"earn subsistence" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use it to refer to the action of making enough money to support yourself, as in the following example sentence: "I am trying to find a job that will allow me to earn subsistence."
The settler is guaranteed supplementary employment to earn subsistence income pending maturity of the plants, and cultivation is guided by experts.
Often perceived as petty street musicians, who perform to earn subsistence living, their talent remains hidden, without avenues to become fulltime professionals.
I have a wish – that all children are given the opportunity to survive and grow in harmonious families and communities, that they are taught how to earn subsistence from honest jobs and that they can live in a peaceful environment".
Those left working with the cattle earned subsistence wages but were able to keep their link to the land.
Capitalists, however, could force workers to spend more time on the job than was necessary to earn their subsistence and then appropriate the excess product, or surplus value, created by the workers.
He was killed while trying to earn a subsistence living, if that, near the epicenter of runaway inequality.
Their inflexible conclusion that wages would always be driven down earned the subsistence theory the name "iron law of wages".
"He has done this more than once," says Lalitha Raju Singh, a mother-of-three who earns a subsistence wage cutting vegetables at a roadside stall.
I was born into a working-class family in Hackney: my mother was a housewife and my father earned a subsistence wage as a packer in a Stepney warehouse.
Marx speculated, however, that the owner of capital could force the worker to spend more time on the job than was necessary for earning this subsistence income, and the excess product or surplus value thus created would be claimed by the owner.
Group-I comprised of the poorest section of people who earned only subsistence income.
