- The average American has $90,460 in debt
- 63% of the workers are unable to pay a $500 emergency expense
- 48% of the population is using credit for essential living expenses
Putting all this together indicates that majority of workers are actually being paid less than the living wage now. This was precisely the problem that Marx identified in the first volume of Das Kapital
note: the median American is “only” 59.8k$ in debt, which while lower than the 90.5k$ figure given in the post, is still larger than the median yearly wage (59k$)
Yeah, it’s a bit less bad for the median, but still unsustainable.