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Friday Fun Fact

A single American earning the minimum wage for a full-time job for a full-year (excluding ALL of the other compensation they may receive from their employer and certainly from government in the form of housing allowances, earned income tax credits, health insurance subsidies, food assistance, free education, subsidized transportation, access to infrastructure and public amenities, etc.) would have an income that would make them equivalent to the typical person in the 44th richest country on Earth – and they would be richer than a typical person from Argentina (once the 3rd richest country on earth), Chile, Poland, Costa Rica, Russia, …

Again, sans any other benefit, this already places them in the top 20% of the global income distribution.

5 Responses to “Friday Fun Fact”

  1. Alex says:

    Purchasing power comparisons would be useful context here.

  2. Tyler M says:

    Good luck arguing that with lefties. It’s apparently offensive. Relative poverty to them only matters as long as it doesn’t include non-developed countrues. Talk about having to get them to check their privilege..

  3. jb says:

    Very insightful. Is that data available or is there a link to the study?

    • wintercow20 says:

      You can pull PPP adjusted data from World Bank or Penn World Tables, then I just did a simple calculation of 2,000 hour per year employment for minwage worker in US and compared.

      Note that we do not include all of the non-wage benefits that a person earning a minimum wage would be eligible for, or have we done a comparison of relative tax burdens across countries for the low wage worker. It would be a good study to put together.

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