# living paycheck to paycheck **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 31, 2018, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004 "2018-12-31T21:39:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/221 "2019-01-07T18:49:42Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Not to be snarky, but I would study some basic economics. It is literally the science of how societies collectively work to provide stuff for everyone. I have, it’s why I’m an Libertarian Socialist (closest to an Anarcho-Syndicalist than anything). Use industrial unions to seize the means of production, abolish wages and wage slavery by the rich capitalists, provide resources for the common good and all that. > [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Makes perfect sense to me. “Here is a great harm you could easily prevent without even touching your standard of living.” “Nah, I’d rather build a 50-foot-tall golden statue. Maybe I’ll donate a pittance to certain vanity projects (that nobody has any say in) - more likely, I’ll spend money to lobby so that I can get even richer at everyone else’s expense.” That’s pretty much just evil no matter how you slice it. Nobody needs a third fucking yacht or a fourth McMansion. I like this video on wealth hoarding for this, but I wouldn’t recommend it to Ditka (or most people here except you) because it’s rather squarely targeted towards nascent leftists and far-leftists, especially younger ones. Not a video meant to convince most people. [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnSiT_3sXDc) ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/222 "2019-01-07T18:57:10Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Nobody needs a third fucking yacht or a fourth McMansion. Construction workers and boat builders might not agree. I skimmed your article, and he seems to be simply announcing that some things are indisputable, instead of showing how they are. For instance, he claims that white families own their homes while black families don’t is “indisputably” because of slavery. It’s not indisputable - I dispute it. Certainly if the author just wants to assert things and expect me to agree automatically, he can do so. I won’t, but so it goes. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/223 "2019-01-07T19:44:21Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Makes perfect sense to me. “Here is a great harm you could easily prevent without even touching your standard of living.” “Nah, I’d rather build a 50-foot-tall golden statue. Maybe I’ll donate a pittance to certain vanity projects (that nobody has any say in) - more likely, I’ll spend money to lobby so that I can get even richer at everyone else’s expense.” That’s pretty much just evil no matter how you slice it. Nobody needs a third fucking yacht or a fourth McMansion. I’m totally with you on this. I dont know why we have no candidates ever harping on taxing the rich or going after high CEO salaries. Well I do know. The CEO’s pay them both parties off and laugh as we squabble over SSM and walls while they get ever richer. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/224 "2019-01-07T20:19:43Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I skimmed your article, and he seems to be simply announcing that some things are indisputable, instead of showing how they are. For instance, he claims that white families own their homes while black families don’t is “indisputably” because of slavery. It’s not indisputable - I dispute it. Really? I thought that big differences between the rate of white and black home ownership was pretty common knowledge. [Here is a Zillow article about it]([http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/IBG](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/IBG) Certificate Requirement Checklist) I found with a simple search. I don’t know I would directly attribute it to slavery itself, but definitely to racism and systemic racial bias. Things like redlining, which includes banking and insurance discrimination, explicit HOA segregation policies, and other practices that are absolutely racist. Home ownership is one of the most important methods of long term and multi-generational wealth accumulation available to the middle class. Denying minorities access to it is not only damaging to the individuals directly affected, but also to their children and grandchildren. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/225 "2019-01-07T20:39:11Z")
> [@Littleman](#): > > This is only true in terms of dollars, not hours. > Supply and demand determines your trades hours to dollars ratio. Comparing in dollars means nothing. Comparing in hours meaning nothing. Everything following from your opposite premise is nonsense, sorry. And again, even if you did compare hours worked domestically, people farther up the income scale tend to work more, not fewer, hours than people further down. Nor are the work hours of particular people ‘for’ other people than themselves. Everyone gets paid for the hours they work. People whose labor is worth more get paid more per hour. But plenty of people are rich with nobody working for them personally. Some people are near the poverty line and do have people working for them personally (marginal small businesses). So that whole concept is also off base. The ‘pyramid’ of labor concept based on assuming some people’s labor is ‘for’ other people but other peoples isn’t, has no validity. Again the simple big picture is: -people in rich countries whose labor is worth less and/or don’t work as much consume more than they produce. -that difference comes from higher income people (who also tend to work more hours but that’s incidental) who produce more than they consume, that difference being in taxes and redistributive public spending, plus price increasing mandates (like the minimum wage) which transfer some of their production to be consumed by lower income people. -poor people in poor countries are not eligible for those same large transfers so if they produce very little they can only consume very little, far less than people called ‘poor’ in rich countries. But their poverty is not caused nor necessitated by the fact that people in other countries are so much richer. