During the past five months of Trump being in charge 863,000 jobs were created. During the same period last year 955,000 jobs were added while Obama was still in office. On July 5th this year, Gallup reported: “Last week, Americans’ confidence in the economy averaged a score of 0, the first time in the 33 full weeks since the presidential election that the index’s weekly average was not positive. ” Full Report
In a recent NYT article of Today, half of American jobs pay about $37,000 or less each year, a quarter pay about $23,000 or less, and a family of four qualifies for SNAP at $32,000 or less. No wonder just over half of all SNAP families work, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. In America, “real” poverty is not about a lack of work, but a lack of compensation.
Trump has run on a platform of addressing this issue by “Making America Great Again” by creating jobs. So far this has not come to pass and slowly the public are losing faith in his “Art of the Deal.”
The US is in trouble it is no longer the land of the free and it is not the land of opportunity. Our research shows that in many respects it never had been.
National Conference of State Legislatures shares that in Oklahoma the minimum wage in 2017 is $2.00 per hour.
Oklahoma Employers of ten or more full time employees at any one location and employers with annual gross sales over $100,000 irrespective of number of full time employees are subject to federal minimum wage; all others are subject to state minimum wage of $2.00 (OK ST T. 40 § 197.5). National Conference of State Legislatures.
How can people survive and pursue their happiness on wages like that? Meanwhile the cost of living index in Tulsa Oklahoma is only 24.42% lower than in New York City.
- Four-person family monthly costs: 2,790.93$ without rent (using our estimator).
- A single person monthly costs: 807.71$ without rent.
- Cost of living index in Tulsa is 27.42% lower than in New York.
- Cost of living rank 215th out of 507 cities in the world.
Realtor.com suggests that a 1 to 2 bedroom, 1 bath apartment in Tulsa costs between $526 to $2,280 dollars per month which is of course much lower than the monthly rents in NYC $2,815 for 340 sq ft up to $22,000 for 2400 sq ft, or the San Francisco monthly rents of $2,815 for 340 sq ft to $13,500 for 2240 sq ft. The minimum wage is $9.20 to $11.00 depending on employer size in NYC and $14.00 per hour in San Francisco as of the time of this article. It is impossible to find a decent place to live on a minimum wage and it is little wonder that people who were raised believing in the American Dream are turning to suicide as a solution to their life issues at record numbers.
Housing Crisis and Fraud at all time high
Countries with a strong middle class are economically strong. Only after owners and investor of large companies, and political policies support a strong middle class will the country stop the trend toward becoming a third world nation.