What would you consider a "living wage", in the current economy?

[Kalidurga]

8. A family can actually scrap by on...

about 15 dollars an hour that is about 2x the minimum wage. Of course, that means getting an apartment under 900 a month. I say apartment because at that wage it's hard to get a loan for a house. Ironically a decent house would be cheaper. You would have to drive a fairly crappy car and the family would only be able to afford one. If there are two working adults, hopefully both can get a job around that pay scale, then they would be able to do a little better than scraping by. But, in this scenario they can have not one, but two crappy cars. Of course, buying brand new clothing on this budget would be a stretch, but you could get new occasionally. Don't worry about getting the best food either, that probably isn't going to happen. But, you can still eat pretty good food, beans and rice are very nutritious and you don't have to worry about pink slime. I hope you like Little Caezars as well because dining out at a decent restaurant is going to be a once in a blue moon occasion. Many people who hate poor people and who have never been poor complain about poor people having the internet and cable. But, at this wage it is almost a necessity. It is much cheaper to pay for cable and internet than to go out for entertainment. Humans definitely need entertainment without that things can get ugly real quick.

My personal experience is that living on fifteen dollars an hour is difficult, but it isn't an entirely grim proposition. I knew a lot of people at the time that had much less and it was pretty bad, sometimes it was hard to even come up with bus fare for them. A coworker I knew would bring food to another coworker, who made more money than she did, but he was paying out a lot of money in child support, he probably had about 6 bucks an hour after that was taken out. I would occasionally give money to people that I knew were in bad shape in a particular week, because I didn't like seeing people go hungry either. I don't know nor have I ever known a poor person that would waste money.