Now as a former burger flipper I can honestly say that working fast food or other minimum wage jobs doesn’t require a rocket scientist’s brain. This why they get paid so little: They’re expendable. Anyone can replace them. Hell, in a few years they may literally start hiring actual monkeys.
But this is not an issue of worth and what someone deserves to be paid; it’s about what people require to be paid just to live.
Some of these people work multiple jobs just to put food on the table and put their kids through school, and even then they have a hard enough time doing that.
In the case of McDonalds, reports from ABC News and Forbes state that the price of a Big Mac would skyrocket an ungodly 68 cents if their minimum wage doubled, and their dollar menu items would pounce to $1.17. Oh the humanity! Rapture me from this fresh Hell, God! Fake cheese on fake meat smushed between seeded dirt shouldn’t come with such a burden!
And for those of you Negative Norberts out there spouting “but then employers will just fire employees, and that’s, you know, jobs and…Obama” let’s just look at some findings by the University of California who studied over 20 states that increased overall minimum wage.
They found, “Businesses absorbed the costs through lower turnover, small price increases at restaurants, which have a high concentration of low-wage workers, and had higher worker productivity”, and the data shows “no measurable effect on employment.”
And sure, you can still say “well it still won’t do them very good”— and you’re right. It takes too much money for even someone with a good education and higher paying job to achieve the ideal American lifestyle—which will forever be depressing.
But employers can still do the right thing and not make their employees feel like they are days away from setting up camp in a dumpster.
It doesn’t take a politician to know that those who make more spend more. Though very few people will actually achieve the American dream, we can still keep up with the times and at least make it seem graspable. And if they can’t live their dream, there’s nothing wrong with having a few extra bucks to indulge on that sweet drug we call capitalism.
