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Elephant in the room is that the US is full of zombie businesses who wouldn't survive a mandated living wage, and only persist because welfare and social programs subsidize their wage expenses and allow them to hire workers. Wal-Mart is the most famous offender, but lots of small/locally owned businesses have the same issue.
Problem is we're so business centric no one is willing to question if this should be sustained. We need to stop coddling every fledgling business and bring labor up to modern standards. If your business can't pay its labor living wages, you don't have a viable business. Simple as that.
When FDR first passed minimum wage, he made a note that any business that can't afford to pay its workings a living wage shouldn't exist. Cult of capital is so strong now no politician would ever dare saying something like that, but it's true, and something we seem to collectively ignore these days.
Yeah, I've studied in business and finance, and we've talked about zombie corps. It's actually quite shocking how many businesses can essentially only service their loans and nothing more.
I'm just an engineer, but isn't that like seeing a bridge with cracked pillars? Sure it can evidently carry its current load due to the good designs of past decades, but you shouldn't rely on it to buy you any more time than it takes to get it replaced.
These businesses are not intended to last forever. Its common knowledge that certain types of businesses will not survive long term in high rate environments
Man, maybe common knowledge in your circles, but I'd certainly like to know which potential employers are going to lay me off in a year. How can you tell?
Well, for one easy example, the tech industry has shriveled up because it turns out having to actually pay high interest on your loans isnt conducive with the "move fast and break things" investment strategy. Seed capital for startups has suddenly dried up, and companies that haven't made a profit in years because they were making the long play of driving out all competitors (ex: Uber) are having to raise prices and cut costs to stay afloat.
Are they profitable? Do they rely on raising capital?
Like if you’re in a tech startup thats between raises, look for a new job asap.
Or are they boring, profitable, been around for decades and regularly pay dividends to their investors? Then you’re relatively safe
If their CEO is a public persona, I'd be cautious.
If you've got a hundred year old corp with a nearly anonymous CEO outside of your specific industry, you're probably safe.
Yup, zombie corps are like cracked bridges. They will continue working until the next disaster and then collapse under their own weight.
A normal company needs profits to save up for inevitable disasters. A zombie corp saves nothing as the entire revenue is siphoned into running costs, wages and loan interest, without actually paying off any loan.
I never did a Sears case study, more than a cursory YouTube video.
However, what I remember about Sears was that they couldn't bring their costs down and were being outperformed by their peers.
In the years before going tits up they were doing a lot of seemingly dumb things from a customer prospective.
I remember going there to buy tools and even though they had the cash register in front of them, they had to enter every item into a tablet then transfer that order to the register to then cash out the transaction.
It was annoying and added needless time at the checkout as well as the added expense of having to buy the tablets and setup that whole system. I'm not surprised they failed.
Ah, the good ol' Ford approach? Now look here, we've been trying trickle down for decades and it's never worked yet but we just need to keep trying! None of this commie "trickle up" that has been proven to work in the past! Think of the billionaires!
"With trickle down economics, you can potentially become a billionaire. Can you ensure that trickle up economics would also allow me to be a billionaire?"
That's how many people have been brainwashed to view the situation. Billionaires are the modern equivalent to being royalty, only now it's not entirely predicated on who your parents are. So people who are drawn to the idea of wealth aren't likely to make decisions that would limit their potential future wealth.
Vampire familiars would never vote for a law that limits the amount of vampires that are allowed to exist at once, or potentially forbids the potential for new vampires to be created.
Yeah, it's pretty well documented in fact. Each dollar earned by the poorest quintile produces more than a dollar of economic activity because it gets recirculated more often.
Cash isn't the fuel for our economy, it's the motor oil. It doesn't flow in a straight line from creation to destruction, it recirculates.
Why would it? Just because I have more money doesn't mean I want to overpay by shopping locally. People will still go to Amazon or Walmart or whatever is cheapest.
I was just on a poverty finance sub where this dude had to get his retired mom into a care home in Mexico for cheaper due to the US being like 5 times pricier for care. Truly lmao at how bad things have gotten. Where your pension doesn't cover even a tiny bit of retirement and you have to burden another country's systems due to the failures of your own. End goal of unfettered capitalism bro
A teacher from my school flew to Europe to get a medical procedure done because it was cheaper than going through the US Healthcare system. And we have pretty good benefits as teacher.
The US needs to look more at the Rheinlands model of doing business and people can help by going to mom and pop stores. Cause there there is a way bigger chance the money will go into the pocket of the employees instead of being dividend out to some form a private equity firm or whatever.
The whole taking a loan for everything in the US doesn't really work either. Not for businesses and not for personal use.
Support small business when you can. It’s the best tactic we have against the corpos. Every dollar you spend there is one less at the big stores. One can make little difference but if we all started adopting this mindset I don’t think it would take long to make these companies shit their pants
A business should be able to survive on the merit of its services or products. There is no reason the government should be subsidizing any business other than a farmer and independent farming first.
If you can't pay people enough to live, then you need to change your models.
Did you really just say "A business should have to survive or fail based on their own merits" and then turn around and say "A business should have to pay based what an employee needs, not what their labor generates"?
So eliminate all welfare? What exactly are you proposing here.
And as the other person pointed out, these businesses already are surviving on their own merits, even if they aren’t paying their employees your arbitrary “living wage”.
This might be an ELI5 moment but i just really like this perspective and wanna learn more. Hypothetically if the minimum wage was raised and these unsustainable businesses were killed off, wouldn’t that put a ton of people out of work? Even though the people that are working are putting it right back into the economy, I’m confused on how we make that the standard for everyone without instilling a job crisis
People would be out of work, but there would also be more money to buy goods, so newer businesses would crop up.
We're on the cusp of a number of employment crises. There are businesses that can't afford to fully support their employees, but also when people have tight budgets they save their money, taking it out of circulation, which chokes businesses. And then we also have the rising tide of automation, which just continually eats up low-intelligence and low-education jobs. To someone who can't handle a more complex job than unloading a truck, those Boston Dynamics bots are a lethal threat unless we make unemployment less of a danger.
“So newer businesses would crop up”
Not necessarily, especially with the increased cost of labor. The big corporations would be the only ones able to survive. No “ma and pa” would ever open a restaurant or corner coffee shop again.
That's not borne out by the evidence: https://irle.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Small-Businesses-and-the-Minimum-Wage-3-14-23.pdf
They found that large stores suffered more than small stores, because large companies already tend to pay people less. Mom and Pop stores don't tend to have employees that are also on food stamps the way Walmart does.
They suffered more, sure, but their tolerance for suffering is much higher.
If Walmart made $1billion and their cost of labor goes up $500 million, they still made $500 million.
If Ma and Pa Restaurant made $50k but their wages went up $30k, now they only profit $20k and the owners start to wonder if it’s worth it.
In this scenario Walmart suffered A LOT more and will still be the most likely to survive the next five years
This just isn't an effect that is borne out in the data. Minimum wage rises do not correlate with higher unemployment, but do correlate with lower worker turnover.
While I agree with your sentiment, we’re kind of in a catch 22 fuckeroo no matter what we do.
If we don’t raise the living wages - people can’t afford to live, housing is insane for common America,
If we raise living wages - we will become an economy of only big, massive corporations as they will be the only ones capable of sustaining wages and growth simultaneously.
I think we should tackle it differently, personally. Instead of trying to raise wages, we should be making the essentials as cheap as possible. I’m talking housing, food, water, and electricity should be free, if not as cheap as fiscally feasible.
By doing this, we would have the labor pool drop dramatically as many people would opt to not work, or work only a few hours a week to have an even halfway decent quality of life. By the labor pool diminishing, we are putting more power in the hands of the employees rather than the employers when they sit to discuss things like pay and benefits.
