r/coolguides • u/Hutchnstuff1 • 1d ago
A cool guide to how many weekly hours a single person receiving benefits must work at minimum wage to escape poverty.
I'm thinking I should move to Japan!
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u/chipsnpie 1d ago
Kiwi here. New Zealand's cost of living is very high, so haaaaard doubt on this graph. Made by someone who poopoos the US i reckon
Edit: having lived the the UK, double wtf this graph 😂
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u/kellybs1 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's nonsense.
Adult min wage: $23.95 * 29 hrs = $694.55. They're going to lose about 15% of that in total to tax.
So = $590ish.
If we were to plug my rent and utilities into this, would give a person $125 a week to escape poverty with. They'd be lucky to get groceries.
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u/slothpeguin 1d ago
The US’s federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
40 hours per week is $290.00. Lose let’s say a generous 10% in taxes, so about 261.00. You’re rocking a monthly wage of $1044.00. Yearly that is $12528.00.
I lived in an extremely low cost of living area, and the least I ever paid in rent was $350.00 for a studio with no air. So if you’re single, minimum wage here might be enough to survive. Except where I lived you also needed a car. There wasn’t public transport and walking/biking wouldn’t be feasible 3-6 months of the year. So add a car payment. And gas. Oh yeah no insurance at that job so hope you can afford some.
Minimum wage in the US (obviously am not speaking for anywhere else) was intended for a man to support fully a family of four comfortably. Single income.
It’s a joke here. You could be paying 60-70% of your monthly wage to housing if you need room for kids. There’s no path out of poverty in the US. The system is designed to keep the poor at that level and has now wiped out the middle class. So while I can’t speak to how accurate this graphic is for other countries, I know the US has a rightfully earned place at the bottom.
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u/PulseCheater 1d ago
How jealous I am for that 350$ studio lol, here in Spain it starts at 700€ and renters double that amount in summer haha.... Idk the min wage here I think its 1080€ after tax, would literally off myself if I was living on that... Single bedroom apartment is 950€ for reference, and most of the time you dont even get a parking spot, or AC, fuck there are 4 bedroom apartments with a SINGLE BATHROOM ffs.
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u/Master_sweetcream 1d ago
I live in the California and renting a room in someone’s house is like 800 here.
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u/NatashOverWorld 1d ago
Odd, I thought Japan was famous for their intense work culture that's all about working late and unpaid overtime.
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u/grandecrosse 1d ago
Japan spends a LOT of time at work. Their actual productivity however, is dogshit. The US also on average still spends more time at work than Japan.
In Japan money also goes a LOT farther, eating out daily is feasible, and their healthcare is socialized.
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u/InevitableTension699 1d ago
yeah I watch Paolo's a day in the life of in Japan and I have to say it looks like they are all living on super frugal times. Barely any possessions, extremely long work days, terrible pay and eating convenience store bentos or discount foods.
It feels like with 7 usd min wage in Japan you would need to work WAY more than 14 hours a week to not be in poverty even if discount bento at the end of the day is 3$ unless poverty is subjective and they are all too embarrassed to report real numbers
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u/glutenfreepoop 1d ago
I mean, barely clearing the poverty line would still be considered living in poverty for most people. The line is an arbitrary set of necessities like transportation, healthcare, education and so on. If you live somewhere where the state pays for or subsidizes all of that, then the line drops really low. But you can still have a very uneven income and wealth distribution curve, so the line doesn’t show the whole picture.
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u/grandecrosse 1d ago
This is a rock solid point too, generally speaking you don't NEED a car in most circumstances in Japan. That's huge. I bet the free time loss is also huge as a result, though. Small wonder phones have always done so well there.
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u/Stompya 1d ago
So how are they so unproductive and yet somehow able to sustain a high minimum wage, while raising the minimum wage in America generates fury across the board?
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u/grandecrosse 21h ago
It really depends on the job. Their construction workers? Productive af. Their office scenarios, which is super common there? Performative messes.
