Wait... Workers Say the Minimum Wage Needs to be HOW MUCH?!

[00:00:00]If $66 an hour was the minimum, how much would you be making right now? I just did some math and let me tell you if a hospital here in Missouri ever pays me that relative amount, I would [ __ ] myself. I would [ __ ] myself.

[00:00:16]You guys should look it up. It's crazy.

[00:00:18]>> $66? [snorts] $66 an hour minimum. Keyword being [ __ ] minimum. To be on par with the boomers that were buying houses back in like 1970. have to work at least 3 and 1/2 hours to make $66. And you're asking me to make that an hour?

[00:00:38]What? What [ __ ] job is giving me that?

[00:00:42]People in the medical industry aren't even [ __ ] making that. I'm already working property management. I What else am I supposed to do? I already know how difficult the housing market is. I This is my job. So, I'm just going to be renting for the rest of our lives.

[00:00:57]>> Wait, the minimum wage needs to be $66 per hour? That's what a lot of people are saying, and I feel like that is an absurd amount, but it really showcases how far behind we have gotten with the minimum wage because earning less than $10 per hour in 2026 is a huge problem.

[00:01:16]You're not going to be able to afford anything. Maybe it pays off your electricity bill. Maybe it pays off your insurance. Maybe it pays your grocery and food bill, but it's definitely not going to cover rent unless you have a million roommates. And if you're watching this video thinking that $66 per hour would seem nice, but it's absolutely absurd, you're completely right. It would change a lot of people's lives, but $66 per hour is not realistic. And I don't think these people expect it to be realistic, but it really showcases how far behind in the times we've gotten because wages, not just the minimum wage, but wages in general have not increased at the same rate of inflation, so we're not really able to afford things in 2026 as we used to back in the older days. Let me know in the comments down below what you think about it and take a look at the rest of these videos.

[00:02:09]>> So, I just found out that the federal minimum wage to keep up with increasing costs should be $66 an hour and not $7.25 an hour. And $7.25 an hour, at least here in Wisconsin, hasn't changed in over 15 years. A lot has changed when it comes to prices of groceries, prices for utilities, rent, cost for homes, property taxes, the list goes on and on.

[00:02:37]But, somehow it's still staying at $7.25 an hour, and it and it should be $66 an hour for us to actually be surviving or thriving and not just surviving, cuz we're all stuck in survival mode right now, dressed to the brim because we are not making enough money even if we have multiple jobs.

[00:02:59]>> The minimum wage in America would need to be $66 an hour to have the same buying power that the dollar had back in the '80s. You're lucky if you could go on Indeed anymore and find a job that offers more than $18 and $19 an hour.

[00:03:13]People are out here kicking in the towel, not seeing the point in doing this anymore because they realize that there's no point. They've been scammed out of their life, and they realize that their time is more valuable than money.

[00:03:25]Some of us don't want to wait until we're retirement age until our bodies and our spirits are too old and broken down to even enjoy life just to look back and see all we did the last 45 years of our lives was clocked in and went to work.

[00:03:40]Money isn't even everything anymore.

[00:03:42]Yet, they have all of us brainwashed to believe in chasing that next dollar is more important than caring for each other.

[00:03:48]You're out here spending your entire life trying to make money, money that you can't even keep because after you pay all your bills and [ __ ] it's all gone. And once you realize all of this is a scam, that's when the true freedom comes in.

[00:04:01]>> Well, hell. We just all found out $66 an hour.

[00:04:07]That's what minimum wage should be if we kept up with inflation from the '70s and '80s.

[00:04:12]How's that make you feel? $66 a [ __ ] hour. And do you guys remember um I think it was maybe 2019 maybe when uh the Senate trying to pass uh to raise the minimum wage to 15, the national minimum wage to $15 an hour.

[00:04:31]Every single red hat voted against it.

[00:04:34]Every single one. Along with Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. But, yeah.

[00:04:41]This is just holding you back, okay? The red hats in Congress. I mean, they are not for you, you know? They They are not. They are for the corporations.

