- cross-posted to:
- workreform@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- workreform@lemmy.world
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
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3-in-1 combo for easier comparison and share-ability. Also compressed to save space
$20,000 annual discretionary budget is a level of wealth I struggle to wrap my head around. And that’s considered part of the “cost of living”? I wouldn’t even know what to do with that much extra money
Just one example:
A 2023 Pew Research Center survey of 24 countries asked respondents how many countries they had traveled to outside of their own. Surprisingly, the U.S. isn’t even in the top 10 list of the most-traveled countries; it comes in at No. 13, with roughly three-quarters of Americans responding that they had traveled to at least one other country.
It says “surprisingly” but its not surprising to me at all, considering I can hardly afford to travel domestically like twice a year, let alone internationally on top of that. By contrast,
According to the survey, Swedish residents are the most traveled nationality in the world. Over half have traveled to 10 or more countries. Indeed, for Swedes, not traveling abroad is rare, with over 99% of them reporting having visited another country.
OK is wrong, my wife makes 16 an hour and can afford to pay for home if barely. 25 an hour would be closer to what is needed.
Can’t speak for all states but I have a really hard time believing this map based on the numbers for NC. The minimum wage needed for what any reasonable single person would consider the cost of living is not >$80k per year, even in the cities. You’d be relatively comfortable making that much here, even be able to save for a down payment on a house if you didn’t choose to live in an expensive area.
Where are you getting these numbers?
SmartAsset’s calculations for cost of living in 2025 are based on a healthy financial breakdown of 50/30/20 for expenses, discretionary, and savings percentages. Which is a level of fiscal security everyone should be entitled to IMO
Their cost of living calculations are not based on “what is the bare minimum one can survive on” where your percentages look more like 66/33/0 or 90/10/0
Really the larger thing these maps show is how all of the money has been drained away from working people over the past 70+ years. The cost of everything has accelerated, for example $35 an hour is about the amount one must make to afford the median rent or median mortgage prices in 2025, but we get screwed out of the value that our labor creates as it gets siphoned upwards. Most Americans survive on credit, which they wouldnt have to do if wages had kept up with inflation the same way that rent did since an era before neoliberal economic policy wrecked everything. If they had, then people would be making about $35 an hour. Considering we produce such massive value with our labor, it makes perfect sense. But allowing wages to stagnate is obviously beneficial to those with concentrated wealth, be it companies or individuals
I don’t think everyone is entitled to wealth accumulation. Housing/health/food security, absolutely, but being able to build wealth by making enough to save 20% of your earnings is beyond a basic entitlement. I doubt most people would agree with you on that.
You could more accurately title this as “Minimum wage needed to live like an average boomer in 1975”. Still fucked up, and not misleading.
Edit: you added a bunch to your reply. I think the framing of this is just wrong, frankly. Wages absolutely have not kept up with the cost of living, but you’re going beyond that and saying everyone is entitled to the financial security of a middle-class earner. It’s a good goal, but not an entitlement, and no reasonable person would frame that as a minimum cost of living.
The 20% is not “wealth accumulation”, it is literally just for emergency expense planning and for retirement savings, and debt payments.
I encourage you to read SmartAsset’s explanation for their calculations. I’m not the one doing any of those calculations, Im using them as a source, while they themselves are in part relying on MIT. Nothing of what I have produced is misleading
Saving 20% of your income is way beyond emergency funds and what is needed for retirement. Typical guidelines for emergency funds are to set aside at least 6 months worth of living expenses, you don’t need to save 20% forever. If you saved even 10-15% of your income for retirement your entire life, you’d have a very comfortable retirement (assuming the world doesn’t burn down before then).
SmartAsset is a financial advisor service, and these numbers seem to be guidelines for middle-class earners. That’s pretty far beyond a minimum cost of living, so I’d say this title is misleading at best.
6 months worth of living expenses in 2025 is gonna be, median, $10k in rent/mortgage payments alone. That in and of itself is like 14% of someones annual income at $35 an hour.
Then you have emergency repairs to a vehicle, plus maybe a home. You assumedly would want to have 6 months coverage for insurance too, no? Plus a fund of money for food, if we’re hypothesizing this is a 6 month fund for a time when you cannot work or otherwise arent making money. So by now were probably talking 17+% of an annual income and we havent even put anything away for retirement yet in the first year.
I truly fail to see how 20% saved annually isnt something reasonable, considering the need for different draws out of some of it will come sporadically, while you also need to be saving for your retirement in some inevitably inflated future where everything is even more ridiculously expensive than it is now.
