$30/hr is considered "high earnings"?

[tech123]

I remember my first job.

Seriously though - I think a lot of it depends on what industry you are in. I've told more than a couple of my broke ass friends that they could basically do x, y and z to gain some marketable skills, find an entry level position in a particular niche within computers, and be at 6 figures within maybe 1-2 years by continuing to learn skills, paying maybe $600 to have their resume professionally written, and switching jobs a couple of times.

One or two of them have expressed interest, zero have stayed the path more than a week or so.

I've literally thrown my whole life in the shitter twice, been homeless, and then immediately started pulling in 6 figures again when I got cleaned up. Having an in-demand skillset is 90% of what matters. If a company can bill you out for good rates, and there aren't enough people to fill seats, they don't care that much about personality, what school you went to, what personal problems you have, etc.

I have noticed that a lot of people who lift seem to self-report that they are pulling in serious money. At least as many seem to be poor as shit too. As long as everyone's happy, I'm happy for them. Not having money stresses me the fuck out, keeps me up nights, etc. so it's just less of a hassle for me to make a lot of it. More of a peace of mind thing. I have like one shirt with a logo on it (I regret buying it but I'm going to wear it out), share a $13k car with my wife, etc. For the most part I live like I don't make much money.

 

[LAM]

I do believe $30/hour is still considered "high" pay for the average American.

that's because the powers that be try to hide the effects of inflation as much as possible. it's one of the reasons why the US subsidizes so many industry's. half of the country couldn't afford food & energy prices that many other people have to pay in wealthy country's in the OECD.,

 

[maniclion]

We're about to bump our household income by $20/hour and not have to lift a finger practically. By renting our 5 bedroom, 2 living room, 1.5 kitchen, 3 bath house in Waikiki, get a HELOC, pay off all our debt, put a down payment on a nicer place and a small mortgage that will be paid with the rent from our other home with money left over. My GF and I make over 100g, but Hawaii is so expensive all that doesn't make us feel well off at all. I know in Texas we could have a huge ranch with a big ass house and money to put in an account to grow and retire before I'm 50...

 

[bigbadbobber]

We're about to bump our household income by $20/hour and not have to lift a finger practically. By renting our 5 bedroom, 2 living room, 1.5 kitchen, 3 bath house in Waikiki, get a HELOC, pay off all our debt, put a down payment on a nicer place and a small mortgage that will be paid with the rent from our other home with money left over. My GF and I make over 100g, but Hawaii is so expensive all that doesn't make us feel well off at all. I know in Texas we could have a huge ranch with a big ass house and money to put in an account to grow and retire before I'm 50...

Now that's a plan.. yes in Texas real estate is a lot cheaper than cali or other states.. plus theres so much oil here, you can do like alot of people here and buy you a ranch to live in and put a couple oil rigs in the back to pump some oil and psy iff the mortgage that way..

 

[IronAddict]

$30 an hour, 4800 a month, barely scraping by if you have your own house and aren't married, and that's not deducting any taxes. If you are married, you need that 2nd income to live comfortably.

If you've got kids work, work, work and more work you lazy American, work to make someone else rich and you can die at 55.

The middle class' days are numbered, it's going to be poor and rich just like in other countries.

 

[Zaphod]

I am a county government employee and make 15.04 per hour.. I wish I was in the oil fields making some real coin.. there was a time when I made considerabley more before the housing crash.. but life goes on ..

Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 4

Why just wish you were in the oil fields?

 

[maniclion]

Now that's a plan.. yes in Texas real estate is a lot cheaper than cali or other states.. plus theres so much oil here, you can do like alot of people here and buy you a ranch to live in and put a couple oil rigs in the back to pump some oil and psy iff the mortgage that way..

The land we are on is almost better than gold, less than an 1/8 of an acre is well over 600k w/o the home value... I could get 50+ acres,2 homes and a mule with just the land value alone if I moved to Texas....

 

[maniclion]

$30 an hour, 4800 a month, barely scraping by if you have your own house and aren't married, and that's not deducting any taxes. If you are married, you need that 2nd income to live comfortably.

If you've got kids work, work, work and more work you lazy American, work to make someone else rich and you can die at 55.

The middle class' days are numbered, it's going to be poor and rich just like in other countries.

Taxes, medicare, health, 401k contributions, rent/mortgage, direct debit of utilities, other bills, most of those jobs mean paying off school loans...take home pay will be meager...how is a consumer based economy like ours to survive if no one has any money to consume with except for credit cards they max out in no time....