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/226 "2019-01-07T20:47:19Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > Really? I thought that big differences between the rate of white and black home ownership was pretty common knowledge. [Here is a Zillow article about it]([http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/IBG](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/IBG) Certificate Requirement Checklist) I found with a simple search. Yes, the disparity of home ownership is common knowledge. > [@](#): > > I don’t know I would directly attribute it to slavery itself, but definitely to racism and systemic racial bias. The author of the article said it was indisputably because of slavery. He didn’t even attempt to show it - he just said it was indisputable. It isn’t. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/227 "2019-01-07T20:55:21Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > What’s it mean? What’s a “flash meal?” Expensive. Do you have the term “flashy”? Because that’s essentially where the word derives from. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/228 "2019-01-07T21:06:42Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > Expensive. > > Do you have the term “flashy”? Because that’s essentially where the word derives from. Got it. Thanks. Yes, we have flashy, but it’s not necessarily expensive. More like “showy” or maybe “fancy” is the best fit. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/229 "2019-01-07T21:17:21Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I’m assuming that expensive hobby you had to give up was flying planes. That is correct. Unless my current income quadruples (at least!) my flying days are over because I simply can’t afford it anymore. > [@](#): > > Whats scary is I remember years ago when you were in a much better place financially, and it’s been a struggle for years for you now since then. Yes. The turning point was November 2007 when I was laid off from my job at Blue Cross Blue Shield. Just in time for the Great Recession. The rest is spoilered because I know not everyone is interested in my story, but some are. [spoiler]The good news is that I am no longer unemployed, underemployed, destitute, or having to sue an employer for the wages owed me. I have climbed out of dire poverty back into the lower middle class. Along the way, 8 of my family members have died, including my spouse, because having just financial problems wasn’t enough, I guess :rolleyes: It’s been a rough decade. > [@](#): > > I have a coworker who was laid off from a good job in 2010, and she never recovered. She never found another job with benefits than paid the same, and she sometimes has trouble just finding a stable job. > > It seems like some people, after they lose their middle class job they bounce back, but some people never do. It’s scary. I’m glad I never had children. Age is a huge factor - ageism does exist. Past about 45 a lot of people just plain don’t want to hire you, and now that I’m in my 50’s that’s even more true. My state started a training program for people like me, folks with LOTS of employment experience and more productive years ahead of them, who were having trouble even getting our foot in the door. That’s how I got my current job. There’s been some success there with getting the over-40-and-laid-off crowd re-hired and productive again. In fact, of the group I was in all but one wound up getting hired before we finished the course. So, bravo to Indiana because someone actually took a look at WHY people weren’t getting work and figured out how to approach that problem. They have programs tailored to various types of unemployed people. It’s not perfect, but it sure as hell beats simply penalizing people for not getting employed fast enough. Anyhow - while my present job isn’t perfect I’m hoping to start some side work making things again, bringing in additional income and maybe seguing into a small business that could bring additional income during “retirement” or even become my primary income after I’m eligible for Medicare and getting health coverage is no longer dependent on who I work for. That’s on top of the longer I’m with my present employer the more money I will make up to a salary cap that’s fairly decent for a single person. So while my current job is adequate I still have plans for better.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/230 "2019-01-07T21:41:20Z")
The problem with confiscating the “money” that Jeff Bezos and the Walton family have is that it is all tied to the value of the stock of their respective companies. It’s not sitting in a bank account. If Congress passes a law saying that they are going to impose a wealth tax and take 95% of their assets, it would cause a massive drop in the price of Amazon’s and Wal-Mart’ stocks. You would never get that $123 billion dollars from Jeff Bezos; we end up with half of that if we are lucky. Frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if the value dropped as much as 90%. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/231 "2019-01-07T21:53:39Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Construction workers and boat builders might not agree. Even granting this premise _entirely_, there are homeless people who could live in those McMansions. More simply put, this is just an utterly absurd allocation of resources. You might as well say that a 50-foot gold statue of my dick is fine - “You say it’s a stupid waste of resources, but the metalworkers sure might disagree with that assessment!” :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/232 "2019-01-08T00:30:43Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I wouldn’t say it was an awful lot, at least as defined by full time work - > 10.4% doesn’t seem like a lot. Especially when it includes people who did not end up below the poverty line so much as start out - > > That’s probably why hardly anyone does, including poor people. > Then I guess I don’t understand your point. **Littleman** alleged that poor people produce more than they consume, and **Correy El** pointed out that this is not true - they consume a lot more than they produce, because they get all kinds of transfer payments from those who do produce more than they consume. Consumption and productivity are both being measured in the same way - in dollars. Their productivity doesn’t change because they receive transfer payments, nor would it if they had their wages (for the minority who are working) increased by fiat. > > Production and consumption are both measured in money, because money is a medium of exchange. But ISTM that you are getting it the wrong way round - productivity increases income, overall, but that is an effect, not a cause. Transfer payments increase income too, independently of productivity. > > People don’t collect welfare because they are producing anything. They collect it because we as a society have decided that everybody should get some kind of income whether they are producing or not. Indeed, the only reason we can have a welfare state is because we have enough people who produce more than they consume, overall, and therefore the government can transfer money from the upper and middle classes to the poor. > > Consumption doesn’t track to productivity in a welfare state in the same way it does in a free market. