Is 20 dollars an hour enough to live comfortably on in america?

>MUH VOTING CHANGES EVERYTHING
kill yourself retard

federal tax at 42k income is roughly an 8% effective tax rate. your marginal rate will be 12% if single.
effective state tax rates will be 4% or lower generally on that income as well. i'm in a relatively high tax state and my effective rate is below 4% on over double that income.
i don't think this changes your overall point that everyone's got their hand in your pocket and shit's messed up, but you're shooting way high on fed and state taxes.

high quality reply. voting can never actually fix very much, but elected officials can for sure make things incrementally worse. user didn't suggest voting fixes stuff, just that shitty candidates can make things worse.

it unironically does, the idea that you can't vote for a politician who will enact different policies is midwit garbage.

Depend son were you live. If you live in 3rrd world America like California and a re white, you will need at least 40 dollars an hour just to pay rent on your coffin apartment.

to be really specific, 42k income in my state nets you an effective overall tax rate of 19% today - fed, FICA, and state combined. that's with no pre-tax savings or deductions.
that is still high for someone who doesn't make good money, i think it ought to be lower, but that's the facts for where i live.

if you have a more optimistic view of our voting base, that's fine.
my view is simply that it's more likely that we will continue vote in some retard who won't do anything, or will make things incrementally worse, than to convince the masses to vote for an outsider who would bring real positive change. yes i agree it's very possible logically, just that people are easily manipulated into not doing that.
i follow my own ethos regarding voting, i just don't expect the lowest common denominator voter to exercise the same discretion.

This is obviously bait but....
you do know about the standard deduction user, right? And tax brackets? And that very few states even go up to an income tax rate of 8% to begin with?
You Any Forumslacks are fucking retarded and not fit to be on Any Forums. Rule number 1 of business is how to pay as little taxes as possible retard

You've more than halved the % he started with. He was absolutely pulling shit out his ass user.

Fuck bro if you know of a 20$ an hour job plez tell me im so tired

ye i make 20 an hour and save about 75% of my income

Major changes and reforms happening through voting is common in american history though.
>people are sick of slavery so they vote for republicans who end slavery
>great depression happens and people vote for soc dems who implement the new deal, creating a welfare state and heavy financial regulations
>high inflation and economic stagnation of the 70s happens so people vote for neocons and neolibs who undo some of the new deal and move towards globalism

Huh? I'm not baiting, you can look all this up

FICA: smartasset.com/taxes/all-about-the-fica-tax
Avg State and city tax: turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/fun-facts/states-with-the-highest-and-lowest-taxes/L6HPAVqSF

You don't see 8.25% on there because you have to include city/local tax too. Just do some research, you will see state taxes are around 5% on average and city/local can be 1%-5%. I didn't even include sales & property tax bitch.

Your effective fed tax is lower than my 20%. The real fed effective tax rate is 11.33% for 41,800 including the standard deduction. source: turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/calculators/taxcaster/

Idk why you fucks can't see we are being taxed out the ass but they make all this shit hard to find and nickle/dime us constantly.

I make 44 an hour and barely get by, albeit I do live comfortably.

I lived in Maryland and I made $20 an hour. I paid 5% on state and 3.25% for local/county tax. You will see averages all over the country are similar. You must live in a progressive tax state. Maryland only excludes income for the first $3,000, then you get raped at 5% for every dollar you make afterward.