There are people in New York City to appear to live a basic existence on a few dollars a month. They don't seem very happy, though.
Where I live (NYC) it depends on a lot of factors, such as whether or not you qualify for government assistance, which can provide money for food and discounted costs for rent. You might be able to live with "the basics" (including phone service and a TV, but not cable or internet) for perhaps under $20,000 a year. It is also not likely to be a happy existence, since it means living in areas that are run-down, dirty, and dangerous and surrounded by people who are depressed and anxious over their plight. I would consider my childhood to be pretty happy, but that may just be my own optimistic outlook getting in the way. I saw some pretty bad things growing up.
For a time my mother and I lived off of my minimum-wage jobs just after high school in the late 80s/early 90s. There were a few years there where we lived on around $11-13k a year. This was in the projects, which weren't quite as bad as the tenements we'd moved from in '79. Based on inflation I assume the costs would be about 3x today, though the minimum wage hasn't increased threefold (it was $4.50 back then).
Where I live (NYC) it depends on a lot of factors, such as whether or not you qualify for government assistance, which can provide money for food and discounted costs for rent. You might be able to live with "the basics" (including phone service and a TV, but not cable or internet) for perhaps under $20,000 a year. It is also not likely to be a happy existence, since it means living in areas that are run-down, dirty, and dangerous and surrounded by people who are depressed and anxious over their plight. I would consider my childhood to be pretty happy, but that may just be my own optimistic outlook getting in the way. I saw some pretty bad things growing up.
For a time my mother and I lived off of my minimum-wage jobs just after high school in the late 80s/early 90s. There were a few years there where we lived on around $11-13k a year. This was in the projects, which weren't quite as bad as the tenements we'd moved from in '79. Based on inflation I assume the costs would be about 3x today, though the minimum wage hasn't increased threefold (it was $4.50 back then).
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