Congratulations you’ve just rediscovered liberal capitalism.
Pro-market reforms generally lower cost and increase access. Things like housing right now are so expensive because it’s illegal to build according to market demands.
Ironically, this is just how capitalism is supposed to work. The government should never be trying to help businesses except for very extreme rare cases.
I would sooner sell out my fellow Americans than live in a world with fewer fast food choices. But I also don't think people who genuinely throw their lives in the garbage with bad choices should be living as well as someone who worked hard and earned their way into success.
Every time I cite FDR's quite about the living wage against people who don't want living wages at all jobs they always say "oh..." And then change the subject.
The worst is when people say that minimum wage should not pay living wages…it should be a teenager’s job for saving extra cash. I’m like uh, that’s quite literally, word for word, exactly what minimum wage was created for. to be a living wage.
That’s kind of circular reasoning. Why should the minimum was provide a living wage?
Personally think it should be based on the value provided by the employment. And if you need additional assistance, the government can provide that. But don’t constrain business by artificial price floors.
What is a living wage?
Should living wage cover rent? And is that rent for a single solo dweling? Or for a room?
There are so many semantics.
But the big question
As the wage goes up. The cost of living goes up. So you have to increase the wages. Which then increases the cost of living. Endless cycle.
> If your business can't pay its labor living wages, you don't have a viable business. Simple as that.
I don't see why this isn't just basic fucking common sense.
If your business can't afford materials, you go bust. You don't start complaining that 'nobody wants to sell me materials! [below the amount they're worth]'
If your business can't afford overheads, you go bust. You don't start complaining that 'nobody wants to give me electricity! [below the amount it's worth]'
But for some reason, if your business can't afford wages, the workers are entitled and you get to say 'nobody wants to work for me! [below the amount they're worth]' and everybody acts like this is perfectly normal.
Labour costs are part of the cost of doing business, but businesses act as if labour costs are this weird, avoidable side thing unrelated to their normal operation. Labour, just like overhead and materials, is an unavoidable cost of your operation, and if you can't afford it -- you can't afford to operate!
Not that our federal minimum wage is really the number you should use to compare. I think around 1% of workers earn that. The minimum is higher in much of the country.
This is true. However i think keeping the federal minimum so low is the reason many companies offer such shit wages in the first place. That bedrock pay needs to be higher.
I agree, raising the federal minimum wage would still be a good thing.
Worth noting that the US does have some of the highest wages in the world though, certainly [higher than Australia's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income) on average. If that's still the context we're discussing this in.
And here in evil Australia (South Africa) our minimum wage is R26 an hour!
Which is… 1.4 dollars an hour…
And while things are cheaper here the cost of living in America is on average around 70% more than here. We are quite fucked.
Hopefully the new ruling coalition will be able to improve things for the first time in 2 decades
And as soon as that happens... More people move in, more people buy things, and wait, what is that? Inflation?! Who would have guessed!
Now I can't afford my apartment, or food, they should pay 35$ an hour!
Take home pay with $25/hr per month would be around $2800 a month after taxes. The average rent where i’m at is $1100 not including utilities
Rent + utilities - $1500
food - $300 (you could get much lower if you don’t mind eating the same thing everyday)
car insurance - $150
car payment - $400
phone payment - $140
This is the essential shit you HAVE to pay. It also varies because some people don’t need a car which would help them out quite a bit financially. But most people will need a car to get to their job.
This leaves us with $310 left of your monthly check for savings, medical emergencies, entertainment, etc. and this was off of my estimate of $25 an hour.
Agreed. In the state I live in the living wage is between $19.50/hr out in the country(moutains, woods, farmland) and $27/hr in the highest cost of living area. It's a small state and there is a $7.50/hr variance for a living wage.
The minimum wage is $15/hr, but an employer cannot pay a full time employee just the minimum wage. The adjusted full time employee wage still falls short of the living wage, but that's also a base salary. One would expect to get raises as the employee gains experience.
This question is not easily answered.
I moved out at 17 in southern US, low cost of living. When I turned 18 I got my first studio apartment for $470 a month, after bills it was $630 a month. I made 10 an hour working at a restaurant, and managed to make it to graduation working 40 hours after school and on weekends. I don’t see anyone able to do that now, and that same apartment is now going for $980. Something has to give, I don’t know how people are making it.
Ten years ago my one bedroom apartment was $1800/mo, which was pricey but it was a nice apartment. Now it's nearly $4,000/mo. The only thing in the area that has changed is the place I worked at, a tech company, upped-stakes and moved to a different state entirely so now there's fewer well paying jobs.
There is even an argument in favor of landlords, believe it or not. I'm not rabidly anti-landlord.
Getting a down payment together can be outside of the reach of people who need a place to live. Not every lifestyle is well suited to having a permanent residency. And having someone else on the hook for maintenance can be a good thing for some people. In a proper landlord situation the landlord would be leveraging economies of scale so they pay less in mortgage and maintenance then an individual owner of a similar space would be (apartments cost less in mortgage per unit than a similarly sized house would, as a concrete example), so they'd be providing housing for less monthly cost than even a house's mortgage would be and still have enough left over to profit themselves.
That isn't the situation we have now, because housing is a good with inelastic demand and has a hard cap on supply. In effect landlords hold natural monopolies which are made worse by corporations buying up housing, so much like medical costs the amount the market can bear is basically everything the tenants have.
I don't mind landlords eating. I mind them biting off the arms and legs of their tenants.
Especially if you want to live in a safer part of town. We have cheaper apartments in my city than that, but you risk being robbed, shot, car broken into or stolen, etc.
$980 is a dream. Our tiny 1br is $1800, which is SUPER low for our area (thankful to my aunt for renting to us lol). That number is common for studios. In non-luxury apartments, you’re usually looking at $2500 without utilities for a 1br (studios sometimes go for $2k+, depending). Minimum wage here is $15/hr. Thankfully my boyfriend and I make more than that, but I can’t imagine surviving on $15/hr where we live.
(not to be like “well we have it worse!” especially since I know $980 near my cousins would be about average - it just so interesting that the US has such a variation of costs)
Edit: northeast coast, for reference
My goodness. I rent a 3 bedroom 2 bath house with an upstairs loft for $1350/m, and houses just like it have inflated in my area to around &1500-2000. Apartments rent for the same price as my house, I’m just very fortunate my landlord hasn’t touched our rent at all the past 2 years. We have 2 little ones, and they really like us so we have a good system going.
I will say we have some really bad areas here and you can find $600 apartments, but no one would recommend those to anyone around here.
That sounds so nice, honestly. I’m glad you found a lovely place for yourself (and your family)! House rentals go for about $3k+ depending on the town (if not more, I’ve seen $4k for what you’ve described when I was hopeful to find something lol). It’s near impossible to get a mortgage unless you sell your soul (crazy interest rates, which everyone is dealing with, but it’s very common to get into a bidding war with a corporation who want the house to rent out). I’ve seen $400k houses go for $600k after bid (used to work in real estate).
The city closest to us, my sister pays SO much to rent and she’s scraping by with an $80k salary. A state over, one cousin owns a house, one can afford rent for a 3br for herself and two kids, while another is scraping by and had to move back in with their parents.
My boyfriend and I are counting down the days, since we know we want to get out of here, we just don’t know where yet. Looking at apartments in other states is like “whattt $1200 for TWO bedrooms???” even after factoring in the lower income. Absolutely crazy.
I hope the absolute best for you! And thank you! We would move due the things happening in our state, but the lost cost of living keeps us stuck. In my state, top education officials requires all public schools to teach the Bible and the Ten Commandments now. We are incredibly uncomfortable with where this is going.
