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Iowa | Family health insurance plans even through an employer usually cost upwards of $500 per month for the employee's contribution.
There are very few jobs that have any sort of defined benefit pension anymore, and the 401k in most cases amounts to a dollar match up to 3% of salary.
So the poor sod making $35-50k per year for his 50 weeks of work gets $6000 taken out of his check for health insurance, and a whopping $1000-1500 (which he must match with his own money) each year from his employer to fund his retirement. That's not going to fund much of a retirement.
Yeah he gets a couple weeks off, but the rest of the year he is at work every day 8-5 or longer. It's not like farmers don't take time off too. Farmers have far more flexibility in their schedules than most wage earners, and they sometimes forget that mowing the lawn, moving snow, working on the house, etc. that oftentimes gets done during a farmer's "workday" all has to be done after work or on weekends by the clock punching general public.
Oh and the town guy's pickup and the gas, insurance, etc. is not tax deductible so that all costs more when you figure it's paid for with after-tax income. A lot of people don't even have enough deductions to itemize on their return, so most of their paycheck is fully taxable.
Don't get me wrong, most farmers are hard workers and deserve everything they have. But there are far too many posts on here by people who've never worked outside of the farm that think everyone in town has a 9:00-5:00 $100k per year job (which is pretty much a fairy tale) when that is far from the standard for most people. | |
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Agriculture's image problem