[00:04:52]You will never matter to them.

[00:04:55]Anytime I mean, that's $137,000 a year, $66 an hour.

[00:05:01]Most people, you know, if you go to college, 4 years of college, God knows how much that costs, and then you get a job in a big corporation, let's say.

[00:05:09]You're going to start out at about $40,000 a year. So, it's going to take you a good 10 years before you're making $137,000 a year. Unless you're really lucky and in some position of privilege or nepotism or something. Otherwise, you could spend your whole life never making what minimum wage should be in this country.

[00:05:30]And you can thank the GOP for that.

[00:05:33]>> Some of you smooth brains are having trouble with the $66 an hour minimum wage. That is the amount it would take to give us the same purchasing power that boomers had when they joined the workforce. You people don't read or Google competently. Boomers could do that with one person working with the minimum wage. My generation, if you have kids and you want to buy a house, holy [ __ ] you both have to be working full time. I swear to God, you guys are insufferable because you want to be. At this point, that's the only explanation.

[00:06:09]You come on the internet and [ __ ] and moan at my generation who were told if we do everything right, we'll be able to build a life for ourselves just like you did and even more and we're not. And we're calling [ __ ] The average price of a house in America is $410,000.

[00:06:28]The average age of a home buyer in America is 56 years old. Something is wrong and it's the people at the top.

[00:06:38]It's time to eat the rich. But thanks for your input, boomers and Gen Xers. It makes it more fun. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[00:06:45]>> Hey, boomers. Did you know that Gen Z would have to make $66 an hour as a minimum wage today to match the buying power back in the 1970s?

[00:06:55]Think about that. $66 an hour when the minimum wage right now, I think it's averaging $8 to $10 an hour. It would need to go up $56 an hour to match the buying power that people had back in the 1970s.

[00:07:12]This is why I think that they're they're totally lazy. They don't want to go out and work. They can't save money. Gen Z does not want to go out and work when they know that by the time they get to 65, 67, and probably by the time they get that age the the the retirement age is probably going to be 70 or 75.

[00:07:30]There won't be any social security left because it will all be spent. So, it was all the money that they took from them on top of not having any buying power because they don't even their wages don't match the economy.

[00:07:42]They don't WANT TO GET OFF THE COUCH.

[00:07:43]THEY DON'T WANT TO STOP WATCHING THE View on ABC. They don't want to stop watching MSNBC. They don't want to stop being a victim. They don't want to stop and think, "What can I do to find the American dream?"

[00:07:58]Until they figure out this wage gap, I don't know what the [ __ ] they're going to do, but remember this. You'd have to make $56 more an hour right now to have the same buying power that people had back in the '70s. So, there's that.

[00:08:10]Comment what you think in the comment box.

[00:08:13]>> So, in Oklahoma, minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

[00:08:19]And we know that's not a livable wage.

[00:08:21]So, it makes you think, how do these people survive?

[00:08:26]They survive by being on government assistance.

[00:08:30]So, you mean to tell me companies in Oklahoma pay their employees so low that they have to now rely on government assistance that's paid for by you and I and other taxpayers instead of just paying their employees more?

[00:08:49]So, essentially, we are financing each employer's costs for their business to run their business because their employees don't make enough.

[00:09:02]And so, they have to rely on available assistance for them because their job doesn't want to pay them. But people are against increasing and forcing jobs to pay more.

[00:09:12]>> The fact that it's coming out that we have to make $66 an hour to be on par like with the boomers when they was buying houses in the '70s and '80s just goes to show like how shitty we have it. Nobody's paying us $66 an hour, literally. And if you do the math, $66 an hour like you would think $66 an hour is like 250 or something. It's like 130.

[00:09:32]It's like not It's not even like Richie Rich.