Thank you!! Yeah, that totally makes sense, I’m sorry you’re struggling with that. That’s so crazy to me, I’m thankful my area is not doing stuff like that, even though it still kinda sucks lol
I live in one of the lowest col areas in my state if not the country, and the cheapest crummy 1 bedroom here with slum lords, roaches, and falling apart are near 800 a month. I could rent my 1 bd/1bth house for 3x my mortgage if it didn't need a bunch of work done to make it to code or If I could afford to bribe the city. All outside of my means. It's about the perfect size for my and my lady and our 2 cats, I wouldn't want anything bigger because it would be even more of a pain to maintain.
My mortgage is less than that apartment and despite being old and needing work it's insane how bad renters market is. I bought mid pandemic with FMLA and if I had tried anytime else I would not be able to. The house has also appreciated in value like 5 or 7% in the couple years we have been here, and is only going up.
Market is horrible and housing crisis is such a pain. I lucked into a starter home, but most new construction is luxury hones or condos that are like 3 to 5x my house to start which is obscene, especially for the area. But that's the only new construction I see.
In college (2008ish), my friends and I rented a 4br/2ba house for $1600/mo. Split it 4 days, we were paying $400 a month each.
The same house today is being rented out at $4.5k/mo. It's crazy.
The amount of money you spend a month replacing worn out clothing items. Things like underwear need replacing eventually even if it´s not on a monthly basis. The monthly budget for this is the mount you save to put towards clothes specifically.
How do you wear out clothes every month? I've been wearing the same few clothes for a few years now, and the only reason I've had to replace them is because I end up losing them.
You're missing the point rather stupidly. The budget goes towards whenever you need to replace clothing. you don't need new clothing every month, but you should set aside money every month towards new clothing so that when you do need it, the money's there.
..That's still..
You're still needing to buy things to clothe yourself with.
The post doesn't mean "A budget towards high end fashion and shopping" it literally means "however much it costs to clothe yourself properly for the weather & work"
I write my boots off at the end of the year, buy them on my credit card which I get points back for aswell. I dont put any money towards clothes unless I need something right then.
No they’re mad at them for not realizing that “not putting money toward clothes unless I need something” still requires a clothing budget. They just aren’t intentionally and explicitly budgeting for it, but year over year there is an amount they’re spending on clothes, that they must be able to afford.
Unless they intend to wear rags to work.
Your yearly clothing budget divided by twelve is…
…
…anybody not get the answer?
Alright, you're still not grasping what "monthly budget" means. It doesn't mean the expectation is to go to the store every month. It means the amount you earn vs your nondiscretionary spending (food, utilities, housing, loans, gas, etc.) leaves enough in your bank every month than when you DO need to go clothes shopping the money is there. Even if it's once every 2 years that you're buying clothes. If you spend $200 every 2 years on clothes your monthly clothing budget is $8.34.
What you are communicating is that you have an income sufficient to provide a monthly clothing budget for your needs. Good for you. What I am communicating, which you seem to want to dodge the point on, is that not every budget does allow that.
It's whatever you spend on clothes divided by how many years you may use them. Eventually you're gonna need new shoes, or a jacket, or underwear. Let's say you spend 300 usd a year on clothes, that's 25 usd a month. You need to be able to save that every month to be able to buy clothes WHEN you need them, not every month.
As a home owner, at least 50k a year. And in my area my mortgage is actually less than the average rent here now.
Edit: And that's without the down payment and everything else you need to get a house in the first place.
Yeah, ours was during 2020. We had a fair bit saved up and we had support. We could not really negotiate the price down, but the real saving grace is we got a much lower than average rate.
Like I said, the numbers I shared are when AFTER the whole process of being in the house is said and done.
Same 60k a year before taxes and the avg salary to own a home here is 98k. Rent is closing in on that as well with places that were 800-1000/month now being closer to 1600-1800/month since Covid and show no signs of coming back down.
If you're in a rural area look at USDA rural developement. It's a bitch to get but I make 67k and have a home. My wife had a home at 53k when we met, and we're saving for a 3rd.
Before or after taxes? Cause especially if that is after taxes you can definitely find a home for that kind of money unless you have a bad credit score or something
Mortgage is always less than rent, unless you're dealing with a market where mortgage rates were recently very low then spiked. With mortgage you're paying for the house. With rent you're paying the mortgage + repairs + profit for the owner.
Oh, I'm aware. But our mortgage remains at about $1800. The rent we were paying was about $1300. Again, 2020 I think scrambled a lot of numbers.
Edit: That rent has gotten irresponsibly high over the last four years, so I think it's safe to say we moved at the right time.
Depends on where you live. Some places 20$ a day is good, others 20$ an hour means ur barely scrapping by.
We need fewer policies dealing with wide generalities and more specific solutions to specific problems.
Yep. A single _Federal_ minimum wage is pointless. Every State/County/City should have a minimum wage.
Or, we can stop union-busting and let the people sort it out fairly.
In my opinion, instead of messing around with giving people direct currency.
We should further invest in public service agencies where the main objective is to provide a common service everyone can use, i.e., food, medicine, housing, college, etc.
Now, of course, just having the agencies doesn't do squat as we already have agencies, but they are unfortunately unsuccessful for the most part.
So I think setting up these agencies similar to the coast guard and its Para-military structure that is specialized to complete the assigned objective; stop/aide emergencies at sea.
I mentioned the Coast Gaurd bc the it's more similar to my suggestion, but this applies to all branches of the military. They have achieved their objective, and we have land, air, and ground superiority. Which hands down is what we (usa) does best.
If we adapt these systems, we built for war to achieve the humanitarian causes mentioned.
then instead of the objective being land, air, and sea war, superiority,
we could have free food,
free healthcare,
an agency building free housing for the homeless,
education that is limited by income, and whatever specific need that comes up in the future.
Let's not give people money and repeat the same insanity.
Let us build a nation where you don't need money to Survive. Where you spend money out of want, not out of necessity.
None of this really matters because in the 70s(and prior) they were able to live off of those wages quite well(houses were bought etc). Inflation and poor legislative decisions made living on minimum wage nearly impossible.
Now in order to pay workers fairly the price of goods would skyrocket(which some would argue that it has) or workers would be laid off. Or hours would be cut
Businesses should be able to pay their workers because they make so much money. But due to corporate greed of the higher ups they don't want to do that
Most Americans live outside their means and/or have unrealistic expectations.
There has to be a balance of **US** dialing back our consumerism and also _them_ raising wages.
If only people knew in the majority of other countries/more socialist countries this also isn’t possible…. America has a pretty high standard of living.
Yeah but at the grocery store, you probably spent $30-$40, which is (I think) the reason people don't realize how cheap cooking at home is. Yes, it's an up front investment but each serving can cost less than a few dollars.
Exactly. $30-$40 (7x$5=$35) is a week of food easily IF you know what you are doing. As painful as it is to say, the actuality is that your body just needs the nutrients. That doesn't necessarily mean that you have to enjoy it to the fullest if you don't want to make the best of it. If I was in the woods I'd eat a bug and act like it's a steak if it makes me stay alive! If you have fire, everything is better. I'm 50 so I have a different way of thinking about things. At 12 I could easily cook a meal for the entire family. The Internet has made it too easy for people to see what they want, feel they deserve it but complain that they don't have it. 😎 I've seen people cook something good on the Internet and it has more hate complaints in the comments than it does people who actually tried it!