People today are buying groceries with Klarna, and were saying nobody needs to be saving money at a good rate? How many people would be subsisting on ridiculous levels of credit right now if they had been paid well enough to put away 20% of a reasonable wage if they wanted to for several years
Why the fuck should people have to live in a “one bad move, or illness, or whatever and youre fucked” economy? Especially one that criminalizes homelessness, throws people in jail, and then abuses them as legitimate slave labor by paying them less than what was considered an appropriate wage for a 9 year old child laborer in the 50s
We live in the wealthiest society in the world, and people dont deserve to live comfortably?
6 months worth of living expenses in 2025 is gonna be, median, $10k in rent/mortgage payments alone. That in and of itself is like 14% of someones annual income at $35 an hour.
I truly fail to see how 20% saved annually isnt something reasonable, considering the need for different draws out of some of it will come sporadically, while you also need to be saving for your retirement in some inevitably inflated future where everything is even more ridiculously expensive than it is now.
The first describes a total emergency fund of 14% annual income that would provide 6 months rent. The second describes annual contributions of 20%, which seems like it provides 6 months living expenses for every year worked. That’s an awesome goal, and kudos to anyone who can do it. I did. It let me retire at 45, which is several steps beyond “living comfortably.”
I think youre misunderstanding that I am referring to the same 20% the entire time. Yes, two different destinations for money in savings (emergency and retirement separately). Their calculations also assume that that 20% is also going towards paying down any debts. My response to him in particular was pointing out that you wouldnt be able to fully fund an emergency account within 1 year and pay down debt and save for retirement. Whereas his point was 20% is a ridiculous amount. I think if you ignore the debt part maybe that would be slightly more reasonable, but even still, if you cant do it in 1 year on $35 an hour how the fuck is anyone gonna do anything remotely close to it at 1/4th or 1/5th of that? They wont. And in reality, by the numbers, even at $35 an hour no one could afford to live at 50/30/20. AKA living truly comfortably and without being in a financially precarious position, which it should be obvious involves having a healthy amount of savings and also not having to work yourself to death after retirement age
The reason I made these isnt even to argue for a certain wage of any kind. The point is to see just how far off all working class Americans are from any level of comfort. Where did all the money go, if people were being paid the equivalent of $35 an hour today 75 years ago? Its no surprise we are all fucked outside of a handful of people
You’re not going to get any argument from me that shit is fucked. Everyone should have guaranteed access to housing, food, and healthcare, and we don’t. A lot of kids were set up for failure by their parents insisting they take out college loans. But your standard for a minimum cost of living is basically the minimum to live like a boomer in the 70s.
The average white male boomer in the US lived like a king compared to everyone else around them, even at the time. The descendants of those people tend to think that the fact that their parents or grandparents had this means they should too. In reality, those boomers were incredibly lucky to be born into a privileged class during an economic golden age.
We don’t get that, we get the world they fucked up. Rich dickheads hogging all the wealth and stealing wages is nothing new, it’s been the standard for all of human history. What is new is that you can see clearly how well the privileged live compared to you. Maybe that will cause things to change, idk.
In the meantime, we need to make do. An emergency fund is intended to be used for emergencies, which are things that threaten your ability to acquire basic needs (food, housing, health). You keep it funded at 6 months of expenses (e.g., the minimum you need to meet your financial obligations plus food+rent). When it’s full, you don’t keep adding to it. When you use money from the fund, you replenish it as quickly as you can. Everyone should have one.
You shouldn’t be having an emergency every single year though. If you are, it’s not an emergency, it’s an extra expense you need to plan for. If you are spending double-digit percentages of your income on debt (car loans, credit cards, etc), you need to stop spending money on anything else but basic needs until you pay it off. Or start a revolution, but we’re arguing on the Internet so I don’t think the odds of that happening are high.
The world sucks. It’s not fair. You can still live a good life in it though, even if it’s not as good as it used to be.
I feel like youre missing the fact that even if the federal minimum wage were $35 per hour, absolutely no one working for that wage in the US would be able to afford to live comfortably at 50/30/20 (the thing you primarily take issue with) without working a second job.
Meanwhile, real actual minimum wages in nearly 10 states are still at $7.25 an hour. Let that sink in for a second. There are people close to getting paid literally 5 times less than what it costs to live anywhere near a base level of comfort. That doesnt even go into agriculture, where the federal minimum wage is even lower.
