[wwright]

Minimum wage in the US is $5.15/hour iirc. At 40 hours per week (which many jobs won’t reliably get), that’s ~$824/month BEFORE taxes, food, and so on. Even in the rural south where I used to live, where the cost of living is very low, many one person apartments would be $400–$500/month. That leaves maybe $400 for everything else BEFORE taxes on a GOOD month. Combine this with the fact that employers aren’t required to, and pretty much never do, provide medical benefits to this sort of employee.

Maybe you can squeak by if you’re lucky… but you have to be consistently lucky. One bad month and the whole thing can fall apart. It’s basically impossible to build wealth or savings in this situation (not to mention care for your own fucking health).

[bitcurious]

The federal minimum wage is $7.25. Most Americans (by number of people) live in a state/county/city with a higher local minimum wage than the federal.

Edit:

https://www.epi.org/minimum-wage-tracker/

This is a comprehensive tracker of state and local minimum wages across the US.

[umvi]

Each state has a different min wage. In Maryland it's $10, in CA it's $12.