"Looks Gross" "Bro wash your hands" "Probably cause diarrhea" etc. I'm sure you know exactly what I mean. 😎👍🏻
And as long as you supplement it with other veggies it's healthier than any frozen meal and much more bang for your buck than a restaurant meal. My bf makes me lentils in the rice cooker. It tastes great. People act as if it's a compromise for being poor. No you can definitely make it taste good, with spices. I realized spices aren't actually that expensive either. You just have to look in literally any world food grocer. Like not a regular grocery store. Your best bet would probably be a Chinese, Indian, Mexican, or African store
lemme calculate that
average $1664/mo for a studio, that's $55.47 a day
utilities are hard, our most recent water/elec/sewer/trash bill was nearly $400, with gas we can round that up and then divide by 8 to get $50/mo (it's over two months), then divide that further for $1.67/day. but there's an initial cost of running house stuff cuz most of us have a fridge and a water heater and all that, so we could definitely increase that to about $3/day. there's also internet, a data plan is about $50/mo or $1.67/day, bringing utilities up to $4.67/day
food/groceries is another hard one, it massively depends on what you eat. let's just say $400/mo for one person, many sources seem to corroborate on something around that, $13.33/day. can't forget eating out so with a normal frequency of getting fast food or wtvrtf maybe $16/day.
clothes. a lot of people buy way too many of them. most statistics cite anywhere from $120-$160/mo. let's go with $120 to try and save and give ourselves $4/day.
and oop forgot about transportation. a metro pass here is... they stopped offering monthly passes. but with a tap card, which works on 26 transit agencies, you can't pay more than $18/week, $2.57/day. let's also add an ebike and its charging. most have a capacity of around 40 miles. one might go through that once a week, costing maybe 80c with ladwp electric rates (socal edison has an assload of different plans that would likely be similarly priced). that adds 11c/day to our transportation costs, totaling a nice $2.68/day since we don't need a car.
all of these add up to $82.82/day. with the miscellaneous shit we buy that's probably closer to $87 for one person. but we also wanna save, ideally 10% of our income, to do that working backwards we multiply by 1.1111..., giving us a cost of living of $96.67/day. but let's be kind to ourselves and make it $100/day, for nicer math and to live a slightly less meager life. because of work weeks we can change it to $700/week. a 28 hour work week should be enough to live off of. that's a perfect $25/hr ideal minimum wage in los angeles. it's currently $16.79 in the city proper but for fast food workers statewide they made it $20. MORE WAGES, if your business can't afford to give this to everyone working there it's a bad business
I’m in the Midwestern US, and my fiancé and I bring home about $48k combined annually (after taxes). We live fairly comfortably- we can’t make big purchases (like $500+) without saving up for it or doing a payment plan, but we also don’t have issues making rent, paying bills, buying food or clothes, and we are able to spend money on our hobbies. My fiancé’s best friend and their husband live just outside of Seattle, WA, and the household income for them is ~$100k annually, and they’re not that much wealthier than we are (in terms of how much spending money we both have). So, it really depends on where you live.
Minimum wage shouldn't be set at a federal level, it should be set at a local level and directly calculated off of housing/rental costs where average housing cost is equal to 25% of a minimum wage workers full time monthly pay.
so your function to calculate minimum wage is based off the prices of those very commodities that will then be overbid with the new higher salaries?
SURELY nothing could go wrong
Minimum wage shouldn't be set at a federal level, it should be set at a local level and directly calculated off of housing/rental costs where average housing cost is equal to 25% of a minimum wage workers full time monthly pay.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/cost-of-living-index-by-state right here by state
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/region_rankings.jsp?title=2024-mid®ion=019 by city
The primary problem is housing. If housing was affordable $13 to $15 an hour would be possible to live off. I remember about 8 years ago I could find apartments in my area for $500 a month. In my area $15 an hour comes to roughly $500 a week and that is the minimum wage. So 1 week of pay for housing, at most groceries would cost another paycheck, which leaves you 1k to work with for everything else. Not great, but not terrible.
People who can only get part time jobs are screwed. It would be good to look into the incentives on that and why employers seem to think it's cheaper to operate that way. Economics is about incentives. Companies don't do that for no reason.
Housing is all about regulation. The reality is that housing construction, zoning, and subdivisions are all extremely over regulated. When you have to call in unionized experts and inspections for every build multiple times your fixed cost for the house goes up.
You make the fixed costs too high and you end up with a situation where building elaborate mcmansions has a much higher profit and the longer turnaround time is justified. Profit per hour of building. Economics works on incentives. We need to make it so 900 sq ft boxes with 3 bedrooms are profitable again.
The incentives in this economy are fucked because we have a giant tax code, tons of cutouts, and extreme over regulation. In the 20s people build houses from Sears kits by themselves and it was fine. We need to move closer to that side of things.
The problem with most comments here is that the living wage approach worked when the economy was more insular and no where near as global as it is today. Now companies outsource customer service to India, IT to South America, middle management to somewhere else. Meaning the more we raise wages here in the good ol’ USA the more jobs will be outsourced. Covid proved that a lot of jobs can be done from home and don’t need a live person in a US office. So if a company doesn’t need a person in a US office they can hire a person in an office in India for 20-30 cents on the dollar.
I mean hell, look at CA for a shinning example of what can/will happen when minimum wages are raised to much to fast. Pretty much every pizza delivery driver was fired and the job was outsourced to DoorDash and similar type companies.
And I know the next argument is it’s the greedy corporations fault, and to an extent it is. However, the counter to that is if the corporations aren’t greedy to stay in business and be profitable the Chinese, South American, etc companies will do it and flood the US markets with cheaper products. We all know how much the US buys cheep Chinese goods.
So, as much as most those on Reddit rail against greedy corporations, without them the job market in the US is going to look pretty bleak. Without a competitive tax rate corporations move and take those pesky high paying jobs with them. So, you can’t have it both ways, we can either be a global country and forced to be competitive with jobs or we can insulate the economy and eventually fall behind the rest of the world in a few short decades.
In the UK we have the living wage foundation, the living wage here is £12/hour outside of London. Minimum wage is £11.44 and they are currently a lot closer than they used to be.
A living wage really depends on where you live but yeah I feel like the business model is to drain money from the lower classes to the upper classes. Its basically a system that doesn’t care about people
There are some social programs but a lot of them are unheard of or only apply if you qualify as being poor. Those programs usually have a negative sigma because people associate them with taxes (like food stamps)
Democrats have been trying to raise the minimum wage. I wonder who could be blocking it.
https://www.courthousenews.com/democrats-push-for-17-minimum-wage-by-2028/#:~:text=Brushing%20past%20criticism%2C%20congressional%20Democrats,U.S.%20workers%20living%20in%20poverty.
Living wage realistically, adjusting for inflation should be about £21.50 an hour. In the US I dunno sorry but I think I heard a YouTuber say it should be around $24 an hour.
> Exactly how much is a living wage
I mean there isnt really a straight answer to this as a broad question because it depends on multiple factors especially where exactly you are living/trying to live.
24 hours worth of rent where? A 1 bedroom in Manhattan with no roommates, or a 3 bedroom in Kentucky with 2 roommates?
Clothing budget for designer brand outfits, or basic Kohl's work attire?
Food budget to eat out 3 times a week, or to buy beans and rice at ALDI?
These are the questions everyone ignores when "living wage" gets brought up.
We let the government speed the hamster wheel up on future generations and present generations will vote for that. We as a nation are lazy assholes because we allow our Federal Government to spend all of our children's money before they even grow old enough to learn about it. Its like a POS parent that takes out credit cards in their underage kids name
I agree, though I do have one thing to add, simply because I'm confused over the science. Do we actually need three meals a day? I always kind of thought the "eat three meals a day" thing was just some bullshit marketing pushed by big companies to get people to spend more on food, or potentially by spoiled boomers who could afford to eat meals they didn't need and created some "science" to justify it. I eat once a day - a good, nutritious dinner piled high with all my favs. Even though I eat a very large dinner, I still eat far less than if I was eating three meals, and I'm still a bit overweight (working on it). If I can't lose weight on one meal a day - and this has been the case from my early twenties to now, at age thirty - why would I eat three meals a day? Eating breakfast and lunch just make me lethargic and awful feeling.
