Households spending 90% of their income on necessities can be considered paycheck-to-paycheck. By this measure, roughly 30% of Americans are categorized as such. 26% of these households spend an extra 5%, raising it all the way up to 95% of their income spent on necessities.
The economy feels as if it’s struggling, but as of just the second quarter of 2024, inflation and wages were only 2% apart. So why does it feel like we’re all scrounging for money?
Inflation means the percentage that prices are currently rising. Prices staying around the same is good, but them already having risen so high means that low inflation rates can only go so far. Money feels so sparse mostly due to the fact that everything is already expensive, not necessarily because it’s getting worse.
A lot of Americans also tend to make minimum wage. Think of all the fast food cashiers, gas station attendants, receptionists. People that don’t have a fancy degree, or can’t even get one yet. Those who don’t want one. There’s a low ceiling to those kinds of jobs, but most people haven’t even gotten off of the floor.
“I’m not struggling personally,” Marin Koleno, Dunkin Donuts employee and student at MCHS says, “but I’ve seen a lot of friends, family struggling. It’s hard to watch.”
When you factor in high costs with the average American worker, eggs take about half an hour of your work. If we decrease these prices, though, that means less money for the company, which usually means less money for the workers, though the extra money isn’t even necessarily going to them.
A lot of big name companies also have a tendency to raise prices in the name of inflation when, really, it’s just about more money in their pockets. While inflation no doubt plays a role, it’s important to remember that corporate greed knows no bounds.
“I’m a cashier,” Orion West, local supermarket employee and student at MCHS says, “so I get to see a lot of the inflation first hand. For example, eggs, they’re like $8 now.”
With all of these factors it’s easy to see a struggling America – a struggling McHenry.
Our family, our friends, they struggle to put food on the table. It’s not because they aren’t working hard enough. It’s society that put them there, and now it’s their job to dig out of this massive hole dug by the generations before them, by the rich. Hopefully, wages keep rising and rising. Remember labor unions and strikes. The people have the power, we just need to use it.