https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history
GEN-Xer here... I'm gonna try some math, please check it if I messed up.
A few things about this.
Baby Boomers Pay between 1946-1964 Min Wage:
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1946 Min Wage $750 / $0.40 = 1,875 hours needed to work
If working 20 hours per week while at school they earned a whole $8 dollars a week. (Pre-Tax)
so... 1,875 worked hours to pay a semester at 20 hours a week = 93.75 weeks.
With that it takes over 1 year at part time work just to pay for 1 semester and only if all that money went directly to school.
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1964 Min Wage $750 / $1.25 = 600 hours needed to work
If working 20 hours per week while at school they earned a whole $25 dollars a week. (Pre-Tax)
so... 600 worked hours to pay a semester at 20 hours a week = 30 weeks.
Under a year, but most of the year to pay for 1 semester of school.
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I'm also going to make a wild guess, that the post might be confusing a Gen-Xer with a Boomer. With this next one, I'll go with the min wage from 1980, to pay $750 for a semester.
180 Min Wage $750 / $3.30 = 228 hours
If working 20 hours per week while at school they earned a whole $66 dollars a week. (Pre-Tax)
so... 228 worked hours to pay a semester at 20 hours a week = 11 weeks.
This is more in the range of being possible ONLY if other stuff was paid, or they managed to make more then min wage. Then it was possible for them to pay off school BEFORE they graduated.
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Lets do a little more math for the 1980 tail end Gen-Xer.
$750 x 4 semesters per year = $3,000 total per year
$3,000 per year / $66 per week (at 20 hours) = 45 weeks of work.
Unless they were making THIS MUCH a week is the ONLY way they would be able to pay for a year's worth of school, and odds are they may have made more or had somebody else pay for other things, like food, rent, gas, or lived at home with their parents while attending school.
This leads me to believe the person on twitter was talking about a Gen-Xer who maybe had some resources.
It also depends if somebody was in school late in life.
Also remember that one person is an example of somebody who was ABLE to pay for school... others choose to buy houses or raise massive families aka BABY BOOMERS.
Not a ton of people could or were able to that either especially POCs and issues with redlining.
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Final thing with my own issues with paying off my $11,000 that I owed back in 2000, aka 23 years ago.
I had to work 2-3 min wage jobs just to get 20-40 hours a week.
No insurance, lived on my own with rent at $300 on rent, 50$ for phone, $100 for gas, $40 for electric $100 for food and $75 MIN payment a month.
I had $665 in bills per month.... unless something happened like mt car breaking down. I couldn't live with parents either, wasn't an option.
I made 6.25 an hour and on the BEST WEEKS if there were hours open I could get MAYBE 30 hours, working all 7 days in a week between 2-3 jobs.
$6.25 x 30hrs = 187.5 per week x 4 weeks = $750 a month
$665 - $750 = $85 (in my account at the end of the month)
$6.25 x 40hrs (very rare) = 250 per week x 4 weeks = $1000 a month
$665 - $1000 = $335 (This only happened in one or two months per year for 3 years)
It wasn't till i got my first job at FILA making a whole $29,000 in 2003 that I was able to keep $1000 in my account a month to be able to buy a car, that I then added $250 a month to pay for my car, but also added another $400 a month because of gas being $3.50 - $4.80 at it's height when going to work.
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https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history
Pretty much don't shit on people when you don't know their own struggle or what they actually made an hour.
It took me into my 30's before I had enough money to pay off my whole school loan and my car at the same time... and that was only because by 2013 I was able to make $52,000 a month, while having to move to BOSTON, and then having to pay $1400 a month in rent.
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I mean if I'm wrong I'm wrong, but people think my school was CHEAP... but not by my pay scale when I was an older teen, young adult.
Plus... the only reason my schooling was 11,000 was because 7K was knocked off based on "need" cause my mom supported 3 kids on 14K a year in 1998-2000.
The only reason I had some of the money I had was because my high school teachers pulled together 750 dollars and I bought a 13 year old car to drive 80 miles per day to school and work (gas was 1.09), and it ended up dying anyways.
It broken down on my way to school and I ended up being covered in radiator fluid, walked two miles with my art supplies and smelled like it till the day was done.
Then had to drop out the semester, because I needed to buy another car to be able to get to school, and stripped the parts off the first car to rebuild the second car, during that missing semester, and take ALL my classes over again.
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Also I know...
TOO LONG DIDN'T READ.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history