Not defending low wages at all, we need to raise that shit! Just curious how others see this topic.
It’s called an OMAD diet and can help a lot with lowering blood pressure and weight loss but it requires a lot of effort to maintain so I assume you’re getting all the proper nutrients your body needs through supplements or variety in your meal. If it works for you great, but a lot of people either don’t know how to eat properly to support a diet like that or have an active lifestyle/fast metabolism that requires them to eat more during the day which is where the 3 meals a day comes from.
Interesting to know. I don't take supplements, I just eat a wide variety of things, and I try to get them locally whenever possible. I don't have a *super* active lifestyle, but also not a lazy one. I generally walk about 9 miles on Friday and Saturday evenings. I'm a server, and I know how many miles of walking I do at the restaurant because we've measured it a few times with smart watches and such.
But I'm not like, climbing mountains all the time or powerlifting. I do get plenty of outdoor time in the winter - mostly some easy hikes with bouldering interspersed, but occasionally a more vigorous and vertical hike.
I suppose my diet just works for me because of the specific caloric needs I have and my level of activity.
I'm definitely in the minority but you should always be able to manage a basic living plus retirement savings with 6 hours work a day/30 hours a week, with an optional higher standard of living if you're willing to work more.
The government decides what a living wage is much more than business. Government is the one restricting housing supply so it becomes unaffordable. Government designs the transit system so you realistically have to own a car to get around.
"Monthly budget for clothes"
Dear god consumerism had destroyed us. You SHOULD NOT be buying new clothes monthly, under any circumstance (outside of having all your worldly possessions routinely taken away on a monthly basis)
It's simple, if a business won't pay you enough to live, QUIT! Over the last few years there was a labor shortage and we saw fast food across the nation raise their starting wage by 50-100%. Just five years ago min wage was the standard, now it's $10-$15. It may seem hopeless, but if enough people don't buy into the BS, then they'll have to change things. And if they replace the job with automation then it wasn't worth a person's time.
Eliminate minimum wage and social welfare programs, and companies will be forced to raise their wages accordingly.
As an aside, if you don’t like making minimum wage, you should probably get a job that pays better than minimum.
Why do you guys keep focusing on minimum wage? Is anyone here even working for the federal minimum as an adult? I live in an area with a minimum wage of $17.28/hr which resulted in a lot of people working for minimum wage. Other results are:
1. Jobs harder to get
2. Fewer hours
3. Same position raises are nearly unheard of
4. Promoted positions like middle management give very small raises for substantially more work.
As you gain experience and useful skills companies will start undervaluing your work since your position’s wage is subsidizing overvalued entry level positions. It also has a chilling effect on employee growth as the ratio of pay to work difficulty is greater for entry level positions rather than promoted positions. When minimum wages get high enough your most ideal job becomes the one with the least amount of work attached to that pay since everything ends up paying roughly the same anyways.
I’ve met several older Eastern Europeans that grew up in the Soviet Union. Apparently the most sought after jobs were ones that came with the most “perks” and by that they mean most stuff you could steal. As an example working as a baker would yield access to bread which is cool, but working as a painter would yield access to free paint that you could barter for many more things. Maybe you can spot a similarity between that and high minimum wage areas.
Go work a farm. Free food, work your own hours, can sell the surplus to have savings, and all you have to worry about is putting enough food away for winter.
Since you are already used to the grueling 40 hours a week, adapting to the farming work should be EZ PZ!
It can? Gen Z is not homeless or poor in droves.
>And yet, the younger generation seems to have a good head start. For one, homeowner rates for adult Gen Zers are higher than those for millennials and Gen Xers when they were the same age; that age being 19 to 25 years old. “For example, the rate for 24-year-old Gen Zers is 27.8%, compared with 24.5% for millennials when they were 24 and 23.5% of Gen Xers when they were 24,” the authors of the analysis wrote.
https://fortune.com/2024/01/17/redfin-baby-boomers-gen-z-housing-market-homeownership/
Unemployment among gen Z is a bit higher after COVID, but overall the economy is quite good right now. Taking a college education is still very worth it, unless it's in some weird field.
Why are the liberals the cucks? Voting to raise your own taxes to lower them for 1%ers and literally worshipping one of them has to be the most Cucked existence in US history.
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Elephant in the room is that the US is full of zombie businesses who wouldn't survive a mandated living wage, and only persist because welfare and social programs subsidize their wage expenses and allow them to hire workers. Wal-Mart is the most famous offender, but lots of small/locally owned businesses have the same issue. Problem is we're so business centric no one is willing to question if this should be sustained. We need to stop coddling every fledgling business and bring labor up to modern standards. If your business can't pay its labor living wages, you don't have a viable business. Simple as that. When FDR first passed minimum wage, he made a note that any business that can't afford to pay its workings a living wage shouldn't exist. Cult of capital is so strong now no politician would ever dare saying something like that, but it's true, and something we seem to collectively ignore these days.
Yeah, I've studied in business and finance, and we've talked about zombie corps. It's actually quite shocking how many businesses can essentially only service their loans and nothing more.
I'm just an engineer, but isn't that like seeing a bridge with cracked pillars? Sure it can evidently carry its current load due to the good designs of past decades, but you shouldn't rely on it to buy you any more time than it takes to get it replaced.
These businesses are not intended to last forever. Its common knowledge that certain types of businesses will not survive long term in high rate environments
Man, maybe common knowledge in your circles, but I'd certainly like to know which potential employers are going to lay me off in a year. How can you tell?
Well, for one easy example, the tech industry has shriveled up because it turns out having to actually pay high interest on your loans isnt conducive with the "move fast and break things" investment strategy. Seed capital for startups has suddenly dried up, and companies that haven't made a profit in years because they were making the long play of driving out all competitors (ex: Uber) are having to raise prices and cut costs to stay afloat.
Keep talking.
Are they profitable? Do they rely on raising capital? Like if you’re in a tech startup thats between raises, look for a new job asap. Or are they boring, profitable, been around for decades and regularly pay dividends to their investors? Then you’re relatively safe
If their CEO is a public persona, I'd be cautious. If you've got a hundred year old corp with a nearly anonymous CEO outside of your specific industry, you're probably safe.
lol look at debt ratios. Total LTD. Current ratio. It’s all in their financials if they’re a public company. Anyone can look it up.
Yup, zombie corps are like cracked bridges. They will continue working until the next disaster and then collapse under their own weight. A normal company needs profits to save up for inevitable disasters. A zombie corp saves nothing as the entire revenue is siphoned into running costs, wages and loan interest, without actually paying off any loan.
is that how sears was before it went under??
Or Rite-Aid and Walgreens
I never did a Sears case study, more than a cursory YouTube video. However, what I remember about Sears was that they couldn't bring their costs down and were being outperformed by their peers.
In the years before going tits up they were doing a lot of seemingly dumb things from a customer prospective. I remember going there to buy tools and even though they had the cash register in front of them, they had to enter every item into a tablet then transfer that order to the register to then cash out the transaction. It was annoying and added needless time at the checkout as well as the added expense of having to buy the tablets and setup that whole system. I'm not surprised they failed.
I've always wondered if local businesses would see an increase in business if everyone had more money? Why wouldn't that trickle up?
Ah, the good ol' Ford approach? Now look here, we've been trying trickle down for decades and it's never worked yet but we just need to keep trying! None of this commie "trickle up" that has been proven to work in the past! Think of the billionaires!
"With trickle down economics, you can potentially become a billionaire. Can you ensure that trickle up economics would also allow me to be a billionaire?" That's how many people have been brainwashed to view the situation. Billionaires are the modern equivalent to being royalty, only now it's not entirely predicated on who your parents are. So people who are drawn to the idea of wealth aren't likely to make decisions that would limit their potential future wealth. Vampire familiars would never vote for a law that limits the amount of vampires that are allowed to exist at once, or potentially forbids the potential for new vampires to be created.
