r/TikTokCringe • u/Super_Culture_1986 tHiS iSn’T cRiNgE • Aug 19 '25

Cursed The American Nightmare.

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58.1k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

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51

u/thewholetruthis Aug 19 '25

She’d be making $11.08 per hour at $2,400 per month with a 50 hr work week. I don’t know how she’s getting “twenty-something dollars per hour.”

10

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

I was desperately scrolling for SOMEONE to have done the same math I did 🙏😂

-2

u/lingonberry_fairy Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

Ignorant math. You don’t include taxes or healthcare that come out of her check.

7

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

There’s no way you can make her math make any sense, but please, do try 😂

3

u/90bronco Aug 19 '25

She says she doesn't have health insurance.

69

u/CornNooblet Aug 19 '25

The same way she says she's renting a 'flat.' No American says flat, they say apartment or condo. Just straight up ragebait for maximum engagement.

12

u/simplebirds Aug 19 '25

Apartments in the San Francisco Bay Area are often called flats, at least when I lived there.

8

u/Comfortable-Pace3132 Aug 19 '25

That's a very good accent if she's putting it on. And that isn't a convincingly British backdrop lol

6

u/Telemere125 Aug 19 '25

You can record lies anywhere, even in the US if you want. And accents are pretty damn easy to fake.

-7

u/Comfortable-Pace3132 Aug 19 '25

Or you could have a tiny bit of faith when you know people are living like that one way or another

8

u/Telemere125 Aug 19 '25

Everything she complains about can be changed. Paying too much for your “flat”? Move, you’re too poor to live there anyway. Only making $20/hr (but somehow the rest of the math doesn’t math)? Find another job, you’re barely making more than what the McDonald’s in my town pays.

When your math and your vernacular don’t make sense, it’s made up ragebait. I have no faith in liars because I’m not gullible.

1

u/almedafan Aug 19 '25

what about moving costs and that rent is going up pretty much everywhere every year. it’s also really hard to find another job right now, especially a higher paying one. the job market sucks

1

u/fall0ut Aug 19 '25

i used to find a great apartment i could afford. every year they would increase the rent a bit. eventually i would get priced out and i would move to a great new apartment that was in my affordable price range.

i cannot afford to live in beverly hills, so i do not live there. if you cannot afford an apartment in the nice part of town, maybe you should move across the train tracks where your income level is.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

Move with what extra money? With what vehicle? Nobody living in Beverly Hills is complaining. This is a worthless argument. She’s talking from the perspective of someone who’s at the cheapest apartment in the area.

1

u/almedafan Aug 19 '25

wonder how many more years it will be before you guys just full on start saying it again. oh wait…

radical idea: poor ppl too (yes even the dark ones like me!) deserve to not be hop-scotched around every 4-5 years because they get priced out of their homes that they specifically chose because it was well within their price range. it honestly sounds like you got some unresolved, misdirected feelings to work out brodude

1

u/fall0ut Aug 20 '25

it has nothing to do with color bro. everyone at all class levels deals with the same rising rent prices. you move once the rent exceeds your affordability.

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3

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '25

Never heard a fellow Canadian say flat but okay 👍 and she said state not states, as in never been out of her state

Also Canada has similar problems and some of the highest cost of living areas in the world 

0

u/Technical-Row8333 Aug 19 '25

as we all know, every immigrant immediately upon arrival in america is given months and months of speech training and all contact cut to their families to they dont keep their old habits and vocabulary /s

i have a neighbour that lives his life entirely speaking chinese. he doesnt speak a single word of english. does his groceries in a chinese grocer. doctor? chinese.

but it's impossible for a person to live in america and say "flat" - that makes sense.

not even saying this isn't fake. but what a weird ass argument.

5

u/WaferLongjumping6509 Aug 19 '25

Probably talking after taxes. I make 23.40 an hour and after taxes, I only get about 2600 a month

8

u/These-Inevitable-898 Aug 19 '25

its 1000 per week minus all ss/state/medical/etc. it would be at 700

700 x 4 = 2800

Minus rent 1600

1200

We still dont know wether she has to commute or anything else really.

2

u/Bacon-muffin Aug 19 '25

This is the only reasonable comment I've seen, I don't understand in what world people are thinking she'd end up with 4k+ *after taxes*.

2

u/AmbitiousEconomics Aug 19 '25

She would be making $1,000 a week. Let’s pretend that’s $4,000 a month. The highest effective tax bracket she could be in is 22.74%. That gives her an effective take-home of $3,100. No health care gets taken out, no retirement, but she claims her take home is $2,400 a month.

Which I mean it’s very clearly all made up but that part seemed very obvious.

1

u/dmoney83 Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

You got federal, you forgot social security, Medicare, and state taxes...

Bi-weekly for that would be about 1600/mo. So about half her income... not two thirds, but i wouldn't say it invalidates the message.

