[cratermoon]

So do vast swathes of Americans.

Pop quiz: In what countries does it cost a full day's wages or more to fill a car's gas tank?

US minimum wage is $7.25/hr. As of this writing, US gas prices average $4.71/gal. For a typical car the gas tank holds about 15 gallons. Even a small car would have a 12 gallon tank.

[mediaman]

I was a little skeptical of this because of the impact of state-level minimum wage laws that are higher than the federal, so I pulled up the data on how many people are paid the US federal minimum wage.

Turns out that 1.1 million people have jobs that pay the federal minimum wage or less. But that number does not include tips, and about 60% of those people work in restaurants or bars. It's hard to say how much in the way of tips they get, but it's fair to say that there are at least 440,000 people who are earning no more than the federal minimum wage and don't get tips to make up for it.

That's about 0.6% of the hourly workforce. For them, filling a 15 gallon tank of gas would take 10 hours of labor, or even more after deducting employee taxes.

Also, while the federal minimum wage demographic skews young, about half of the 1.1m figure above are over the age of 25.

Above data is per the BLS.

[the_lonely_road]

Doesn’t make sense to use federal average gas price here. Anyone making the federal minimum wage is in one of the lowest cost of living parts of the country and will subsequently also have one of the lowest gas prices to go along with that lowest income.

[mediaman]

It doesn't vary enough to make a big impact. Regular gas in Alabama is only about 8-9% cheaper than the national average. So it almost cuts an hour off.

[cratermoon]

Yes you note that I didn't take into account payroll taxes.

[NullInvictus]

Pair it with the fact that by-and-by, apartments are extremely expensive, and in short supply, so that service jobs are often not near where people are forced to live, and that you have to pair the cost of a car with the cost of gas, and rent. Public transit is a joke, a hollow underfunded mess in most cities.

It is absolutely brutal out there, and the response is inhumane.

I don't want to discredit the experience of grad students. I've known more than a few Grad students (anecdote warning), and they are also stuck in a special kind of hell. As the article mentions, they often can't seek other employment, so they're stuck with what the university pays. But even if they could, they can't - universities may stipulate that they expect X number of hours a week, but that's a joke. Every task given over to graduate students comes with piles of mandatory overtime under crap conditions that are unpaid.

The university may talk about 'valuable experience that will pay dividends' (conveniently not paid out by the university), but grad students often deal with losing proof of that experience when their work or ideas appear under the byline of their advisor. What do you do? Your relationship with your advisor is crucial to graduating.

Suffer all that, and _maybe_ you'll get your PhD. I've met a couple of phD students who dropped out simply because their advisors were intolerable, or really disinterested in any part of the advising process except squeezing work from their student workers.

Looking from the outside in, there's a weird sorta hazing elitist mindset going on. Professors say, "My PhD program sucked, so now I'm going to make it suck for you. Can't hack it? Well, you probably don't 'belong'".

[pilsetnieks]

> Pop quiz: In what countries does it cost a full day's wages or more to fill a car's gas tank?

Most of them? If you're looking at minimum wages, Luxembourg with the highest at $14.91[1] comes out to about $120 daily. Gasoline is at or above 2€/l in Europe now, a typical gas tank holds about 60 liters, so about 120€ to fill the tank. Which is more than $120.

You don't need to fill the tank daily, at least I'd hope not.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_w...

[chrisseaton]

> In what countries does it cost a full day's wages or more to fill a car's gas tank?

Most countries.

[bsagdiyev]

Pretty much every other country in the world. Europe pays $8/gal or more depending.

[mberning]

People in the US are very spoiled in this regard. In Europe and Asia having a car and being able to afford to drive it is honestly a luxury.

[notch656a]

People in southeast Asia have motorcycles or trikes (taxis) despite having comparatively much lower income. In China most households own a motorbike. Clearly motor transport is highly desirable and borderline "needed" to keep up the kind of industrial society that can maintain their population, healthcare systems, fertilizer production, life saving pharmaceutical production, etc. Many people would simply starve if motor vehicles could not facilitate the movement workers and goods necessary to maintain these populations.

Having avidly driven both motorcycles and cars, I can tell you the safety a car provides you is not just a luxury. It's a a way to protect your children from higher chances of death in transit. In some states in the US transporting the family on a motorcycle would simply be illegal, as they mandate minimum age for riding on the kind of vehicles that one can legally transport their family on (in Asia the family is often times 3+ up on the same tiny motorbike).

I suggest you work on repealing transportation child safety and emissions laws if you want to bring us closer to Asia. Families do not need the spoiled luxury of these foolish safeguards.