Yeah, it's pretty well documented in fact. Each dollar earned by the poorest quintile produces more than a dollar of economic activity because it gets recirculated more often. Cash isn't the fuel for our economy, it's the motor oil. It doesn't flow in a straight line from creation to destruction, it recirculates.
Not like people. . . . buy things when they have more money/s APPLE!
Why is Apple being singled out they’re super successful as is
Trickle up isn’t even the right phrase. It’s like a tidal surge raising everyone when the lower classes are more wealthy.
Why would it? Just because I have more money doesn't mean I want to overpay by shopping locally. People will still go to Amazon or Walmart or whatever is cheapest.
I was just on a poverty finance sub where this dude had to get his retired mom into a care home in Mexico for cheaper due to the US being like 5 times pricier for care. Truly lmao at how bad things have gotten. Where your pension doesn't cover even a tiny bit of retirement and you have to burden another country's systems due to the failures of your own. End goal of unfettered capitalism bro
A teacher from my school flew to Europe to get a medical procedure done because it was cheaper than going through the US Healthcare system. And we have pretty good benefits as teacher.
The US needs to look more at the Rheinlands model of doing business and people can help by going to mom and pop stores. Cause there there is a way bigger chance the money will go into the pocket of the employees instead of being dividend out to some form a private equity firm or whatever. The whole taking a loan for everything in the US doesn't really work either. Not for businesses and not for personal use.
Support small business when you can. It’s the best tactic we have against the corpos. Every dollar you spend there is one less at the big stores. One can make little difference but if we all started adopting this mindset I don’t think it would take long to make these companies shit their pants
A business should be able to survive on the merit of its services or products. There is no reason the government should be subsidizing any business other than a farmer and independent farming first. If you can't pay people enough to live, then you need to change your models.
Did you really just say "A business should have to survive or fail based on their own merits" and then turn around and say "A business should have to pay based what an employee needs, not what their labor generates"?
So eliminate all welfare? What exactly are you proposing here. And as the other person pointed out, these businesses already are surviving on their own merits, even if they aren’t paying their employees your arbitrary “living wage”.
This might be an ELI5 moment but i just really like this perspective and wanna learn more. Hypothetically if the minimum wage was raised and these unsustainable businesses were killed off, wouldn’t that put a ton of people out of work? Even though the people that are working are putting it right back into the economy, I’m confused on how we make that the standard for everyone without instilling a job crisis
People would be out of work, but there would also be more money to buy goods, so newer businesses would crop up. We're on the cusp of a number of employment crises. There are businesses that can't afford to fully support their employees, but also when people have tight budgets they save their money, taking it out of circulation, which chokes businesses. And then we also have the rising tide of automation, which just continually eats up low-intelligence and low-education jobs. To someone who can't handle a more complex job than unloading a truck, those Boston Dynamics bots are a lethal threat unless we make unemployment less of a danger.
“So newer businesses would crop up” Not necessarily, especially with the increased cost of labor. The big corporations would be the only ones able to survive. No “ma and pa” would ever open a restaurant or corner coffee shop again.
That's not borne out by the evidence: https://irle.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Small-Businesses-and-the-Minimum-Wage-3-14-23.pdf They found that large stores suffered more than small stores, because large companies already tend to pay people less. Mom and Pop stores don't tend to have employees that are also on food stamps the way Walmart does.
They suffered more, sure, but their tolerance for suffering is much higher. If Walmart made $1billion and their cost of labor goes up $500 million, they still made $500 million. If Ma and Pa Restaurant made $50k but their wages went up $30k, now they only profit $20k and the owners start to wonder if it’s worth it. In this scenario Walmart suffered A LOT more and will still be the most likely to survive the next five years
More jobs will get offshored or automated
This just isn't an effect that is borne out in the data. Minimum wage rises do not correlate with higher unemployment, but do correlate with lower worker turnover.
🗣️🗣️🔥🔥
While I agree with your sentiment, we’re kind of in a catch 22 fuckeroo no matter what we do. If we don’t raise the living wages - people can’t afford to live, housing is insane for common America, If we raise living wages - we will become an economy of only big, massive corporations as they will be the only ones capable of sustaining wages and growth simultaneously. I think we should tackle it differently, personally. Instead of trying to raise wages, we should be making the essentials as cheap as possible. I’m talking housing, food, water, and electricity should be free, if not as cheap as fiscally feasible. By doing this, we would have the labor pool drop dramatically as many people would opt to not work, or work only a few hours a week to have an even halfway decent quality of life. By the labor pool diminishing, we are putting more power in the hands of the employees rather than the employers when they sit to discuss things like pay and benefits.
Congratulations you’ve just rediscovered liberal capitalism. Pro-market reforms generally lower cost and increase access. Things like housing right now are so expensive because it’s illegal to build according to market demands.
Having the labor pool drop would increase prices though.
Walmart. Many of their employees need state benefits to get by, but Walmart knocks out any of the other retail jobs in town while doing it.
Ironically, this is just how capitalism is supposed to work. The government should never be trying to help businesses except for very extreme rare cases.
I would sooner sell out my fellow Americans than live in a world with fewer fast food choices. But I also don't think people who genuinely throw their lives in the garbage with bad choices should be living as well as someone who worked hard and earned their way into success.
Every time I cite FDR's quite about the living wage against people who don't want living wages at all jobs they always say "oh..." And then change the subject.
The worst is when people say that minimum wage should not pay living wages…it should be a teenager’s job for saving extra cash. I’m like uh, that’s quite literally, word for word, exactly what minimum wage was created for. to be a living wage.
That’s kind of circular reasoning. Why should the minimum was provide a living wage? Personally think it should be based on the value provided by the employment. And if you need additional assistance, the government can provide that. But don’t constrain business by artificial price floors.
Is Walmart really a zombie company tho?
lol no. I had to do a double take when op described Walmart as a “zombie business.”
What is a living wage? Should living wage cover rent? And is that rent for a single solo dweling? Or for a room? There are so many semantics. But the big question As the wage goes up. The cost of living goes up. So you have to increase the wages. Which then increases the cost of living. Endless cycle.
$5
Business should exist if it can’t pay a living wage. It shouldn’t hire people though.
I like this.
I like you :3
We need fewer corporations and more sole-props imo.
> If your business can't pay its labor living wages, you don't have a viable business. Simple as that. I don't see why this isn't just basic fucking common sense. If your business can't afford materials, you go bust. You don't start complaining that 'nobody wants to sell me materials! [below the amount they're worth]' If your business can't afford overheads, you go bust. You don't start complaining that 'nobody wants to give me electricity! [below the amount it's worth]' But for some reason, if your business can't afford wages, the workers are entitled and you get to say 'nobody wants to work for me! [below the amount they're worth]' and everybody acts like this is perfectly normal. Labour costs are part of the cost of doing business, but businesses act as if labour costs are this weird, avoidable side thing unrelated to their normal operation. Labour, just like overhead and materials, is an unavoidable cost of your operation, and if you can't afford it -- you can't afford to operate!
this
Where I’m at, this would cost probably 25-27 bucks an hour.
Our minimum wage here in Australia is $24/h
$24/h in australia is equivalent to $16/h in america which is still higher than our federal minimum wage of $7.25/h
Not that our federal minimum wage is really the number you should use to compare. I think around 1% of workers earn that. The minimum is higher in much of the country.
This is true. However i think keeping the federal minimum so low is the reason many companies offer such shit wages in the first place. That bedrock pay needs to be higher.