And Im not sure why you are so obsessed with this “boomer in the 70s argument”. Were comparing to the late 1950s when men alone were paid enough to support an entire family of four, which over doubles cost of living numbers. It was also a time when wealth was not concentrated within 1% of society.
I dont understand in literally any way the argument “we just have to do what we can”. Its literally unsustainable for many Americans to even try to do that.
Americans right now hold, collectively, over 1 trillion dollars in just credit card debt. On average each American holds over $6k in credit card debt, which would be over 10% of the average salary earner’s income ($61k). Again, just on credit card debt and nothing else.
In 1950, all debt owned by the average household equated to only 2% of their income. Two percent. And people were way worse off financially in 1950 than they were by 1958
People keep down voting these common sense arguments.
You are correct and this post is misleading at best.
This is defeatism in full display.
deleted by creator
Too many data classes. Too many colors. I can’t determine exactly what class states are without a color picker.
Your update legend is more confusing than the original
I suppose that is a fair criticism of the multi faceted map with red and green, but the other two are simple light-dark scale and I dont see how your criticism makes sense. You can literally read those two perfectly clearly in grayscale if you wanted to. So I dont see the criticism there, sounds more like a personal issue
I’m a GIS professional for 11 years and work with accessibility so no it’s not a personal issue. Any more than 5 color classes are too much. Your inability to accept criticism is a personal issue
I accepted your criticism as far as it was reasonable to me. Im not a professional, nor do I think my chart needs to meet your conception of a professional standard. As I said it is clearly legible to myself and many other people. The middle map yeah its not accessible to someone with colorblindness issues, I get that. I agreed with you. The other two are accessible and legible perfectly fine in grayscale for anyone with vision issues.
The idea of it not having more than 5 classes is something I even personally already did when it was feasible on the orange map, without knowing anything of what is apparently a standard. I intentionally did not break down the scales any further just for that clarity. That was not an option for the red map, as finer bands made far more sense in that case considering the width of the scale that was caused by massive fluctuations in state minimum wages
I dont see how this an issue with me as opposed to you being a nitpick since you do this as a day job. Im doing it for fun and for my own visualization. And it appears most people dont seem to have any problem understanding them. Maybe you oughtta lighten up a bit
I don’t really care. You’re the one who made it personal
Okay? 🤷♂️
I make less than all of those and live in one of the expensive states. Life is fun. :)
I would love one of these for the UK
Id be happy to make some up, I just would need reliable COL data to start from if I can find it
Hourly minimum wage in France (after taxes) : 9,40€ 💀
You first need to calculate the cost of living and compare the wages against that.
Can you define cost of living a little clearer?
Data and Methodology
SmartAsset used MIT Living Wage Calculator data to gather the basic cost of living for an individual with no children and for two working adults with two children. Data includes cost of necessities that cover housing, food, transportation, income taxes and other miscellaneous items. It was last updated to reflect the most recent data available on Feb. 10, 2025.
Applying these costs to the 50/30/20 budget for 50 U.S. states, MIT’s living wage is assumed to cover needs (i.e. 50% of one’s budget). From there the total wage was extrapolated for individuals and families to spend 30% of the total on wants and 20% on savings or debt payments.
Questions about our study? Contact us at press@smartasset.com
Ah, so I should divide all of the numbers in your graphic in half to get to something reasonable then.
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?
I think what most of us are saying is that the way those people were living back then was unsustainable and an unnecessary level of wealth. The 50/30/20 comfort level is unsustainable and requires exploitation. Sure, we’re all being exploited now, but to have $20k annual disposable income would surely mean exploiting someone else (e.g., developing nations)
How would more money flowing out of the US and into the rest of the world, rather than sitting in billionaire accounts, not improve the lives of people around the world? How would US wages being appropriately high not drive up wages around the world, considering Americans are generally paid well above any other workers?
Your argument of exploitation makes no sense. Sustainability is a fairer angle, but an issue that could be solved by having plenty of government money researching innovation. Money that would come from people spending money and paying taxes, from their higher wages. Rather than money being parked in billionaire bank accounts…
If anything, the current system by which we Americans get paid shit relative to what value we create is generating exploitation around the world
Map is useless. Cost of living varies widely within a given state.
The variations in minimums are literally the point of the map.
within a given state, but you don’t understand, so fuck it.
Thanks for clarifying. No need to be so condescending.
Plus it’s a good map nonetheless.
It’s a dude massaging data and dumping it into ChatGPT, what do you expect
AI was not used whatsoever in the creation of these maps. I used basic math functions on an excel spreadsheet and mapchart.com. Fuck off dude