[dotnet00]

Lots of countries in Asia have a variety of taxi-style transport services that make owning a car not as necessary.

For example, just in India alone you can hitch a ride on a bicycle rickshaw, auto-rickshaw, taxi, bus, train or subway. It's pretty easy to get around anywhere without having to drive, but this is also only possible because labor costs are so absurdly low (and of course, generally not that great for the drivers), with costs for private rides on the first 3 often comparable to public transport costs in the US.

Plus, Europe and Asia are generally more densely populated than the US, so having a car is a status symbol in that it shows that you can afford a safe place to keep a car. Meanwhile, outside of big cities like NYC (where car ownership is similarly a bit of a luxury), people easily have room to safely park one car per family member.

These are all heavily intertwined factors though, just as owning a car isn't as much of a status symbol in less densely populated areas, owning a car is less necessary in more densely populated areas.

[tyoma]

In most of the US a car is a necessity. Public transport is either non-existant or so badly done it is effectively unusable.

[cratermoon]

> or so badly done it is effectively unusable

This is intentional. See General Motors streetcar conspiracy.

[rabuse]

It's not really "spoiled", as that is the price due to the fuel taxes in Europe, where the U.S. pays almost nothing in fuel tax. If they don't like that high of a fuel price, then they're free to vote for another party.

[midhhhthrow]

And the whole world is free to suffer the consequences of global warming which are becoming increasingly dire.

Sorry for the snarkiness but it just needed to be said

[jhgb]

And your carefree approach leads to this: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Per-Capita-Emissions-of-...

[sigstoat]

> Pop quiz: In what countries does it cost a full day's wages or more to fill a car's gas tank?

i'm going to guess "most of them" if you're using minimum wage.

i just checked britain and came up with 107.31 pounds for an average tank, whereas 8 hours at their minimum wage will get you 76 pounds.

so what's the point? grad students are usually salaried in my experience, and can get housing near enough to the university that they walk, not drive, even in the US.

[phpisthebest]

Pop Quiz: How many people in the US are working for the Federal Minimum wage right now today...

I am willing to bet it is very few given what I have seen advertised for traditional minimum wage jobs.

I am not sure how pointing to what the legal minimum wage is holds any value in the conversation, that matters is the current market rate for labor, we should not be looking to government as the basis of our economic worldview

[cratermoon]

About 1.1 million people have jobs that pay the federal minimum wage or less. Not counting farm jobs (think migrant labor).

[phpisthebest]

That looks to be 2020 BLS data, before the Massive labor shortage, the Great Resignation, and massive wage inflation.

Do you have a current source?

But even assuming that data is still valid, that is what 1.5% of the labor force, and about 1/2 that is teens, or under 24 years old.

so the massive amount of focus on "minimum wage workers needing to support a family" we are talking about 0.75% of all workers that would fall into that categorization, we should help these people with social programs to be sure, but I would not call that a crisis, or something needing massive economic/regulatory upheaval to resolve, it seems to be the market is doing just fine with wages with out government intervention

[jhgb]

> Pop quiz: In what countries does it cost a full day's wages or more to fill a car's gas tank?

In most of them, I'd bet. Just for example, in Czech Republic we're currently at $7/US gal. Our median (NOT minimum) income is around $8.5 per hour. So this is 1.5 working days for your 15 gallon tank for the average worker.

BTW, someone already did the relevant calculations: https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/articles/85/ -- feel free to compare the situation in the US to other countries.

[midhhhthrow]

I got an ebike and filling that up costs me very little. Not to mention the savings on insurance, registration, parking, smog, maintenance and they can be cheap to buy if you know where to look

[908B64B197]

> Pop quiz: In what countries does it cost a full day's wages or more to fill a car's gas tank?

I would assume most of the countries that have months of backlog for US Visas consular appointments?

[vangelis]

> fill a car's gas tank well there's your problem

[twistedpair]

Who needs to buy 15 gallons of gasoline daily (unless in the transit industry or doing a long road trip)? Seems like a mismatch between frequency of earning (days), and car filling.

Most people fill their car weekly or less. Heck, since the pando, I do it less than once a month.

[umeshunni]

Usual caveat that no one actually makes minimum wage

[cwmoreiras]

Good point! Lowest wage I ever had was $7.40/hr. That was the minimum wage for my state at the time. It was a whole 15 cents more than the federal minimum wage.

15 cents * 8 hrs/day = a whole $1.20 per day above the federal minimum wage. It was awesome.