I don't see how that is possible when I have been told that $100,000 is just middle class in NYC because it is so expensive to live there. And yet 50% of retail workers are living there on less than $19,000 a year.

Hmmm.

Must be less than 5% of New York Citians working in retail or something.

Oh, and add in the additional skew for the handfuls of 1%

take the set of numbers 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9,982.

The median of those numbers is 5, with half above and half below. The average is 2,000 or (3+4+5+6+9,982)/5

Although with larger sets it is harder to skew. If you have 9,999 at ten and one at a 100,000 the average is 20. The one outlier, although much, much larger than the rest, does not pull the average up that much. Whereas with 99 at ten and one at 10,000 the average is 110.

New York City, with perhaps 3 million households will not be skewed that much by a few billionaires even with an average, and a median is not skewed at all.

Because in NYC that's the only way to get by with retail wages, obviously... so 4 to a 2-bedroom is the new standard... but only until the retail conglomerates manage to hike profits while keeping wages stagnant for another few years, while landlords and other retailers continue to raise prices... resulting in yet lower real-wages for retail employees and the requirement that they live 3 or 4 to a room... 5 to a studio... 17 to a 2-bedroom... and on and on...

You can do studies on the mathematics of medians and averages and such-like all you like... but an actual analysis of the sorts of things that are done-without is a far more telling topic of research— assuming a research team can get enough trust and access for a reasonable sample for analysis. (Most likely, many of those polled about things they are "doing without" will be confused by a thing or three they are asked about... because the things that a middle-class interviewer is liable to ask about are liable to be things that a worker won't even be familiar with... like health insurance, or vacation pay... things that might as well be words in French... the words of the upper classes which ordinary folk just don't get. )

Health Insurance? Yeah, it'll cover some of the costs if I break a bone. Cleanly. I think I might get a deduction or discount on some medications too. They won't tell me which, but I'm sure it'll come up soon... at an employee meeting... soon... or later...

These wages qualify one for medicaid. As long as you don't live with a spouse who makes too much, I suppose.

Connect the minimum wage to inflation and tax the stock market that fuels the exploitation. I favor a two pronged attack on vampire capital.

I should also point out:

2014
Impose a $2,000 per employee tax penalty on employers with more than 50 employees who do not offer health insurance to their full-time workers (as amended by the reconciliation bill).[74]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act

Hehe... even the tax penalty over insurance is a F*ing joke... my employer acquired an exception to having to provide "minimum" requirements, because, it was apparently argued that actually being forced to provide the legal minimum requirements regarding wages owed was just one of those things...

Same as the Social Security COLA.