What will 1 hour of work at minimum wage buy in your country?

In a different thread I posted this:

This is an example of someone working 40 hours a week on minimum wage:

Minimum wage is £6.50 per hour, 40 hours = £260 before deductions.
Income Tax = £11.23
National Insurance = £12.60 (Contributions for welfare benefits & State pension)
Take home pay = £236.17
So total tax/deductions equates to 3.66 hours of the weeks work.

Then it got me thinking, what will an hours work at minimum wage allow you to buy in your country.
I'm going on cheapest prices local to me and rounding down, but here goes:

2 pints of beer at my local pub
2 bottles of wine at supermarket
78% of a pack of 20 cigarettes (15 cigarettes)
13 loaves of nasty white bread
5.4 litres of petrol
6 and a half McD's cheapest cheeseburgers
500 minutes & 1000 sms/texts, for a month, on prepay mobile phone
18 and a half 400g tins of cat food
13 pints (568ml cartons) of milk
1 whole chicken (large) ready to cook
Electricity for my home for a week, works out £6 - £7 maximum, that's me and my teenage son.
Just over 2 days of gas for my home (heating/hot water/cooking)

...and as for apples and oranges:
21 'Granny Smith' green apples
32 large oranges

That's the best start I could think of for things I imagine are available to most of us, so how is it where you are ATS?
What will an hours work on minimum wage buy for you?

Yeah, pretty much the same in my count.... Oh hang on!!

That's an interesting way of looking at minimum wage, but even a hourly liveable wage rate, wouldn't get you much more.

a reply to: grainofsand

$16.87 Australian dollars worth of awesome juicy gummy bears, or 3 long necks (700ml king browns) of full strength beer and a packet of chips, or 8 cheeseburgers.

a reply to: Cobaltic1978

Haha, I know, I took my prices from Tesco's (and Wilkinsons for the cat food, she's happy with the 35 pence tins), so I imagine it's the same for all of us in the UK.
The 'living wage' is a strange one though because when we look at housing costs that varies wildly across our country.

...I'm self employed (general building/plastering) and I've worked for below minimum wage a few times when I've messed up my estimate of time/materials for a job, lol, my own stupid fault though.

a reply to: Sublimecraft

I'm jealous of your beer prices, that would be 3 and a half pints at my local, but I'd have to buy 4 as only women buy half pints.
...just joking, before I get called misogynistic or something!

a reply to: grainofsand

Oh the joys of self employment.

You are spot on with the housing costs, I live in Bristol and the rents here have increased significantly over the last couple of years. So much so, that it would be less costly to have a mortgage, but we know how difficult it can be to get a mortgage nowadays.

I feel for the youngsters who work 40+ hours a week and still cannot afford a place of their own, either renting or buying. And of course local authority housing is almost zero here as most of the decent council houses have been snapped up through the 'Right to buy' scheme, with no replacement housing being built.

Well going by the 'casual' minimum of $21.50AU (about 11 pound $17US) I could get.

-One 30 pack of smokes.
-4 long necks of beer.
-A family sized pizza & garlic bread delivered to my house (a quality one, not the pizza hut junk)
-2 Grand Angus burgers from Mcdonalds (awesome quality burgers, imo), with $5.50 left over.
-21 litres of milk.
-5 loaves of decent quality whole grain bread.
- 2 kilos of decent quality bacon

a reply to: grainofsand

In America. I think minimum wage for my state is $7.50

That's

Cigarettes would be around 1.5 packs (30)
3 yucky 40Oz beers 6%.. about 1200ml X 3
if mcdonalds still has dollar menu it's about 7 cheese burgers.
or 1 lb of lunch deli meat OR cheese.
2 gallons of gas.. about 7.6 liters
1.5 gallons of milk..
1 lb of hamburger and a pack of buns.
Little cesars pick up pizza..


Off the top, but should be close

a reply to: Cobaltic1978

Housing really is the harsh one for most folk.
My son is starting full-time work again, lifeguarding at a local pool for the Summer between college.
He thought he would like to get his own place for a few months and then we did the maths.

His take home pay each week is £236 so let's look at the costs:

£100 Rent for the roughest 1 bed flat each week
£7 Electric
£20 Gas
£10 Water
£15 Council tax

That leaves him £84 per week to buy petrol, food, clothes, blah.