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing - very few people want poor people to starve if they can’t work, accusations against conservatives nothwithstanding - but it is a thing. > > Regards, > Shodan Uh nope , what I said was that the hours consumed by America’s poor are far more than they could possibly produce. Therefore In order to maintain even a lifestyle that is considered poor in america someone has to be working for less than they are In order to maintain their lifestyle. ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/233 "2019-01-08T01:34:38Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > Comparing in hours meaning nothing. Everything following from your opposite premise is nonsense, sorry. > > And again, even if you did compare hours worked domestically, people farther up the income scale tend to work more, not fewer, hours than people further down. > > Nor are the work hours of particular people ‘for’ other people than themselves. Everyone gets paid for the hours they work. People whose labor is worth more get paid more per hour. But plenty of people are rich with nobody working for them personally. Some people are near the poverty line and do have people working for them personally (marginal small businesses). So that whole concept is also off base. > > The ‘pyramid’ of labor concept based on assuming some people’s labor is ‘for’ other people but other peoples isn’t, has no validity. > > Again the simple big picture is: > -people in rich countries whose labor is worth less and/or don’t work as much consume more than they produce. > -that difference comes from higher income people (who also tend to work more hours but that’s incidental) who produce more than they consume, that difference being in taxes and redistributive public spending, plus price increasing mandates (like the minimum wage) which transfer some of their production to be consumed by lower income people. > -poor people in poor countries are not eligible for those same large transfers so if they produce very little they can only consume very little, far less than people called ‘poor’ in rich countries. But their poverty is not caused nor necessitated by the fact that people in other countries are so much richer. Measuring production.by dollars is nonsense. If I have a skill that is in demand i make more more simply because of that. I don’t have to actually produce more. ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/234 "2019-01-08T01:38:32Z")
And these numbers about the poor not working are hilariously self confirming. Poverty line is something like $1024 gross per month. If you work a minimum wage job you are automatically not below poverty line. So by virtue of the chosen dollar amount you can’t work and be considered impoverished ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/235 "2019-01-08T01:46:02Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Because, fundamentally, “hours worked” is a fungible commodity. At least for now, we need people who are able and willing to work 8 hours a day doing things like flipping burgers, manning cash registers, and folding clothes. That’s simply something our society needs to function. At the same time, these positions are grossly denigrated. We act like people shouldn’t expect to be paid enough to survive doing those jobs, and at the same time, we act like it’s perfectly normal for people who aren’t working a whole lot harder to be paid hundreds of times more. That’s… kinda bullshit, on a couple of levels. > > Firstly, you cannot demand a service, then denigrate anyone who would perform that service - that’s absurd. The fact that the service is something anyone can do does not reduce the fact that someone is spending literally half their waking hours providing it to you, and that their options are often split between “do that” and “starve/become homeless/freeze in the streets”. > > Secondly, being rich in a situation where those around you are in crushing poverty is [just downright sociopathic](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/its-basically-just-immoral-to-be-rich), regardless of how you earned that money. As the marginal value of each dollar you own falls, the grotesquery grows. You could take 99.99% of Jeff Bezos’s money from him and he’d still be able to live like a king for the rest of his life without working a goddamn day; meanwhile, those billions of dollars taken from him would be enough to ensure that nobody on the planet went hungry for _years_. There is so much good you could do with 123 billion dollars. You could maybe even get away with not horribly abusing and underpaying your workers! What does Bezos have to say about that? “[The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel. That is basically it](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/jeff-bezos-thinks-his-fortune-is-best-spent-in-space-2018-05-01).” And some people wonder where the guillotine memes are coming from. :rolleyes: > > It feels like there are a lot of assumptions baked in here that don’t make a whole lot of sense. Like that you can objectively measure “production” by what the market offers in dollars. Given the structure of capitalism, that assumption seems batfuck insane. Any given minimum wage burger-flipper is being a hell of a lot more productive (in terms of overall utility provided to humanity) than some middle-manager in a [bullshit job](https://www.vox.com/2018/5/8/17308744/bullshit-jobs-book-david-graeber-occupy-wall-street-karl-marx), and yet probably makes only a fraction of the money. Something may be wrong with the model here. > > Most poor people