It has been interesting. One angle I didn't touch on the complicates the problem is that minimum wage is almost three times what it was when I first started writing, and you have to earn a heck of a lot more money now just to survive, but magazine pay rates really haven't increased at all in thirty years.
Even with minimum wage at $7.25, you'd have to live like a monk, and almost certainly be on food stamps, to survive with such little income.
I'm out of touch on the numbers, but I think average income now is somewhere around $32,000, and I'm not sure it's really possible to survive all on your own, with no help from the government, parents, or someone, with less than $20,000 or so.
It's tough enough earning this kind of money from novels, articles, etc., especially after an agent takes 15%, and Social Security takes another 15%, and then this tax and that tax eats even more. I'm lucky if I can keep half of what I earn, and this makes it all that much tougher.
I read somewhere that the last writer to actually earn a real living, meaning meeting at least average income, strictly from writing short stories was Paul Darcy Boles, a writer most have never heard of. Ray Bradbury wasn't counted, but only because he's made so much money from screenplays, TV scripts, etc.
It's just hard enough earning a living right now, no matter what you do, let alone from writing short stories.
