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How can anyone get by on this?

I've written extensively about minimum wage, supported by fact-checkers, economists, and scholarly studies. All of them support raising the minimum wage as a solution to lifting people out of poverty and getting them off public assistance. It's slowly happening, and there's much more to be done.

But when it comes right down to it, where the rubber meets the road is what it means for everyday workers who have to live with those wages. I honestly don't know how they do it. Ask yourself: Could I live on this small of an hourly wage? I know what my answer is.

(And note that the minimum wage in many parts of the county is STILL $7.25, so it could be even less than this).

paychecks, McDonalds, corporate power, broken systemOne year of work at McDonalds grossed this worker $13,811.18.via JustFrugalMe/YouTube

The YouTube channel Just Frugal Me discussed the viral paycheck and noted there's absolutely nothing wrong with working at McDonald's. More than 2 million people in the U.S. alone work for the fast food giant. The worker's paycheck shows they put in 72 hours over the pay period, making $8.75 per hour. Before taxes, that's $631 for the week. Just Frugal Me's breakdown is even more eye-opening, breaking down this person's pay after taxes and weighing across average rent and utility costs. Spoiler Alert: the total costs for basic necessities far outweigh what this person is making even while working 12 hours per day. But they do make too much to qualify for Medicaid, meaning they will have to go out and buy their own health insurance.

mcdonald's, minimum wage, restaurants, fast food, burgers, big macA photo of a McDonald's in Hartford, CT. via Mike Mozart/Flickr

Even in states like California, where the state's $20 minimum wage ensures that people earn nearly three times as much as the federal minimum wage, which remains as low as when this paycheck first made the rounds nearly 10 years ago.

Still, even for a worker that maxed out at 40 hours per week and took zero vacation or sick time, that's only a little over $41,000 per year. That's barely half the median wage in the state of $78,000 and far below a sustainable living wage in cities like Los Angeles.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

The U.S. federal minimum wage is just $7.25 and hasn't been raised since 2009. In April 2025, the Raise the Wage Act of 2025 was introduced in the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. The bill would increase the federal minimum wage to $17 an hour by 2030 and eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers and those with disabilities. But supporters should be cautious that it's unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Congress.

If the Wage Act of 2025 were to pass, over $22 million workers would get a raise, which is 15% of the U.S. workforce. It would raise $70 billion for low-wage Americans, an increase of $3,200 per worker.

“No person working full-time in America should be living in poverty," Virginia Congressman Bobby Scott said in a statement. "The Raise the Wage Act will increase the pay and standard of living for nearly 22 million workers across this country. Raising the minimum wage is good for workers, good for business, and good for the economy. When we put money in the pockets of American workers, they will spend that money in their communities,”

This story originally appeared ten years ago. It has been updated to reflect new information.

Canva, Rep. Jame Comer/Twitter, Congressman Ted Budd/Twitter

A common refrain we're hearing from politicians and pundits who insist on denying current reality is that leadership right now needs to focus on "lowering the temperature."

You know, in case a violent mob decides to storm the Capitol or something.

From lawmakers the past couple of days:

"Trying to impeach a President with less than 10 days left in office is the worst way to lower the temperature in our country. If Democrats say they want unity, this isn't the way to show it." – Congressman Ted Bud (R-NC)

"I've reached out to President-elect Biden today & plan to speak to him about how we must work together to lower the temperature & unite the country to solve America's challenges." – House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)

"I am opposed to yet another impeachment of President Trump by Nancy Pelosi that will further inflame tensions in America. We need to lower the temperature and unify Americans behind issues we can all agree on." – Congressman James Comer (R-KY)

And watch Fox News' Brian Kilmeade use the same language:


I'm not sure where these talking points come from, but there's clearly a deliberate message that we all just need to calm down and not do anything that might result in incensing a violent mob.

You know, like the one that already stormed the Capitol.

It feels a bit like these folks don't really comprehend what is happening in their own country and haven't digested the gravity of what just happened. So that we're all clear on where we are, let's take stock real quick:

Insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol last week while both houses of Congress were in session. They broke windows, doors, and furniture and left urine and feces in hallways and offices. They killed a police officer with a fire extinguisher, beat another with flag poles, and put more than a dozen Capitol officers in the hospital. They appeared ready to take lawmakers hostage with flex cuffs and chanted about hanging the vice president. They even constructed a gallows on Capitol grounds—and they did it all in the name of keeping Trump in power.

