Comment on The federal minimum wage is officially a poverty wage in 2025

• MrVilliam@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I don’t live in The Netherlands, so I don’t pretend to have any sort of first-hand knowledge of what it’s like there, but this resource says that children under 13 can’t work unless they’re sentenced to community service due to an offense, or working as a performance like as an actor in a commercial or a play. It also looked like there’s no minimum wage for workers under 15?

  But I don’t doubt that Dutch workers have much higher labor standards. Current minimum wage for 21 and older there looks to be nearly double American federal minimum wage (€14.06 vs $7.25). I live in Virginia, which has a much higher minimum wage than the federal one, currently $12.41. The Northern counties and around Richmond are ludicrously expensive, however, so it’s not like people could reasonably get by on that in those areas. You won’t find a half decent house in those areas for under $500k, and actual nice houses start at like $750-900k. If you somehow got a 0% mortgage and somehow had zero expenses outside of paying off that $500k house, it would still take 20 years of working full time at that minimum wage job to pay that. More realistic mortgage rates and expenses would make that take closer to 70 years.

  Average life expectancy in the US is 77.5 years.

  source

  • teije9@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    technically you’re not allowed to work at 12, but most companies, especially smaller ones that don’t get checked that strictly ignore those laws if a 12 year old approaches them and asks them for a job.

    source