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A comment on Sympathy for the Luddites. Parent comment

Re:Sympathy for the Luddites by yummyfajitas on Friday June 14, 2013 @09:29PM (#5883464)
In the US, we have more than 10 different income levels and a basic consumption guarantee of about 20k/year (i.e., even people earning $0/year tend to consume about $20k/year).

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce/standard/2009/income.txt

http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf

This doesn't stop large chunks of our society from opting out of work.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2010.pdf

http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/

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Re:Sympathy for the Luddites by euroclydon on Saturday June 15, 2013 @09:14AM (#5884920)
Does that mean, on average, the minimum anual pay to get someone off the couch in the U.S. is $20K+? My wife is from Colombia, and she tells me people there are motivated to go work and hustle each day for a few bucks. Of course that's off the books. I wonder how off the books work, if counted, would change those U.S. statistics?
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