Trump has spent the two months since the presidential election claiming that the election was rigged, stolen, fraudulent, and/or unconstitutional. He has lobbed and relobbed baseless allegations that have repeatedly been debunked. He has encouraged his supporters to "stop the steal" and "save America" from the "Radical Leftist Democrats." It's been lie after lie, and when you mix those lies up with the quacko conspiracy theories pushed by QAnon—which the president has never denounced, only saying that its deranged adherents "love America"—you end up with a mob of people who think and that it's their patriotic duty to attack the seat of democracy and embarrass the nation on the world stage as they act out their tyrannical government overthrow fever dreams.

The absurdity of the insurrection somewhat masked the seriousness of what we witnessed. But anyone with the slightest understanding of civics should know that a violent storming of the U.S. Capitol is not a sign that things are getting too hot. It's a sign that we're already on fire.

Imagine standing in front of a burning building and saying, "We just need to figure out how to lower the temperature." Um, no. We need to put the fire out. Now. Quickly. By whatever means we have available to us.

The time for "lowering the temperature" was months ago. And the way to lower the temperature was to tell the American people the truth about the election results and to move forward with a peaceful, orderly transition. The reason the temperature got so high in the first place is because opportunistic politicians and right-wing media allowed fringe conspiracy kookiness into the mainstream when they realized how easily and eagerly their voters and viewers embraced it, and because we have a president who fans the flames of prejudice.

Calls for lowering the temperature and uniting the country fall flat when a significant portion of the country believes one candidate literally stole the presidency from the other, and when continued lies, misinformation, and impassioned rhetoric have already ignited the flame of insurrection. At this point, it's too late to lower the temperature. We have to actually put out the fire now. What does that look like? How about telling the truth and uniting around the fact that the violent storming of the Capitol only happened because a dishonest president of the United States can't admit defeat. That's a good start.

What could be more unifying than a unanimous, bipartisan statement of the objective facts? Biden is the rightful winner of the election according to everyone who actually has the authority to determine that's the case. On top of that, the U.S. does not unite with or negotiate with terrorists. The U.S. does not tolerate coup attempts. The U.S. does not abide by sedition and insurrection. This is why people who serve in our government and military take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Congress was literally in the middle of a constitutional duty when domestic enemies sent them into hiding. The storming of the Capitol was literally an attack on the Constitution.

Just because those who did it see themselves as patriots and not seditionists doesn't make it true. Just because they believe they are "saving America" doesn't mean that they actually are. Just because they say they support the Constitution doesn't mean they know what that means. Just because they carry the flag doesn't mean they're actually defending what it stands for.

What we witnessed was a violent mob co-opting the symbols of our nation, mixing them with the language and symbols of white supremacy and those of their dear leader, and attempting to overthrow an entire branch of the federal government. If that's not the most disgusting attack on democracy that we've seen in modern history, I don't know what is. And they are still threatening more violence to keep Trump in power.

When a house is on fire, you don't need to lower the temperature. You need to put out the fire, and you need to do it now.

In the chaos of the attack on the Capitol two days ago, some important stories have gotten a bit buried. One story that's not getting the attention it should—ironically, because journalists usually do everything they can to not make themselves the story—is the violent attacks on the press that took place.

New York Times staff photographer Erin Schaff described her harrowing experience in a Twitter post shared by her colleague Emily Cochrane.

In Schaff's words:

"Grabbing my press pass, they saw that my ID said The New York Times and became really angry. They threw me to the floor, trying to take my cameras. I started screaming for help as loudly as I could. No one came. People just watched. At this point, I thought I could be killed and no one would stop them. They ripped one of my cameras away from me, broke a lens on the other and ran away.


But then the police found me. I told them that I was a photojournalist and that my pass had been stolen, but they didn't believe me. They drew their guns, pointed them and yelled at me to get down on my hands and knees. As I lay on the ground, two other photojournalists came into the hall and started shouting "She's a journalist!"