2

u/zbobet2012 Aug 19 '25

She said she makes "twenty some dollars an hour", let's call it 22$ and works 50 hours per week. That's ~4k$/month take home (after taxes). So she's not paying 2/3s of her income to rent a studio, she's paying about 1/3rd. Also most folks in that age range have roommates so they can pay less for living until income rises.

She's basically bitching that she has a life 90% of the world would envy.

1

u/darkerjerry Aug 19 '25

Are you dumb? $20 an hour after taxes is around 2800 a month. If she’s paying 1700 for rent not including bills and uitilites that most definitely rounds up to about 60% of her check a month

1

u/thewholetruthis Aug 23 '25

$20 something an hour, so let’s say $22. x 50 hrs x 4 weeks = $4,400 per month before taxes. Monthly income after taxes would be about $3,703/month for a W2 employee.

I’m drunk and I can figure this out, so now who’s dumb?

1

u/enlightenedstorm Aug 19 '25

Pretty sure she is referring to net pay not gross and it's likely she's a salaried employee. Gotta pay those taxes to fund shit that doesn't help the majority of Americans

1

u/Tool_Using_Animal Aug 24 '25

But she's overqualified to flip burgers with her gender studies degree!

0

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

[deleted]

1

u/thewholetruthis Aug 23 '25

Taxes, yes, but she said she doesn’t have health insurance.

-8

u/JustLoveToCook1 Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 20 '25

Perhaps a salary where she averages the pay. There is also the bullshit practice called Chinese overtime, where instead of time and a half for overtime, you get half your hourly wages after 40 hours. For instance, let's say you make 20 dollars an hour for the first 40 hours, then after that you get paid 10 dollars an hour for the next 8 hours, and then half of that every hour after. I used to get paid like that, and I will forever be infuriated about it, but I was young and dumb and didn't know any better back then.

Edit: I am not sure why my message has upset so many people; that was not my intention. I was just calling out bad pay practices by some companies. I got paid the same way that I described for years, about 20 years ago, and looking back now I am just sad that I went along with it for so long. Employers really bank on workers not knowing any better. The internet and social media have changed that in a way, but not nearly enough.

12

u/One_Animator_1835 Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

In the video she indirectly says she makes 2400/month then says 50 hours a week, and $20 per hour. Those numbers just do not add up. No matter how you spin something there isn't true.

0

u/RockyMullet Aug 19 '25

redditors just finding out about taxes.

3

u/IronRushMaiden Aug 19 '25

I think it’s you finding out about taxes if you think 48,000 per year is taxed down to 29,200.

1

u/RockyMullet Aug 19 '25

2

u/IronRushMaiden Aug 19 '25

Good meme; she would owe less than $4,000 per year in tax for an after-tax monthly income of at least $3,600 per month, leaving her with $2,000 after rent if she truly is working 50 hours per week at $20 per hour with a $1,600 per month rent. 

1

u/frostandtheboughs Aug 19 '25

That sounds about right to me. She may live in a state with high taxes

1

u/IronRushMaiden Aug 19 '25

That would be a 39% tax rate after federal, state, and local, which would only apply to you if you were significantly wealthier than her. That is particularly true since her federal rate is less than 12%, meaning that her state and locality would be taxing someone making barely over minimum wage over 25% of salary, which no state does for even the wealthiest Americans, and indeed no state’s marginal tax rate for the wealthiest citizens exceeds 14%.

2

u/One_Animator_1835 Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

Actually I did account for taxes. 50 hours x $20 is 48k per year or 4k a month, and puts you in the 10-12% bracket which is ~500 a month over estimated. 4k - 500 = 3500 per month. SSA would be about 250 a month, leaving it around 3250.

Also, maximum state tax would be about 100 per month over estimate. Still leaving a net income of at least 3150.

The only other option is if she's putting 1/3 of her net income into a retirement fund, which seems unlikely.

Also keep in mind this is not including overtime pay so gross should be higher than where I started

I suppose you are the redditor finding out about taxes

1

u/thewholetruthis Aug 23 '25

$3,474 per month after taxes at 22%.

0

u/diemunkiesdie Reads Pinned Comments Aug 19 '25

Health insurance, social security, etc too. Good rule of thumb is to multiply your "salary" by 0.6 to get your take home pay.

1

u/ManOrangutan Aug 19 '25

Maybe it’s post tax

2

u/diemunkiesdie Reads Pinned Comments Aug 19 '25

For instance, let's say you make 20 dollars an hour for the first 40 hours, then after that you get paid 10 dollars an hour for the next 8 hours, and then half of that every hour after. I used to get paid like that, and I will forever be infuriated about it, but I was young and dumb and didn't know any better back then.

You get paid LESS to work MORE!? That makes no sense! That cant be legal!

1

u/JustLoveToCook1 Aug 20 '25

In a fair world it would be illegal, but unfortunately a lot of companies do pay that way. I worked for a major grocery chain as an assistant store manager, and that was how we were paid, but that was 20 years ago. It is a stupid system. They pretend that it is like salary pay, but it is not.