[00:09:37]>> [cough] >> Number one, they saying we have to make $66 an hour to be on par with them or whatever, right? But at the same time, they're getting social security and we're paying for it. Like, all of it is just like we are like and I don't think personally that I was born in the wrong time. Like, I like the time period I was born in. I like the fact that I could just search anything up on Amazon my [ __ ] whimsy is whim and it will come here tomorrow. Like, they couldn't do that in the '70s and '80s. But at the same time, I feel like they was living a little bit better. Yes? Everything that they was eating wasn't processed. The air was a little bit less polluted. You know, their self-esteem was a little bit higher. I don't know. Like, it's What do like It's so sad.

[00:10:19]>> Now, I completely understand that the minimum wage is meant to be like an entry-level job, but you should be able to pay rent, you should be able to afford food, and you shouldn't be able to suffer and have to have a million roommates just to survive on that job.

[00:10:36]And what's really sad is now a lot of the older generations are still stuck in entry-level minimum wage-paying jobs. We see a lot of these older folks taking up these jobs, which is taking away opportunities from the younger people, and is creating a decreased competition among the companies for higher pay. Now, I think something definitely needs to happen with wages, not just the minimum wage, but wages all over the board need to go up because the cost of living has increased at such an insane rate that we're not able to afford things anymore.

[00:11:12]>> I heard a lot of talk that in order to have the same purchasing power as the boomers back in 1969, that the minimum wage should be about like $68 an hour.

[00:11:21]But I think that's actually a very gross underestimation of what it actually is. You see, in 1969, the US dollar was still on the gold standard.

[00:11:35]So, you would need to tie in the worth of gold into the wages.

[00:11:41]So, to do the math correctly, you need to take the price of gold in 1969, multiply it by 40%, and divide that into 8 hours in a day, and that is your true minimum wage. And when I did that, the minimum wage ended up turning out to about $237 per hour.

[00:12:11]So, in other words, you need to be making at minimum almost $9,000 a month to have the same purchasing powers as boomers in 1969.

[00:12:28]$9,000 a month. You wonder why everyone wants to be a [ __ ] influencer, because no other no real career can pay that much.

[00:12:37]So, might as well flip the game table.

[00:12:42]>> So, the minimum wage is supposed to be $66, which y'all telling me?

[00:12:45]The minimum wage is supposed to be $66, which y'all telling me, and I was asking for 30, and people saying 30 was too high.

[00:12:50]It's supposed to be 66, and y'all telling me 30 WAS TOO HIGH. OOH, CHILD, if y'all couldn't been bad at math, this was a worse time to be bad at math. I only do research. I can ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and other forms of research.

[00:13:04]People figured out that the minimum wage is supposed to be $66 today.

[00:13:08]If y'all wanted the same buying power in this in the similar circumstances that the boomer had it back when they was 20 and 30s years old, the minimum wage would have to be $66 to match that buying power it was back in those times.

[00:13:26]For short, $66 needs be the new minimum wage if y'all want it to be a fair economy throughout history. Right now, we are getting paid Minimum wage is what? $7.25 right now?

[00:13:39]That's nearly 1/10 1/10 of what it should be.

[00:13:45]We are 1/10 of what the of what minimum wage should be and I get it. All the other jobs is what they is doing what they doing, but keep in mind a lot of these jobs then is again underpaid. A lot Man, are you hell yeah. A lot of jobs is underpaid.

[00:14:00]But $66 >> So, I feel like when we talk about federal minimum wage, we kind of skip over the conversation of purchasing power, which is like very relevant to the conversation. So, in 1938, that was the first time they ever established a federal minimum wage.

[00:14:14]It was set at 25 cents an hour. Today, almost 90 years later, it's only went up $7. It is $7.25 an hour. Some people will look at that and say, "Okay, well, if you do the math, it's a 2,800% increase." Technically, that's right, but that number means absolutely nothing without looking at what that money can actually buy.

[00:14:31]Purchasing power. So, purchasing power is the amount of goods and services that your money can actually buy. So, in simple terms, it's going to answer that question of how much life can I afford with the money that I earn. So, 25 cents in 1938 had the purchasing power of roughly $5.90 in today's money.