Then you have ads mindfucking you all day and night telling you that you have to buy this, if you don't have that you aren't a good person you'll be shunned by society, get this now and all lifes troubles will be gone....etc ad nauseum...e pluribus unum

 

[IronAddict]

The land we are on is almost better than gold, less than an 1/8 of an acre is well over 600k w/o the home value... I could get 50+ acres,2 homes and a mule with just the land value alone if I moved to Texas....

You could build yourself quite a nice compound with that much land. Build on all four corners and share the backyard with family, friends, renters etc...

It would make for an outstanding bastion too.

 

[IronAddict]

Taxes, medicare, health, 401k contributions, rent/mortgage, direct debit of utilities, other bills, most of those jobs mean paying off school loans...take home pay will be meager...how is a consumer based economy like ours to survive if no one has any money to consume with except for credit cards they max out in no time....



Then you have ads mindfucking you all day and night telling you that you have to buy this, if you don't have that you aren't a good person you'll be shunned by society, get this now and all lifes troubles will be gone....etc ad nauseum...e pluribus unum

All just part of the master plan, that's how they're gonna get ya. Live like that, then get sick and you're phuqed.
Just like that and you've fallen through the cracks everyone knows is there but have no intention to fix.

Inflation and more taxes is their answer.

 

[heckler7]

The land we are on is almost better than gold, less than an 1/8 of an acre is well over 600k w/o the home value... I could get 50+ acres,2 homes and a mule with just the land value alone if I moved to Texas....

^^1%, now your just bragging, no need to rub it in

 

[LAM]

$34K puts you in the top 1% in the world.
We are the 1%: You need $34k income to be in the global elite... and half the world's richest live in the U.S. | Mail Online

and here is another completely useless stat. those in the lowest income quiintile in the US have more wealth than 99% of the world's population that lived before them.

income and wealth are just many indicators that need to be evaluated with the overall quality of life being far more important.

 

[dogsoldier]

I agree with LAM. Anyone who has ever been to a Turd World country and got out of the resorts will tell you, it is much better to be poor in America than most of the world. Our poor tend to be fat, have TV's and cell phones. Look at the real poor in South and Central America, or even Mexico. The poverty of the third word is beyond heart breaking.

Wait...what???....I agreed with LAM.......Oh.....I need to go lay down.......I must have had a stroke or something........

 

[Popeye.]

I wish I made $30 per hour.................

SAME HERE!! WTF are they complaining about!

 

[sneedham]

Why just wish you were in the oil fields?

Good point......

 

[jay_steel]

30$ an hours is allot for a single person with no responsibility it is good pay. I made that when i was 24 and when you live with roomates and ect lifes good. Started to put my gf (now wife) through college when I meet up paid all her bills and ect to help her out and i realized how far money actually goes. There is no way i could live off of 30$ an hour, we were actually living paycheck to paycheck for a while at 5,900$ a month with our mortgage. We still have another year until the farm profits kick in, but i dont think its really possible to live a comfortable life at that wage to be honest. Yes we could have bought an older home instead of brand new, but then the older homes electric bills are 400$ a month where the new energy efficient homes at 80$. We could move into a different neighbourhood, but our skin color is white... I like feeling safe in a good area. Luckily my wife finally finished her masters and is running the athletic training department at a high school. so our income just doubled over night.

when it all comes down to it i feel that people over value them selves. I took at a job making 15$ an hour right after the Navy with 10 years of IT experience and the ability to walk on any network and recreate it. But if i wanted to work I had to, less then a year later my wages more then doubled and I not only run the IT department but the operations side as well. With hardwork comes sacrifices.

I think 50+ is more on the high wages side.

 

[mac10chap]

Now that's a plan.. yes in Texas real estate is a lot cheaper than cali or other states.. plus theres so much oil here, you can do like alot of people here and buy you a ranch to live in and put a couple oil rigs in the back to pump some oil and psy iff the mortgage that way..

Isnt exactly that easy. If you are buying land, it is VERY hard to gain the mineral rights to the land. Yes, you can buy a ranch and own 0 mineral rights on that land. I'm pretty sure the only way to gain the mineral rights is the have the property paid off. Atleast that's how it was explained to me by friends of the family that live on ranches. Hell, even my mortgage company told me that as soon as my house is paid off, I own the mineral rights on the half acre my house is on. But until you pay it off, you own nothing.

 

[AnabolicAmerica]

A lot of people make less than that. It's crazy to me, I don't know how they must be living.

 

[Big Smoothy]

Lot of good comments by everybody in this thread.