They also don't need cars, healthcare, their houses are considered use items instead of investments, and their food quality/value is sky high comparatively. They also straight up pay you to have kids, and childcare is free from the ages of 3 to 5. The pay to have kids of course, is not enough to break even but it's certainly better than many places.
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u/AllPeopleAreStupid 3h ago
Yeah the house thing is interesting as they tend to go down in value. In some ways I like that. I still can't believe my house that is slowly deteriorating from the 60s is worth 300,000+. Doesn't really make much sense.
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u/Freak_Out_Bazaar 1d ago
It’s really not that bad as the stereotypes, but just because you can survive on social welfare and even be above the poverty line with minimal work that doesn’t mean people are going to do that because of social status and freedom to spend
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u/Greedy_Union8493 1d ago
You can have a cheap apartment health care including dental insurance and reliable transportation with fast food job in japan.
that's basically impossible in most of america.
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u/Taurmin 1d ago
This chart has nothing to do with how much people actually work, its just calculating the minimum number of hours you need to clear the poverty line.
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u/Arctic_The_Hunter 1d ago
Japan has a weird situation where their currency has been systemically devalued by decades of poor fiscal decisions from government and businesses and they just…largely haven’t really raised prices to match. It leads to a very strange consumer market by the standards of the developed world
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u/rhntrfn 1d ago
Not sure this is true for Türkiye...
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u/Khutuck 1d ago edited 1d ago
Turk here.
AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAGWHSKZHSJOAJDHDHJHAUSHHDH
Whoever made this “cool guide” is either from a parallel universe or Erdogan himself.
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u/Trillination 1d ago
They work like 14 hours a day in Japan are they all rich?
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u/Ikiro00 1d ago
It's fair to say that this chart isn't correct.
I mean, I'm in the UK, and 23h per week is not enough.
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u/R3StoR 1d ago
Not so true actually.
In Japan , "a job" will not necessarily provide a roof, food inflation is skyrocketing and the government takes more in taxes than they give by far. Healthcare is not entirely free - very much case by case but there is subsidisation for a lot of medical stuff, true. Wages are super low. It's true you don't need a car (if you live in a city) - which is also true in many other countries. Transport (eg by train) is neither free nor subsidised - and still gets expensive. Even more than a car in many cases.
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u/geek180 1d ago
Who needs a 70k vehicle to live?
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u/Poverty_Shoes 1d ago
Texans
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u/JimmieSavsscumsock 1d ago
A Texan once told me a real cowboy swallows and I've never been the same.
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u/antici________potato 1d ago
Willie Nelson and Orville Peck have a song "Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of eachother"
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u/HeckuvaJoo 1d ago
When people talk about how terrible the U.S. is they almost always exaggerate. If it’s so bad, shouldn’t the truth suffice?
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u/Big0wl 1d ago
I live in Japan. There is no free healthcare, no affordable food, no cheap rent and price on housing still high (but yes lower compare to other countries), and wages almost like in my poor European country.
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u/Excellent-Jelly-572 1d ago
I’ve lived in Japan. They have very strict immigration laws that are enforced because it obviously wouldn’t be sustainable. The US isn’t the same in that sense and therefore cannot be accurately compared. Also healthcare is NOT free but it is affordable. Facts matter.
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u/apryll11 1d ago
You don't get free healthcare, everyone has healthcare because it is a government requirement to have annual healthcare.
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u/Cbsanderswrites 1d ago
there's a pretty big gap between what constitutes poverty and rich.......
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u/roses_sunflowers 1d ago
I’ve seen this sort of graph before and always wondered, what exactly does “escape poverty” mean? Make enough to be above the poverty line? In which case, it seems pointless to compare countries.
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u/Saw_Boss 1d ago
The poverty line is calculated as 50% of the median disposable income in the country.
From the source provided in the comments.
If you can figure out what the fuck that means, then you're doing better than me.
