I should have mentioned it in yesterday’s Update post, but I am currently searching for full-time work. I have been employed since the beginning of the year, but my pay and hours have both been cut in late January. Originally, I was supposed to be working 40 hours a week for $20 per hour, with potential to negotiate up to $25. Then my hours were cut to 30 and my pay reduced to $15 per hour.
My current office job is not, shall we say, the most stable of office jobs. There can be moments where I do not work up for an entire week. I would like to work 40 hours a week except the dozens of various offers for interviews I have been getting for the past two weeks are from people looking to fill part-time roles for $14 per hour. People across the US have been agitating for $15 per hour and now there are reports of State Governments raising wages to as high as $20 per hour.
The days of when $15 per hour could be considered a decent wage is no longer a fact. Anyone who works 120 hours a month receives an estimated $1,800 before State Income Tax, Federal Income Tax, and Federal Taxes to finance Social Security and Medicare spending. If they were to work 160 hours a month for $15 rather than 120 hours, they can expect to receive $2,400 before all Taxes.
Do people not realize that working 120 hours for $20 and 160 hours for $15 are worth the same amounts? A full-time wage of $15 for 160 hours each month will yield $2,400. Conversely, a part-time wage of $20 for 120 hours every month also reaps $2,400. For comparison purposes, 120 hours per month for $15 yields $1,800, whereas 160 hours per month for $20 yields $3,200.
The push for $20 in certain parts of America comes as a consequence of some Americans expecting to be paid $2,400. The State Corporatist would argue that $1,800 and $3,200 are equally unsensible for employees and employers alike. Accounting for differences in State Income Taxes and consistencies in all Federal Taxes, can a single person subsist anywhere between $1,900-$2,100 each month?
I ask this question because I am also curious if somebody, like an elderly pensioner in their seventies for instance, could hypothetically subsist on $3,000 per month from receiving Stock Dividends after investing hundreds of thousands of US Dollars in Stock Dividends. Accounting for the maximum rate of 25%, $750 will be subject to taxation. Altogether, there should be $2,250 left over for our seventy-something pensioner, which is slightly more than how much a twenty-something might earn from working 120 hours a month for $20 or 160 hours a month for $15.
Our twenty-something may be paying for a Student Loan and our elderly pensioner in their seventies may be paying for additional taxes from receiving Social Security as income. Both might be renting an apartment somewhere, which should not cost them more than $1,000 each month. Would $900-$1,100 be enough for our twenty-something? Is $900-$1,250 enough for our elderly pensioner? Is a disposable income $900-$1,250 enough?
We Americans live in a Market/Mixed Economy where Financial Markets, not Agriculture or Manufacturing, are the main driver of economic growth. Whenever news about the “economy is doing well” crops up, that is solely because the Financial Markets themselves are doing well.
To my young readers of The Fourth Estate, without something like the Work-Standard, consider investing Kapital in the Financial Markets. Whether one is still in secondary school, attending university, or just graduated from university, it does not hurt to invest $200 each month from even a part-time job to start earning Stock Dividends. Assuming one started in January like I did, $50 in Stock Dividends by the end of next month is good for starters. Making it to $100 by the end of the year is great and making it to $300 before the beginning of 2025 is even better.
Two or three decades ago, in 1994 or 2004, a Millennial who invested $20,000 in at least two Berkshire Hathway Stocks would already have $1.2 million US Dollars by 2024 (as of this writing). Sure, $300,000 will be spent on Federal Taxes, but $750,000 is still enough to get a head start on something interesting. Why not play the game of State Capitalism, even if only for a little while?
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