[asdfdsa1234]

Our society is structured that way, except for the "without going on welfare" stipulation. A sole breadwinner with a spouse and two children making $20k will receive another $10k in EBT and EITC, free healthcare, and pay a tax rate close to 10%. Effectively his or her income will be above $30k, which isn't bad considering per capita GDP is only about $45k.

How could society be structured to guarantee higher wages to unskilled workers?

[bzbarsky]

I'm not sure about your comparison to per-capita GDP there.

What you just described is a family of 4 with a total income of $30k+.

Per capita GDP of $45k means that GDP per 4 people is $180k. That $45k number is per person, not per worker.

So either the claim is that $30k is not that bad compared to $180k (unclear, a priori) or ... something?

[jlgreco]

>The median household income in the United States was $44,389 as of 2004.[9][dead link] The median income divides households in the US evenly in the middle with half of all household earning more than the median income and half of all households earning less than the median household income. According to the US Census Bureau, the median is "considerably lower than the average, and provides a more accurate representation."[49]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...

[bzbarsky]

As it happens, the _median_ household income is about the same as the _mean_ GDP per capita in the US right now. That's because incomes typically have distributions in which the mean is a lot higher than the median, as your link notes. Note that GDP per capita is also higher than mean per-capita income for people because there are non-household components of GDP (e.g. you would need to count unrealized capital gains as income to get closer to "income" approximating GDP).

I agree that household income is a more interesting thing to compare to for this case, though, but even more interesting would be comparing to similar households. Otherwise you're comparing the income of our hypothetical family of 4 to the incomes of 1-person households, incomes of households containing just a student, incomes of households containing one or two retirees, and so forth.

Luckily for us, such information is out there; http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/statistics/4perso... lists the median family-of-four income in the US at $67,000 or so in 2005 (though by state the median ranges from about $50k to about $90k, which shows the problem with talking about aggregate "United States" numbers). http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/Fam_Inc_SizeofFam... has similar numbers for a few years later... http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/househ... has quite a bit higher numbers than that for 2011 ($75k median nationally), which is a bit surprising to me, actually.

None of which answers the question of how reasonable an income of $30k is for a family of 4, of course.