$40,000 ain't sh!t outside of Podunk, USA.
I make between 2-3 times what the average person in my industry makes. I receive profit sharing, stock, quarterly bonuses, wage increases, health dental disability and life insurance, sabbaticals vacation sick and holiday time, and a pension and I only work on average 14 days/ month. Do you want to know why? Because the corporation I work for, whose profits are $50+ Billion per year, takes care of their employees. They do this because they are a worldwide industry leader in an industry that is not unionized. Many have attempted to form unions in my industry. Employers such as my own do this to keep unions out and to keep their employees happy, which the current POTUS came to personally to praise their groundbreaking of new construction in the US versus overseas, praise their treatment of their workers through wages and other benefits, and praise what we do for the world.
It really is a slave mentality to put a corporation, such as McDonalds, Burger King, or Yum Brands, aka the plantation, whose profits are multi-billion annually yet cannot provide the simplest forms of employee appreciation such as profit sharing competitive wages and health insurance (to name a few), before your fellow (wo)man.