[00:14:50]But, this ignores another important concept, which is cost of living. This is the amount of money that's required to afford basic necessities: housing, food, transportation, health care, other expenses. Everything has went up.

[00:15:05]So, point of this video being the cost of living has not increased evenly.

[00:15:11]Things like housing, health care, child care, education have risen much faster than the wages in many cases.

[00:15:18]Uh so, I want to answer the question of has the purchasing power of workers kept up with the actual cost of living?

[00:15:26]So, I will start this by combating the most popular argument that I know I'm going to hear. Only 1% of Americans make minimum wage. Okay.

[00:15:37]First of all, 1% of Americans is still roughly 800,000 to 900,000, almost a million human beings who are working and being paid for $7.25 an hour.

[00:15:49]But more importantly, the minimum minimum wage debate, it's never just been about people making exactly $7.25.

[00:15:56]So, to prove to you that this is not just an issue of minimum wage and this is an issue of cost of living and purchasing power, we have a hypothetical person who makes $15 an hour. That's almost about that's about twice the minimum wage.

[00:16:10]$15 an hour times a 40-hour work week gets you $600 a week.

[00:16:16]$600 a week times 52 weeks in 1 year gives you $31,200 per year for gross income.

[00:16:24]When you do your monthly gross based off of that 31,200, you get about $2,600 a month.

[00:16:32]After you take out social security Medicare taxes, which is about 8%, um you get about $2,400 a month.

[00:16:41]Then, taking into account federal and state taxes, depending on state and deductions, you're going to get about 2,100 to 2,300 a month.

[00:16:50]So, your average one-bedroom is about 1,300 to 1,400 a month.

[00:16:57]Average food for one adult is about 350 to 450 a month.

[00:17:03]Transportation, so your car payment average is about 700 a month. Insurance is about 200 a month and that's generous cuz mine's 325. Gas, about 150 to 200 a month, again, generous. Maintenance for your car, about a hundred a month. Um And then, okay, utilities is about two hundred a month, and that's generous.

[00:17:25]Your Wi-Fi, about sixty a month. Phone, about seventy-five a month. Health care, so you've got your prescriptions, your co-pays, insurance premiums, out-of-pocket costs. That's going to be about a hundred fifty to three hundred a month.

[00:17:37]And then, you've got your household necessities, so like toilet paper, soap, cleaning supplies, laundry, hygiene.

[00:17:43]That's going to be about a hundred a month. So, your total is going to be about three thousand five hundred and thirty-five a month. So, your deficit is about one thousand two hundred to one thousand four hundred a month. So, even making double the minimum wage, with no kids, no child care costs, no student loans, no credit card debt, no emergencies, no vacations, no eating out, no pets, you're still going to be short over a thousand dollars every single month, on average. And then, another thing I found is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that in twenty twenty-three, roughly thirty million jobs in the United States pay less than fifteen dollars an hour.

[00:18:21]And that's about one-fifth of jobs in the United States. So, if you hear anyone saying, "Oh, well, only one percent of Americans make the minimum wage." Yeah, well, actually one-fifth of them make less than fifteen dollars an hour, and they can't survive off of that.

[00:18:35]So, you can argue all day, every day, "Oh, well, not that many Americans make seven twenty-five an hour. The statistic The statistics show that less than a million Americans make seven twenty-five." Well, guess what? The statistics also show that roughly thirty million Americans are making less than fifteen dollars an hour.

[00:18:50]So, what's your point?

[00:18:53]And another thing that we really need to talk about more when we talk about minimum wage is that there's an economic concept called a living wage, which is the amount of money a person must earn to meet their basic needs without relying on government assistance or going into debt. So, a minimum wage and a living wage are not necessarily the same thing even though they should be.

[00:19:15]But, my point being is that the question we should be asking is not how many people are making minimum wage.

[00:19:22]Why does a person working full-time in one of the wealthiest countries in human history still struggle to afford a basic life?

[00:19:31]It's in that that's insanity. Like that The math does not math.