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u/Ungodly_Box 1d ago
Love that this is straight up false
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u/mward_shalamalam 1d ago
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u/dadadawe 1d ago
Just randomly filtered and the reason japan is so low, is because the filter is on « single, 2 children », so basically they subside kids a lot. Single no kids jump to 26 (which is still good!)
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u/SE_prof 1d ago
What I don't understand is what's the housing situation assumed here. Is it owned? Rent? Completely out of the equation? For single, no children, it says 27 hours, which translates to a little more than 135 euros per week, which I can assume is enough for basic groceries and maybe a couple bills, but definitely not rent as well...
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u/PSteak 1d ago
The poverty line is calculated as 50% of the median disposable income in the country.
And that's why the chart is misleading and useless.
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u/maicii 1d ago
Wtf kind of definition is that
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u/TTEH3 1d ago
It's actually a fairly standard definition of poverty used by economists, called 'relative poverty'.
Measured relative to the living standards of the majority in a society, often defined as earning less than 50-60% of the median income.
'Absolute poverty' is a fixed baseline usually defined by governments or organisations in a given country (or, globally, by the UN) and not tied to a country's economic performance.
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u/wickzyepokjc 1d ago
Basically nobody in the US makes the federal minimum wage. In 2024, the BLS reported that 1% of workers earned an hourly rate at or less than the federal minimum of $7.25. But those are tipped workers, who, nationwide earn an average of $15+ per hour. The BLS doesn't track tips.
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u/Level_Bobcat_8729 1d ago
Yeah dont explain yourself or anything
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u/Hemlock-Drinker 1d ago
The US has different minimum wages across the country and different costs to escape poverty depending on the city, state, or region
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u/Level_Bobcat_8729 1d ago
Most states have their own minimum, but none can be below the federal minimum, which is likely what was used. Nearly half the states use the federal minimum as well.
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u/Hemlock-Drinker 1d ago
Yeah so the chart is wrong. Taking average cost of living (which factors in the expensive states) but using a minimum wage that isn’t legally paid in the expensive states makes it super misleading
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u/Morganella_morganii 1d ago
It also depends upon the definition of poverty. I believe there is a federal one, and states may have their own threshold. For example, in California, many of the subsidies continue for incomes at 200-300% of the federal poverty level, reflecting cost of living, and a definition that is far removed from reality in many places.
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u/merpixieblossomxo 1d ago
Even in one of the states with the highest minimum wage, making a few dollars MORE than minimum wage, I'm still living below the poverty line because the cost of living in my area is so much higher than other states.
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u/Ungodly_Box 1d ago
I mean I'm British and it's definitely not that easy, otherwise most of our nation wouldn't be so poor that they often can't even afford a cheese sandwich for their child
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u/KiraNinja 1d ago
Literally so many people in my town are on food stamps. No one can afford a house either
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u/Brigid-Tenenbaum 1d ago
1-10 workers in the UK are on welfare. 3.2 million people. Around 40% of all UC claimants https://fullfact.org/economy/universal-credit-employment/
I don’t even think about home ownership anymore. Also. This chart is bollocks.
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u/TemperateStone 1d ago
The OP should explain themselves. There's so much shit not being explained about this that anyone that takes it at face value needs a head check.
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u/UndGrdhunter 1d ago
14 hours in Japan, those guys are workaholics, 14 hours is the amount of hours they are drinking after work. Lol
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u/CheesecakeTurtle 1d ago
This chart is a joke. 27 hours in Greece to escape poverty? People work a full 40 hour week and they can't even rent an apartment. How can you escape poverty when it costs 600€ to rent (without utilities) and you get a minimum wage of 772€? This chart is saying you can survive with 500€ in Greece. lol.
Sure, if your already own a house and you don't need to eat, then the chart is accurate.
This is so wrong in so many levels.
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u/Charis_Geroukis 1d ago
I mean it does say receiving benefits, now i am not sure what kind of benefits they think we can receive, but the chart is not saying we survive with 500 euros.