He changed his mind then and decided that throwing me £25 a week wasn't so bad lol

Interresting exercise...

From sunny South Africa, the land with the laughing president: Different jobs have different minimum wages.. Lets work with the R13.50 figure - $1.10/hour (Ranges from R9.50 - R15.40)

This buys you:

1 Liter Petrol
8-12 kWh electricity (depending on the time of month)
8 cigarettes
1 Quart of beer from liquor store, not enough for a 340ml beer at the pub..
1 loaf white bread
1 liter milk
500ml Coke
A junior chicken burger from McD
About 4 minutes talk time on mobile
1.25 kg of mieliepap (Crushed maize, staple food)

Geez, it sounds bad thinking of it this way...

Its a ludicrous way of looking at it.

First, on the monthly wage, take out rent for a suitable place that, if you have a dependent, won't result in the government removing your dependent due to unfit living conditions.

Then add utilities, same deal, dependents would be removed if unfit living conditions.

Then add phone for emergency and work.

What is left for food, if any. Then try to see how many cans of catfood is left for the month.

Your hour of work is already in a huge deficit.

I suggest at minimum wage, you have just barely covered rent and utilities. No food.

a reply to: Subaeruginosa
Wow, Australia seems to be the place to live on minimum wage so far!

a reply to: KnightLight
You seem to be the same with cigarettes as Australia, massive tax on them here in the UK, 1 hours work in your state and Australia seems to buy double the amount of smokes an hours work will here.
I'm not sure if it is a good thing or not, but I smoke so I would say I'm jealous but I buy mine imported from Eastern Europe 'tax exempt' from a guy at the pub, half price compared to shops.

a reply to: Unity_99

I do it the other way.. I buy food first. then pay bills late or make money appear somehow.
Going hungry for an entire week with only salt and pepper in your house will do that to you.

@grainofsand yea not bad here for that, and all in all I feel like I'm coming off not so bad. I quit smoking some time ago though.


But here's the thing..
RENT...
makes it Impossible.
They don't have places cheap enough.
so you just find 2 couples and all live in a 2 bedroom. Works if you are all college friends.

a reply to: PadawanGandalf

Wow, that seems a challenge being on minimum wage in SA.
Perhaps your housing costs are a lot lower so that mitigates it a little?
One hours work buys just a junior chicken burger from McD's?!
I wonder if McD employees earn more than minimum wage.

originally posted by: Unity_99
Its a ludicrous way of looking at it.

Oh, I'm sorry.
It was just for an interesting comparison, pity you didn't share the prices in your area.
I didn't include housing costs as they vary so wildly everywhere.

originally posted by: KnightLight
But here's the thing..
RENT...
makes it Impossible.

That seems to be the common theme for all of us so far.
Oh, and I didn't realise you have different minimum wage levels depending on the state.
That makes it even more interesting to me now I think more about it.

As grain of sand has already does some good English ones I will say that after I just worked it out and minimum wage would pay the rent on my house for exactly six and a half hours.

a reply to: nonspecific

Ooh that's another interesting way to look at it.
My tiny little house would be about £600 per month to rent out, £138 per week.
So, 24 hours a day times 7 = 168 hours
£138 divided by 168 hours = £0.82 per hour

£6.50 (hour at minimum wage) buys me 7.9 hours of a roof over my head.

Cheers NS, good to see you back

*Edit*
Just thought of another, annual car insurance for my son, when/if he passes his driving test next month, will be around £2000 for the smallest 1 litre engine car you can buy. Quick maths, one hours work at minimum wage will buy him 28 hours of auto insurance.

a reply to: grainofsand

Federal minimum wage in this country has been $7.25 per hour since 2009, so not much. A pack of smokes maybe, a few cheap, nasty fast food items. A few bottles of water or soda, a day pass for the bus...anything small and cheap. About the only really decent thing would be fresh produce...that could buy a few apples or oranges at the grocery store, depending on which store you go to. Pretty pathetic indeed.

a reply to: grainofsand

I live in the U.S. (Seattle) and for me where I shop for groceries; $15.00 would buy me 2 days worth of food.