Another photographer, John Minchillo from the Associated Press, was physically assaulted, with the attack being caught on video. Some in the crowd seemed to think he's part of ANTIFA, despite him clearly and repeatedly pointing out his press credentials. At one point, he is violently thrown over a wall and you can hear someone yelling that they were going to kill him, but he thankfully was escorted away without injury.

The AP, which is known for being one of the least biased, most factual news outlets, had a bunch of their equipment destroyed by the mob, who chanted "CNN sucks" while destroying it. You'd think the big "AP" stickers on some of the equipment would have offered a clue that it was not CNN's, but no one is accusing these folks of being the sharpest pencils in the pack.

Here's another video of media equipment being smashed by people in the crowd to a chilling chorus of "F*ck you!"

And just to add to these disturbing and disgusting attacks, someone scrawled the words "Murder the Media" on a door of the U.S. Capitol. Lovely.

It should be crystal clear to anyone who values democracy that an attack on the free press is never okay. The freedom of the press is enshrined in the first amendment of the Constitution, and since the people who stormed the Capitol building were attempting to put themselves in the place of our duly elected government, their attacks on the press were an attack not just on the individuals and media outlets involved, but on the Constitution itself.

It shouldn't be surprising that people who have been told pretty much daily that the news media is the "enemy of the people" would eventually take that rhetoric seriously. This is exactly what people who criticized the president's extreme language warned would eventually happen.

People can have legitimate criticisms of media companies while still recognizing that the journalists working on the ground are heroes of democracy who put themselves into harm's way to keep us informed about what's happening in the world. These are people who document history as it happens. They are the eyes and ears of the people, and without them we would truly be living in darkness.

Attacks on the free press are attacks on democracy itself and should be called out as such. And the fact that these attacks came not from some outside terrorist group, but from a group of American citizens violently attacking an entire branch of our federal government, should be a huge wake-up call about where we are and the extremist rhetoric that led us here.

Here in the U.S. many of us had our eyes glued to the news yesterday as a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, disrupting a constitutionally-mandated session of Congress and sending lawmakers into hiding. We watched insurrectionists raise a Trump flag on the outside of the building, flinched at the Confederate flag being marched through its hallowed halls, and witnessed the desecration of our democracy in real-time.

It was a huge and horrifying day in our history. Our own citizens attacking our own government, all because the president refuses to accept that he lost an election. In their minds, they are patriots defending democracy from an illegitimate election. In reality, they are terrorists destroying the foundations of what makes America great.

The disconnect between what these people believe and actual reality could not be starker. Years of misinformation and disinformation, bald-faced lie upon bald-faced lie, and conspiracy theory upon conspiracy theory have led to this place. It was predictable. It should have been preventable. But it was still stunning to witness.

As an American, it's a little hard to digest in its entirety. We've been in this weird space of "alternative facts" for years, and have grown accustomed to hearing blatant lies pushed as truth. We've gotten used to being gaslit daily, from the highest office in the land. That constant deluge of falsehood has an effect on our psyches, whether we fall on the side of eating it up like candy or spitting it out like the poison it is.

So seeing what happened at the Capitol through the eyes of another country's media is really something.


British broadcasters were on the ground with the rioters yesterday as they stormed the building, and they captured footage from outside and inside the building that is just surreal. But it's not just the visuals that are striking. To hear a foreign country's media describing an American insurrection really drives home the seriousness of what we all witnessed. To see the domestic attack on our democracy through the eyes of one of our closest allies somehow hits home in a way that seeing it on our news does not.

Watch the incredible coverage from iTV News' Robert Moore:

"America's long journey as a stable democracy appears to be in genuine doubt." Wow, those words. It's a bit like having a friend slap you straight when you've gotten a bit too wrapped up in your own b.s. It also feels a lot like watching news coverage from a country we would criticize for its anti-democratic elections.

What a sobering perspective of where we are as a nation. "Humiliating" seems to barely scratch the surface, knowing this was what the world just watched transpire in our Capitol. "Grave" is another word that comes to mind.

It's going to take time and a herculean effort, but let's all commit to doing our part to repair the fabric of our democracy, restore dignity to the U.S., and regain our standing on the global stage.