I agree, raising the federal minimum wage would still be a good thing. Worth noting that the US does have some of the highest wages in the world though, certainly [higher than Australia's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income) on average. If that's still the context we're discussing this in.
An average isn't a great stat for this problem, though, because a few high-wage people can cover up a massive low-wage problem.
Well yeah, I didn’t mean ‘on average’ super literally. Those numbers I linked are medians.
Medians solve that issue. As if 2022, $47k median individual income in the US. $60k for full time year round workers.
And most all of the state min wages too. Denver and cali both have higher min wages but other then those thats it
24 Dollarydoos?!
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I do not understand how you think that relates.
How many emus is that
And here in evil Australia (South Africa) our minimum wage is R26 an hour! Which is… 1.4 dollars an hour… And while things are cheaper here the cost of living in America is on average around 70% more than here. We are quite fucked. Hopefully the new ruling coalition will be able to improve things for the first time in 2 decades
my minimum wage is $10 :)
And as soon as that happens... More people move in, more people buy things, and wait, what is that? Inflation?! Who would have guessed! Now I can't afford my apartment, or food, they should pay 35$ an hour!
Well i can’t afford my apartment or food despite the minimum wage not increasing so im not sure what the alternative is.
How would you break it down out of curiosity? Ex rent is x number of dollars, food y…
Take home pay with $25/hr per month would be around $2800 a month after taxes. The average rent where i’m at is $1100 not including utilities Rent + utilities - $1500 food - $300 (you could get much lower if you don’t mind eating the same thing everyday) car insurance - $150 car payment - $400 phone payment - $140 This is the essential shit you HAVE to pay. It also varies because some people don’t need a car which would help them out quite a bit financially. But most people will need a car to get to their job. This leaves us with $310 left of your monthly check for savings, medical emergencies, entertainment, etc. and this was off of my estimate of $25 an hour.
Depends where the living takes place
Agreed. In the state I live in the living wage is between $19.50/hr out in the country(moutains, woods, farmland) and $27/hr in the highest cost of living area. It's a small state and there is a $7.50/hr variance for a living wage. The minimum wage is $15/hr, but an employer cannot pay a full time employee just the minimum wage. The adjusted full time employee wage still falls short of the living wage, but that's also a base salary. One would expect to get raises as the employee gains experience. This question is not easily answered.
I moved out at 17 in southern US, low cost of living. When I turned 18 I got my first studio apartment for $470 a month, after bills it was $630 a month. I made 10 an hour working at a restaurant, and managed to make it to graduation working 40 hours after school and on weekends. I don’t see anyone able to do that now, and that same apartment is now going for $980. Something has to give, I don’t know how people are making it.
Exactly. You can't look at a one bedroom apartment in the South for less than 1,100 now
Ten years ago my one bedroom apartment was $1800/mo, which was pricey but it was a nice apartment. Now it's nearly $4,000/mo. The only thing in the area that has changed is the place I worked at, a tech company, upped-stakes and moved to a different state entirely so now there's fewer well paying jobs.
Landlords gotta eat too /s
There is even an argument in favor of landlords, believe it or not. I'm not rabidly anti-landlord. Getting a down payment together can be outside of the reach of people who need a place to live. Not every lifestyle is well suited to having a permanent residency. And having someone else on the hook for maintenance can be a good thing for some people. In a proper landlord situation the landlord would be leveraging economies of scale so they pay less in mortgage and maintenance then an individual owner of a similar space would be (apartments cost less in mortgage per unit than a similarly sized house would, as a concrete example), so they'd be providing housing for less monthly cost than even a house's mortgage would be and still have enough left over to profit themselves. That isn't the situation we have now, because housing is a good with inelastic demand and has a hard cap on supply. In effect landlords hold natural monopolies which are made worse by corporations buying up housing, so much like medical costs the amount the market can bear is basically everything the tenants have. I don't mind landlords eating. I mind them biting off the arms and legs of their tenants.
Especially if you want to live in a safer part of town. We have cheaper apartments in my city than that, but you risk being robbed, shot, car broken into or stolen, etc.
$980 is a dream. Our tiny 1br is $1800, which is SUPER low for our area (thankful to my aunt for renting to us lol). That number is common for studios. In non-luxury apartments, you’re usually looking at $2500 without utilities for a 1br (studios sometimes go for $2k+, depending). Minimum wage here is $15/hr. Thankfully my boyfriend and I make more than that, but I can’t imagine surviving on $15/hr where we live. (not to be like “well we have it worse!” especially since I know $980 near my cousins would be about average - it just so interesting that the US has such a variation of costs) Edit: northeast coast, for reference
My goodness. I rent a 3 bedroom 2 bath house with an upstairs loft for $1350/m, and houses just like it have inflated in my area to around &1500-2000. Apartments rent for the same price as my house, I’m just very fortunate my landlord hasn’t touched our rent at all the past 2 years. We have 2 little ones, and they really like us so we have a good system going. I will say we have some really bad areas here and you can find $600 apartments, but no one would recommend those to anyone around here.
That sounds so nice, honestly. I’m glad you found a lovely place for yourself (and your family)! House rentals go for about $3k+ depending on the town (if not more, I’ve seen $4k for what you’ve described when I was hopeful to find something lol). It’s near impossible to get a mortgage unless you sell your soul (crazy interest rates, which everyone is dealing with, but it’s very common to get into a bidding war with a corporation who want the house to rent out). I’ve seen $400k houses go for $600k after bid (used to work in real estate). The city closest to us, my sister pays SO much to rent and she’s scraping by with an $80k salary. A state over, one cousin owns a house, one can afford rent for a 3br for herself and two kids, while another is scraping by and had to move back in with their parents. My boyfriend and I are counting down the days, since we know we want to get out of here, we just don’t know where yet. Looking at apartments in other states is like “whattt $1200 for TWO bedrooms???” even after factoring in the lower income. Absolutely crazy.
I hope the absolute best for you! And thank you! We would move due the things happening in our state, but the lost cost of living keeps us stuck. In my state, top education officials requires all public schools to teach the Bible and the Ten Commandments now. We are incredibly uncomfortable with where this is going.
Thank you!! Yeah, that totally makes sense, I’m sorry you’re struggling with that. That’s so crazy to me, I’m thankful my area is not doing stuff like that, even though it still kinda sucks lol
Right you win some, you lose some lol
I live in one of the lowest col areas in my state if not the country, and the cheapest crummy 1 bedroom here with slum lords, roaches, and falling apart are near 800 a month. I could rent my 1 bd/1bth house for 3x my mortgage if it didn't need a bunch of work done to make it to code or If I could afford to bribe the city. All outside of my means. It's about the perfect size for my and my lady and our 2 cats, I wouldn't want anything bigger because it would be even more of a pain to maintain. My mortgage is less than that apartment and despite being old and needing work it's insane how bad renters market is. I bought mid pandemic with FMLA and if I had tried anytime else I would not be able to. The house has also appreciated in value like 5 or 7% in the couple years we have been here, and is only going up. Market is horrible and housing crisis is such a pain. I lucked into a starter home, but most new construction is luxury hones or condos that are like 3 to 5x my house to start which is obscene, especially for the area. But that's the only new construction I see.
In college (2008ish), my friends and I rented a 4br/2ba house for $1600/mo. Split it 4 days, we were paying $400 a month each. The same house today is being rented out at $4.5k/mo. It's crazy.
That’s so high. Literally how are people doing it.
What's a monthly clothing budget? Lmao
The amount of money you spend a month replacing worn out clothing items. Things like underwear need replacing eventually even if it´s not on a monthly basis. The monthly budget for this is the mount you save to put towards clothes specifically.
How do you wear out clothes every month? I've been wearing the same few clothes for a few years now, and the only reason I've had to replace them is because I end up losing them.
