Then why say this at the start of your comment thread?

Sorry. The exact salary amount doesn’t matter in this case, because I know enough about their situation (which I won’t be disclosing to you) to do a rough estimate based on their quality of life and from the information they’ve given me.

Either you knew their rough salary, or can’t remember. Which was it?

FFS man, chill out. Save this energy for when you’re debating some right-wing lunatic trying to push bullshit narratives.

I can’t remember lots of things. Hence my name, Dipshit. I’m a dumb pile of shit with ADHD. I’ve had a lot of conversations over the years and I don’t remember everything from them. What got encoded in my dumb little memory was that they weren’t making much more than me.

But shit man, what you’re not seeming to understand here is that:

minimum wage x full time work ~= $A

this person’s salary at this job + this person’s salary at thier other job ~= $B

$A and $B are not very far off. Functionally, they are the same when compared to $C, what either of our salaries should’ve been, even with me being fresh out of high school, but still having a few projects under my belt.

If you don’t accept it, don’t accept it. It’s one example out of many that people can provide. I don’t really have a desire to continue trying to anonymize parts of my employment history to you in an effort to convince some stranger that the things I know happened happened.

The real conversation here which I’m trying to have with you once you stop nitpicking on my personal back story (in an effort to dox me I assume because this is getting a little much, don’t you think?) is why are you so flabbergasted by this concept?

Are you familar with the idea that people can be paid less money than what they are worth? Do you know how capitalism works? Do you understand that there will be winners and losers and because we don’t live in a meritocracy, who gets to be winners and who gets to be losers largely comes from chance?

Your entire point seems to be on disproving my experience, I assume because then that would mean that in your head your argument is sound, that everyone is paid what they are worth, and that it was just a “skill issue” from someone with “victim mentality” (both your phrases) why someone wouldn’t be paid what they are worth.

What’s your point?

I know some people making six figures with second jobs, especially if they’re teaching in their field or live in a high COL area. It doesn’t mean they make “minimum wage” but maybe they live paycheck to paycheck. Those are very, very different.

That’s a good thing I didn’t say they were making minimum wage. Look, throwing out some numbers here randomly (small numbers since it’s going to be easier to calculate and I am a dipshit):

hypothetical minimum wage $10/hour. 40hr / week that’s $400/week. x 4 weeks in a month that’s $1600/month. After taxes (let’s say half - what’s advised for sole proprietors anyway - for ease of math) that’s $800/month.

This person was making salary at their teaching job so that’s $X, but what I’m saying is that the web dev agency which hired them paid them $Y. I don’t know if $X == $Y and also was married with a husband with salary $Z, but I do know that $X + $Y + $Z <= COL for that area.

This tells me that both myself and them were having trouble making ends meet in the same area. That area was a relatively low cost of living area as well. I’m no economist but i would estimate that salary ranges (in the pre-remote work boom) in an area vary depending on the COL, meaning that low cost of living area salaries may be something like fulltime work at minimum wage for a year * 2 or maybe * 3, but HCOL area salaries may be something like fulltime work at minimum wage for a year * 5 or * 10. These opinions are my own and may be very wrong but they just seem to be what I have experienced at least back then. Now with remote work it’s hard to say since high earners can move to rural areas and work for companies in HCOL areas.

I didn’t think I’d be talking to someone who’s going to try to pull apart my anonymized story to look for defects to try to win an argument. My previous answers reflect the person I once was prior to this conversation going down such a deep and personal rabbit hole.