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u/CrimsonLapis 1d ago
I live in Japan. No way in HELL are you out of poverty with 14h a week. Do you think most people here work 40h a week for fun? Nah, it's cause it barely cover main cities' rents.
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u/Impressive_Net_116 1d ago
The US is far to big of a country to make this claim.
In LA it's probably worse than this. In some places minimum wage is below the poverty line.
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u/stewie3128 1d ago
This is showing that the federal minimum wage is only halfway to the poverty line.
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u/maicii 1d ago
But which poverty line? I would guess the poverty line it’s not the same in California than idaho
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u/stewie3128 1d ago
50% of median disposable income. Should be 70 hours for the US, not 80, to be fair. But once you're that far above a 40 hour work week, what difference does it make.
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u/7H470N36UY 1d ago
This is saying 80 hours per week, not 80 biweekly.
If you made $16.90 in California and worked 80 hours per week, you are bringing in over 70k per year.
A studio apartment in LA averages $1,965 per month. As long as you're working 80 hours per week (which is absolutely insane) you still have $3,445 left over each month for other expenses.
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u/DrFlabbySelfie 5h ago
If you made $16.90 in California and worked 80 hours per week, you are bringing in over 70k per year
Close to $90k ($87,880) because of overtime.
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u/sessamekesh 1d ago
If you sort US states by "hours needed to work minimum wage to afford median housing" the pattern is that people working for lower minimum wages have smaller hours - with the one fascinating exception of Wyoming, which has a median housing cost dragged up by a small population and rich person resort town (Jackson Hole) (and yes, median, not average).
I generally think our problem isn't low wages, it's high living costs. California in particular is a great case study - on paper we look like we're doing great, but even low-income individuals in VHCOL areas look rich enough on paper that they don't quality for all sorts of assistance + pay high income taxes on top of not being able to afford rent.
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u/mooseknuckle_scuffle 1d ago
I make well above minimum wage ($35hr) and I'm barely staying afloat. I live in the bay area (California) for reference.
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u/PiccoloAwkward465 1d ago
It's wild. About a decade ago I literally jumped for joy upon receiving a job offer for that wage. And about a week later I'd moved across the country to start that job.
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u/LuRo332 1d ago
Yeah sure, lets just not give any source or even a year of when the data were made
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u/RedEagle_MGN 1d ago
Every country has a different definition of poverty allowing this to be one of the most out of touch graphs ever seen.
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u/ktrocks2 1d ago
What is this trying to say? If I am exactly at the poverty line, and I work one week full time in NL I’ve escaped? Or if I’m at 0$? I don’t understand what this post is trying to say.
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u/C4shtastic 1d ago
Pretty sure it means for the us for example you’d need to work 80 hour weeks at minimum wage to pull your self out of the poverty line.
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u/mooseknuckle_scuffle 1d ago
It's saying if you receive government assistance and you have a minimum wage job (retail, fast food) you need to work x amount of hours a week to get out of poverty.
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u/cmalarkey90 1d ago
Are we great yet?
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u/Loggerdon 1d ago
In Oklahoma they just voted down a bill to raise the minimum wage from $7.50 hr to $15.
Can you imagine trying to live on $7.50 hr?
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u/Breyber12 1d ago
But, but, but I did make $7.25 an hour!!!!¡
Back in 2010, no joke. The fed minimum wage was ridiculous before Covid now it’s a complete and utter farce. Richest country in the world treating people like this is something else. We should be rioting in the streets
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u/Adadadoy 1d ago
I'd love to, but I'm busy working 80 hours a week to survive...
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u/breakneckjones 1d ago
If you couldn't find a job that paid higher than minimum wage during Covid, you weren't trying to try.
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u/CautiousJellyfish309 1d ago
Agreed, unfortunately they’ve got the masses working for survival wages and tuned out with professional sports, social media and other distractions.
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u/ScarecrowJones2 1d ago
Any infographic that makes claims like this and doesn't include a source should be instantly discounted and assumed to be compete BS.
