{"id":11687,"date":"2015-09-01T06:56:14","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T11:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11687"},"modified":"2015-09-01T06:56:14","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T11:56:14","slug":"the-oligarch-recovery-low-income-americans-cant-afford-to-live-in-any-metro-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11687","title":{"rendered":"The Oligarch Recovery \u2013 Low Income Americans Can\u2019t Afford to Live in Any Metro Area"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Oligarch Recovery \u2013 Low Income Americans Can\u2019t Afford to Live in Any Metro Area<\/a><\/h3>\n

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We were told we needed to bail out Wall Street in order to save Main Street. Well the results are in\u2026<\/p>\n

Wall Street has never done better, and Main Street has never done worse.<\/strong><\/p>\n

From\u00a0the\u00a0Huffington Post<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Low-income workers and their families do not earn enough to live in even the least expensive metropolitan American communities, according to a new analysis of families\u2019 living costs published Wednesday.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The analysis, released by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, is an annual update of the think tank\u2019s Family Budget Calculator that reflects new 2014 data. The\u00a0Family Budget Calculator<\/a>\u00a0is a formula designed to determine the income \u201crequired for families to attain a secure yet modest standard of living\u201d in 618 different communities across the country that the U.S. Census Bureau defines as metropolitan areas. The formula uses data collected by the government and some nonprofit groups to measure costs of housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, \u201cother necessities\u201d like clothing, and taxes for families of 10 different compositions in these specific locales.<\/em><\/p>\n

The updated\u00a0Family Budget Calculator<\/a>\u00a0shows that even the most affordable metropolitan areas in the country are beyond the reach of millions of American families with incomes above the official federal poverty level<\/strong>. The official federal poverty level for a family of two parents and two children in 2014 was $24,008, according to the EPI.\u00a0But the least expensive metropolitan area in the country for this family type is Morristown, Tennessee, where a family needs an income of $49,114, according to the Economic Policy Institute\u2019s budget calculator.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Economic Policy Institute also estimates that minimum-wage workers \u2014 who almost universally earn less than the federal poverty level \u2014 lack the income needed to make an adequate living in any of the communities surveyed, even if they are single and childless. The think tank notes that this includes minimum-wage workers living in cities or states with a higher minimum wage than the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour, or\u00a0$15,080 a year<\/a>\u00a0for a full-time worker.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Oligarch Recovery \u2013 Low Income Americans Can\u2019t Afford to Live in Any Metro Area We were told we needed to bail out Wall Street in order to save Main Street. Well the results are in\u2026 Wall Street has never done better, and Main Street has never done worse. From\u00a0the\u00a0Huffington Post: Low-income workers and their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[124,8599,8598,303,305,5314,7265,4285,6040,6174,1092,860],"class_list":["post-11687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-central-banks","tag-economic-policy-institute","tag-family-budget-calculator","tag-fed","tag-federal-reserve","tag-housing-costs","tag-huffington-post","tag-liberty-blitzkrieg","tag-main-street","tag-michael-krieger","tag-oligarchy","tag-wall-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11688,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11687\/revisions\/11688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}