1.75 x federal poverty level

Based on 2012 guidelines, I lived last year at 175% of the USA federal poverty level (FPL). These guidelines have no basis in reality, of course. If legal terms such as "poverty" and "minimum wage" were related to self-sufficiency, then the requirement for wages would be much higher. That's why government entitlement programs will determine your eligibility by relying on extra multipliers to the FPL. Here in Minnesota, I think eligibility is currently defined as 1.30 x FPL (see page 5), so I don't qualify for food stamps.

An alternative called the Self-Sufficiency Standard (SSS) has a much more reasonable definition. Unfortunately, it's also very dependent on local prices, so it must be calculated for each city. Minnesota has no such calculation yet that I could find, but a 2008 report from the Economic Policy Institute (see Figure B) found that a family-of-4 budget in Minneapolis was higher than Los Angeles. I was able to find the SSS numbers for Los Angeles County. Using their calculator for a single adult, I found a living wage of $30,496. I earn only 0.64 x SSS for Los Angeles, so life is a very slow but persistent slide backwards.

Minimum wage doesn't change with inflation. When adjusted for inflation, minimum wage in the 1960s was as high as $10/hour compared to today's minimum of $7.25/hour. I'm poor, but I'm still doing better than many Americans. The U.S. Conference of Mayors recently published a report on hunger and homelessness. In their survey of 25 cities including Minneapolis, they found that:

• 82% of the cities reported increased requests for food assistance in 2012.
• 37% of people requesting assistance were already employed.
• 19% of people needing assistance did not receive it.
• 95% of the cities reported kitchens and pantries reducing meals or supplies per person in order to meet demand.
• 75% of the cities expected demand to increase in 2013.
• 0% of the cities expected demand to decrease in 2013.

We're all poor, but we're still doing better than some other Americans. Imagine if you worked at a job where minimum wage laws don't apply. If you had enough people volunteer for these low-wage or no-wage jobs, you could be one of 2,500 businesses profiting from $2 billion of industrial activity. It works even better if you make it easy to qualify for these jobs. You could start by making contract law into criminal law punishable with prison sentences. For instance, you can start with the easy things like rent delinquency (why evict when you can convict) and phone unlocking (why let customers switch vendors when you can literally lock them in). Don't neglect petty theft, so be sure to award a decade of service to anyone who steals $100 or a slice of pizza or four cookies. It's so very easy to land a job as an inmate that an observer from another country might remark that we have "reinvented the slave trade".

I'll settle for 1.75 x federal poverty level and no health insurance. Compared to most Americans, I'm doing rather well. I haven't joined the slave class yet! By handing ever more power to plutocrats, we've lowered our national standards a lot.