 

[LAM]

I've posted this many times over the years

Wage Statistics for 2010

at $30/hr a worker is earning roughly $62,400 which puts him/her in the upper 20%. if you look at the percentages you'll see that 50% of US workers are earning half of that. then you have to adjust them for inflation.

 

[s2h]

I wish I made $30 per hour.................

Probably the only honest guy in this thread....

 

[s2h]

I know tool hands that are getting 16000 dollar checks every 2 weeks, but are still broke.

Idiots with their money

Let's see some evidence of this....98% of america would be trying to become "tool hand"....whatever that is if it paid 400k+ a year..

 

[s2h]

We're about to bump our household income by $20/hour and not have to lift a finger practically. By renting our 5 bedroom, 2 living room, 1.5 kitchen, 3 bath house in Waikiki, get a HELOC, pay off all our debt, put a down payment on a nicer place and a small mortgage that will be paid with the rent from our other home with money left over. My GF and I make over 100g, but Hawaii is so expensive all that doesn't make us feel well off at all. I know in Texas we could have a huge ranch with a big ass house and money to put in an account to grow and retire before I'm 50...

True....Hawaii is very expensive...almost too the point its ridiculous...on the other hand Texas is very affordable..that's why all these big companies are moving here...Houston is the fastest growing city in the US now...

Even custom homes are under a $100 a sq ft...no state income tax...limited personal property tax...and you can carry a gun or guns..

 

[LAM]

True....Hawaii is very expensive...almost too the point its ridiculous...

that is the inherent problem with island living, everything has to be imported, nothing is manufactured there at all and all of those costs are passed on to the consumer. it could be wost as there are no major duty placed on those products while other islands like the Bahamas, Cayman Island, etc. do.

 

[s2h]

that is the inherent problem with island living, everything has to be imported, nothing is manufactured there at all and all of those costs are passed on to the consumer. it could be wost as there are no major duty placed on those products while other islands like the Bahamas, Cayman Island, etc. do.

yeah..thats pretty obvious..well to most of us..

 

[maniclion]

that is the inherent problem with island living, everything has to be imported, nothing is manufactured there at all and all of those costs are passed on to the consumer. it could be wost as there are no major duty placed on those products while other islands like the Bahamas, Cayman Island, etc. do.

It costs almost twice as much to ship a container from a US port to here than any of the Asian ports due to fees for the stevedores and some other things I can remember right now...

 

[Big Smoothy]

I've posted this many times over the years

Wage Statistics for 2010

at $30/hr a worker is earning roughly $62,400 which puts him/her in the upper 20%. if you look at the percentages you'll see that 50% of US workers are earning half of that. then you have to adjust them for inflation.

$30 per hour puts a worker (individual) in the upper 20% because wages in the US are so low.

I was talking with my Vietnamese teacher in Hanoi and she works with Americans from all regions and backgrounds. We are talking about current events and economics and she directly and casually stated that "Wages in America are low."

That hit me.

I'll give an example. WA state minimum wage is $9.19 per hour. If you have a job that gets tips you still get the $9.19 by law, unlike those douche-bag states that pay less that min. wage because the worker gets tips.

Anyway, in my hometown, 15 miles west of Seattle, almost all of the job ads are for min. wage and some pay $10 per hour or $10.50 per hour.

Now....these are full time jobs! For adults, not teenagers. Monday to Friday, 40 hours per week.

The cheapest 1-bedroom apartment is $650 per month. Some incl. utils, some do not. Studios, which would be cheaper are basically non-existent.

Add gasoline, car insurance (it's the law), food, and one cannot make it on that wage.

These wages are for teenagers that live at home with their parents.

 

[sneedham]

Let's see some evidence of this....98% of america would be trying to become "tool hand"....whatever that is if it paid 400k+ a year..

Prob in the oil fields..My brother worked for someone and he was just bumped to 170,000 a year and then got fired...He is my younger brother and I thought I was going to kill him.. If he only realized if he could have worked a few more years he could have been set.....

 

[s2h]

Prob in the oil fields..My brother worked for someone and he was just bumped to 170,000 a year and then got fired...He is my younger brother and I thought I was going to kill him.. If he only realized if he could have worked a few more years he could have been set.....

I'm familiar with the oil industry...Petroleum Engineers aren't pulling 400k a year...nobody on there tools is pulling 400k a year...

Granted the oil fields pay well...but not that well..

 

[theCaptn']

I'm familiar with the oil industry...Petroleum Engineers aren't pulling 400k a year...nobody on there tools is pulling 400k a year...

Granted the oil fields pay well...but not that well..

400k is exec or high level consultants fees.

Guys on the tools may pull half that, but generally under