It's bad but where do you get that number? I think it's more like $1 a day or perhaps $2 a day, which is bad for people in developed countries but not as bad as you think for people in developing countries. You can make some posts on Steem and in theory do okay if you're in certain parts of the world.
That said, the problem is vote buying and selling, and the fact that quality content gets the same $1-2 as a low quality content. There is no incentive for content quality to improve over time.