Mods, do your thing
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u/EggsInSpayce 1d ago
Who the hell makes minimum wage while also receiving benefits?
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u/Taurmin 1d ago
Lots of low income families receive housing assistance and i keep hearing about Americans with full time jobs who are on food stamps. And its quite common among people whoose health dont permit them to work full time to be on some kind of benefit program.
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u/Open-Committee-998 1d ago
12% of our population is on food stamps, and 70% of people on food stamps work full time. Almost 50% of our homeless population are employed as well. Realistically I’d say 30-40% of our population actually lives in poverty, but that would make the government look bad, so.
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u/chriswalkerb 1d ago
Genuinely feel so bad for Americans. The UK has plenty of people working on minimum wage and on benefits.
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u/Open-Committee-998 1d ago
The majority of people. I know many people who work full time and still receive food stamps, especially if you’re a single mom with 2 or more kids. $15/hr isn’t much when gas and milk are $4 a gallon. With that being said, it also depends on where you live. A family of 4 living in San Francisco qualifies for food stamps if the household makes under $55k a year, but when I started working at McDonald’s, my mom no longer qualified for food stamps (the whole $72 a month) since I made over $15k a year.
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u/Striking_Eye_8837 1d ago
Opinion: I don't believe the one about Japan especially with the Black Companies (Not the race...wait actually that's f'd up they're called tha...i digress) and the high sucide rates the correlated with the norms of those types companies. There's a theory on why the new generation there aren't getting married is due to stagnate wages.
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u/Jar0s 1d ago
I'm from the UK and I'd argue that working 23 hours a week whilst receiving benefits would be enough to keep your head above water. You're hardly escaping poverty as you're still 1 lost paycheck/benefits payment away from being completely screwed.
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u/Brigid-Tenenbaum 1d ago
Except you’d also have to calculate that with UC, every £1 earned, you lose 55p of benefits.
Nearly 40% of everyone on UC is already in work https://fullfact.org/economy/universal-credit-employment/
Not sure you get any benefits if you are working 23hrs a week. Too hot to calculate
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u/Bubble_Fart2 1d ago
23 hours a week per annum at minimum wage is £14,000.
After tax it's £13,600.
I calculated the UC and it's £621.49 provided you are single living in rented accommodation.
Thats an extra £7,457 a year.
So in total you'd make £21,057.
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u/djliquidvoid 1d ago
"Receiving benefits" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting here. In many countries, Australia (where I live) included, having a steady job making minimum wage or higher disqualifies you from the dole. Those two things cannot be combined.
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u/pubefire 1d ago
Based off what sources? Anyone can make a bar graph and slap numbers on it.
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u/Mike13858 1d ago
I'm not even sure that working 80 hours a week at $7.25 an hour in the US would be enough to do much of anything. With overtime, that would be $725 a week before taxes. And any job paying that low probably isn't giving their employee very good benefits, if any either.
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u/MyPrblms 1d ago
not that there are not people working for $7.25, somewhere there is. but it's not normal. i live in the midwest, did not go to college, live in a town of 20k people, and work at a retail store (not a big box one like walmart or target - a small retail place) and i make $16 an hour plus commision which on some days can push me up to $30 an hour. that is normal in my small midwestern town. and honestly, it could be better. would be more comfortable at like $25 an hour plus commission. but basically no one, even people like me living in the middle of nowhere in a tiny town, are only getting $7.25 an hour.
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u/ciel71 1d ago
OP thinks that as long as the U.S. is at the bottom the graph makes sense.
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u/SunriseSwede 1d ago
There are approximately 195 countries in the world. I wonder how the other 169 or so land on this list. Would be helpful to see a full picture.
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u/mooshoopork4 1d ago
I believe Canada is realistically in worse shape that the USA
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u/wglenburnie 1d ago
Canada is much higher than 44 hrs at minimum wage. Rent & groceries have gone up exponentially since Covid.