do, in fact, work. And while higher-paid people tend to work more, it’s more by a matter of degree, not magnitude, and it’s usually fairly detached from the actual work put in. Someone working two full-time minimum wage jobs is already working as many hours as Bill Gates put in, and yet will never, ever, _ever_ get rich from their labor. You typically only get rich when you have other people working to make you rich - people you pay less than they produce for you. > > That last bit should be fairly uncontroversial - it’s literally how a company works. If you paid people the full value they produced for you, there would be no way to turn a profit. And that’s where this theory falls apart. Without line cooks, cashiers, and all those other minimum wage jobs, McDonalds could not function. Do they get paid what they deserve? Probably not - flipping burgers is a famously low-wage enterprise. Meanwhile, [McDonalds could easily double the wages of its workers and still turn a profit](https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-could-double-wages-for-employees-and-make-less-money-2013-7?IR=T) (without raising prices!) - in your model, would their productivity have suddenly doubled? It sounds like it, but that makes zero sense - they’d still be doing exactly what they were before. > > How much do you suppose your smartphone would cost if the countries it was sourced from had a similar standard of living and labor laws to the US? Maybe double or triple what it costs now? Even leaving aside cases like Coca-Cola hiring death squads to break up attempts at unionization in columbia or the borderline slave labor at FoxConn plants in China, or the literal slave labor that’s used to mine Coltan, where some party is using coercive tactics to enforce slave-like conditions, the fact of the matter is that if the people working in sweatshops demanded a standard of living akin to ours, our products would be _far_ more expensive. That’s why manufacturing has moved to places like China, India, and Thailand - you can still pay people a dollar a day there, and any attempts at unionization tend to get stomped on a lot harder than is legal here. We are absolutely subsidized by cheap labor (at times slave labor) from the third world. Pretty much exactly what I’m trying to say ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/236 "2019-01-08T02:08:20Z")
> [@Littleman](#): > > Measuring production.by dollars is nonsense. > > If I have a skill that is in demand i make more more simply because of that. I don’t have to actually produce more. Missed the edit window but nevermind if you’re say, a landlord. You are producing exactly nothing, you use a little bit of what people are paying you to maintain your property and your income is well, basically limited to how many more properties you buy with the money people are giving you to use what you own. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/237 "2019-01-08T02:10:11Z")
Bezos did just give his employees a pay raise, and also just launched a couple of philanthropic enterprises- focusing on education and homelessness. [https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi4qfLQjN3fAhXoQd8KHdNLCkkQzPwBegQIARAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fjeff-bezos-richest-person-modern-history-spends-on-charity-2018-7&psig=AOvVaw1ANRqZeu1zMd\_3x6WH1hTL&ust=1546999571947258](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi4qfLQjN3fAhXoQd8KHdNLCkkQzPwBegQIARAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fjeff-bezos-richest-person-modern-history-spends-on-charity-2018-7&psig=AOvVaw1ANRqZeu1zMd_3x6WH1hTL&ust=1546999571947258) ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/238 "2019-01-08T06:30:15Z")
> [@Littleman](#): > > Missed the edit window but nevermind if you’re say, a landlord. You are producing exactly nothing, you use a little bit of what people are paying you to maintain your property and your income is well, basically limited to how many more properties you buy with the money people are giving you to use what you own. You are also wrong. People that own property for rent, utilize their capital to produce a needed good—housing. The value of that housing is determined by the rent that a willing renter is able to pay to the landlord, multiplied by a multiple that other buyers would be willing to pay for that stream of rental income. This is a value created in society. In fact the majority of value created in society comes from the capital investment made by people with such capital. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/239 "2019-01-08T06:59:47Z")
> [@raventhief](#): > > Bezos did just give his employees a pay raise, and also just launched a couple of philanthropic enterprises- focusing on education and homelessness. > > [Redirect Notice](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi4qfLQjN3fAhXoQd8KHdNLCkkQzPwBegQIARAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fjeff-bezos-richest-person-modern-history-spends-on-charity-2018-7&psig=AOvVaw1ANRqZeu1zMd_3x6WH1hTL&ust=1546999571947258) Good for him! Let’s take a look… On Thursday, Bezos announced the launch of a $2 billion fund to support homeless families and education programs in underserved communities. Wow, a whole… 1.33% of his _obscene_ wealth! Good for him. Bless his little heart. 🙂 Also, the pay raise is… [not without caveats either](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/3/17934194/amazon-minimum-wage-raise-stock-options-bonus-warehouse). ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004/240 "2019-01-08T07:07:01Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Good for him! Let’s take a look… > > On Thursday, Bezos announced the launch of a $2 billion fund to support homeless families and education programs in underserved communities. > > Wow, a whole… 1.33% of his _obscene_ wealth! Good for him. Bless his little heart. 🙂 > > Also, the pay raise is… [not without caveats either](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/3/17934194/amazon-minimum-wage-raise-stock-options-bonus-warehouse). Oh, I’m well aware. But I also see movement in the right direction. It’s also not the first thing he’s done, especially for the homeless in Seattle. I don’t want to pretend he’s a saint, but saying he’s doing nothing but blue origin is wrong. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/living-paycheck-to-paycheck/827004.md?page=13)