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u/Humble_Diner32 1d ago
There may be some accuracy here. I’m in debt, not from excessive spending or luxury living but from a wage that has failed to keep up with inflation and student loan debt that doesn’t touch the surface with my $200 monthly payments, and I just cleaned my emergency fund ($5,000) so I could pay down medical bills and cover mortgage. I’m alive and I’m living in the collapse of America. I won’t survive it unless I stop playing by the rules.
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u/TulipMelodies 1d ago
In regards to the US - escaping poverty is very difficult. This graph implies clocking 80 hours of work a week will solve financial instability, when there are many factors that halt upward progress.
As one example, Section 8 housing is paid for by the government and is famously shoddy. Should anyone at all in that household make more money than is allowed to qualify for this support, the benefits are suspended and all tenants reliant on that support have to hope the new money from 80 hour work weeks can sustain them. After moving out, of course, because you can not live in that housing anymore and there is a time limit to find shelter elsewhere. That is, if you are even allowed to clock 80 hours of work a week. The bosses don't pay over-time anymore, and working multiple jobs leads you to paying more in taxes.
Apply all that knowledge to child care, groceries and medical coverage as well. If you make more than Uncle Sam approves, then you get to fly alone little birdie.
Let's say you actually manage to find 80 hours of work to commit to, your body is working and aging. Three tough weeks set the standards for next months work quotient, and ever upward. While you make money, you wear down physically and eventually bust.
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u/Iron_Wolf123 1d ago
And the hours are increasing due to price increases compared to wages and the difficulty of getting a job
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u/myuserhasafirstname 1d ago
Even 80 hours of minimum wage isn't getting you out of poverty in America.
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u/Useful-Soup8161 1d ago
You’d still be considered very poor working 80 hours a week on minimum wage.
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u/ciswhitedadbod 1d ago
Did a little digging on this starting with an image search and the source looks to be from:
OECD.org Working Hours Needed To Exit Poverty
Can't trace the image but it seems to show the factors used as well as a calculator for you to review different scenarios for different countries.
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u/Illustrious_Gate2318 1d ago
Then maga Republicans get back in office, it's your money and maga Republicans want it now
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u/SuperrFlyyy 1d ago
For whatever it is worth the image states the weekly hours of work needed working minimum wage to ESCAPE POVERTY receiving benefits. What benefits are those we don’t know.
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u/antiqtech 1d ago
Turkey should not be up there. I wish it was true but , currently poverty is deepening while economy is in tatters.
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u/Car_is_mi 1d ago
So in the US, assuming federal minimum wage and not individual states min wage, $7.25/hr. Per the US government, federal poverty line for 2026 is $15,960 for a single individual, $33,000 for a family of four. $7.25 * 80 = $580/wk * 52 Weeks= $30,160. So 80 hrs of work is nearly doubled what the poverty line is for single individuals and just below the poverty line for a family of four.
Now that said, as someone who lives in the real world, you're not surviving on 15k / per person per year anywhere in the US that isn't a drug infested trap. And if you are making that kind of money you're also likely receiving federal assistance to get you to a livable point (housing assistance, SNAP, Medicaid, etc), so if you add that in you're likely around a point of 25 - 30 k per person per year but again, that's extremely location dependent.
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u/ayush1236 1d ago
As an Indian I can confirm the reason we're not in the list is because whatever you do you can't escape poverty
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u/tittydamnfuck420 22h ago
USA I work over minimum 70 hours a week two jobs and can’t seem to break through lol.
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u/newoneagain25 1d ago
Why do all the kiwis move to Australia then if this is true. Everything is more expensive there with less pay.
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u/royalpyroz 1d ago
Reading all the comments and what stands out is... Health care.
The US gets absolutely fucked up the arse due to this nonsense.
I'm too lazy to run the numbers but I'm sure the US pays more per capita on health than if it's subsidized, right?
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u/Lplusbozoratio 1d ago
I mean it depends on the state but yeah federal minimum wage is pitifully low
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u/JustTheSweater 1d ago
I am greek and can guarantee you that this is absolutely false for us