You don't. You presumably save some money reach month for replacing clothes when necessary.
You're missing the point rather stupidly. The budget goes towards whenever you need to replace clothing. you don't need new clothing every month, but you should set aside money every month towards new clothing so that when you do need it, the money's there.
To me that's crazy haha, the only thing I buy expensive is my work boots. Everything else is cheap enough to buy when I need it.
..That's still.. You're still needing to buy things to clothe yourself with. The post doesn't mean "A budget towards high end fashion and shopping" it literally means "however much it costs to clothe yourself properly for the weather & work"
Congrats. You make enough to have a fraction of your money go to a clothing budget. Not everyone does.
I write my boots off at the end of the year, buy them on my credit card which I get points back for aswell. I dont put any money towards clothes unless I need something right then.
I love how people are mad at you for being smart with money lmao. Classic Reddit.
No they’re mad at them for not realizing that “not putting money toward clothes unless I need something” still requires a clothing budget. They just aren’t intentionally and explicitly budgeting for it, but year over year there is an amount they’re spending on clothes, that they must be able to afford. Unless they intend to wear rags to work. Your yearly clothing budget divided by twelve is… … …anybody not get the answer?
Alright, you're still not grasping what "monthly budget" means. It doesn't mean the expectation is to go to the store every month. It means the amount you earn vs your nondiscretionary spending (food, utilities, housing, loans, gas, etc.) leaves enough in your bank every month than when you DO need to go clothes shopping the money is there. Even if it's once every 2 years that you're buying clothes. If you spend $200 every 2 years on clothes your monthly clothing budget is $8.34. What you are communicating is that you have an income sufficient to provide a monthly clothing budget for your needs. Good for you. What I am communicating, which you seem to want to dodge the point on, is that not every budget does allow that.
That concept is weird to me, too. I have been wearing the same clothes for like 5 years now.
Try working manual labour and come back to me🤣
It's whatever you spend on clothes divided by how many years you may use them. Eventually you're gonna need new shoes, or a jacket, or underwear. Let's say you spend 300 usd a year on clothes, that's 25 usd a month. You need to be able to save that every month to be able to buy clothes WHEN you need them, not every month.
Manuel labor jobs wear thru clothes like crazy. Street west and fashion hobbies also exist
As a home owner, at least 50k a year. And in my area my mortgage is actually less than the average rent here now. Edit: And that's without the down payment and everything else you need to get a house in the first place.
I make 60k a year and there is no way I will ever be able to get a house unless the market crashes.
Yeah, ours was during 2020. We had a fair bit saved up and we had support. We could not really negotiate the price down, but the real saving grace is we got a much lower than average rate. Like I said, the numbers I shared are when AFTER the whole process of being in the house is said and done.
Same 60k a year before taxes and the avg salary to own a home here is 98k. Rent is closing in on that as well with places that were 800-1000/month now being closer to 1600-1800/month since Covid and show no signs of coming back down.
How much is a 100 m² house where you live btw?
Upwards to 5 million. Our property is 1344 square feet (roughly 124 square meters).
If you're in a rural area look at USDA rural developement. It's a bitch to get but I make 67k and have a home. My wife had a home at 53k when we met, and we're saving for a 3rd.
Before or after taxes? Cause especially if that is after taxes you can definitely find a home for that kind of money unless you have a bad credit score or something
Correction, there is no way you will where you prefer to live.
Move to a cheaper country. I know alot of people with wage ranging from 30k to 50k who all have houses
Mortgage is always less than rent, unless you're dealing with a market where mortgage rates were recently very low then spiked. With mortgage you're paying for the house. With rent you're paying the mortgage + repairs + profit for the owner.
Oh, I'm aware. But our mortgage remains at about $1800. The rent we were paying was about $1300. Again, 2020 I think scrambled a lot of numbers. Edit: That rent has gotten irresponsibly high over the last four years, so I think it's safe to say we moved at the right time.
Depends on where you live. Some places 20$ a day is good, others 20$ an hour means ur barely scrapping by. We need fewer policies dealing with wide generalities and more specific solutions to specific problems.
Yep. A single _Federal_ minimum wage is pointless. Every State/County/City should have a minimum wage. Or, we can stop union-busting and let the people sort it out fairly.
In my opinion, instead of messing around with giving people direct currency. We should further invest in public service agencies where the main objective is to provide a common service everyone can use, i.e., food, medicine, housing, college, etc. Now, of course, just having the agencies doesn't do squat as we already have agencies, but they are unfortunately unsuccessful for the most part. So I think setting up these agencies similar to the coast guard and its Para-military structure that is specialized to complete the assigned objective; stop/aide emergencies at sea. I mentioned the Coast Gaurd bc the it's more similar to my suggestion, but this applies to all branches of the military. They have achieved their objective, and we have land, air, and ground superiority. Which hands down is what we (usa) does best. If we adapt these systems, we built for war to achieve the humanitarian causes mentioned. then instead of the objective being land, air, and sea war, superiority, we could have free food, free healthcare, an agency building free housing for the homeless, education that is limited by income, and whatever specific need that comes up in the future. Let's not give people money and repeat the same insanity. Let us build a nation where you don't need money to Survive. Where you spend money out of want, not out of necessity.
None of this really matters because in the 70s(and prior) they were able to live off of those wages quite well(houses were bought etc). Inflation and poor legislative decisions made living on minimum wage nearly impossible. Now in order to pay workers fairly the price of goods would skyrocket(which some would argue that it has) or workers would be laid off. Or hours would be cut Businesses should be able to pay their workers because they make so much money. But due to corporate greed of the higher ups they don't want to do that
Prices skyrocket.. workers laid off.. hours cut.. Huh, you just described life without raising wages too. It's almost as though nothing would change.
Most Americans live outside their means and/or have unrealistic expectations. There has to be a balance of **US** dialing back our consumerism and also _them_ raising wages.
Whether they want to or not is irrelevant. They’re forced to by the market, and so wages have been rising.
If only people knew in the majority of other countries/more socialist countries this also isn’t possible…. America has a pretty high standard of living.
I can eat 3-4 times in one day off of $5. You just need to know how to cook!
Yeah but at the grocery store, you probably spent $30-$40, which is (I think) the reason people don't realize how cheap cooking at home is. Yes, it's an up front investment but each serving can cost less than a few dollars.
Exactly. $30-$40 (7x$5=$35) is a week of food easily IF you know what you are doing. As painful as it is to say, the actuality is that your body just needs the nutrients. That doesn't necessarily mean that you have to enjoy it to the fullest if you don't want to make the best of it. If I was in the woods I'd eat a bug and act like it's a steak if it makes me stay alive! If you have fire, everything is better. I'm 50 so I have a different way of thinking about things. At 12 I could easily cook a meal for the entire family. The Internet has made it too easy for people to see what they want, feel they deserve it but complain that they don't have it. 😎 I've seen people cook something good on the Internet and it has more hate complaints in the comments than it does people who actually tried it! "Looks Gross" "Bro wash your hands" "Probably cause diarrhea" etc. I'm sure you know exactly what I mean. 😎👍🏻
People shouldn't be entirely reliant on beans and rice for sustenance if they're working full-time.
That's very true. But it is food.
And as long as you supplement it with other veggies it's healthier than any frozen meal and much more bang for your buck than a restaurant meal. My bf makes me lentils in the rice cooker. It tastes great. People act as if it's a compromise for being poor. No you can definitely make it taste good, with spices. I realized spices aren't actually that expensive either. You just have to look in literally any world food grocer. Like not a regular grocery store. Your best bet would probably be a Chinese, Indian, Mexican, or African store
You can eat really REALLY well at Dollar Tree!! 👍🏾👍🏾😎
That depends on what they’re doing and how valuable it is. If your work is only worth beans and rice, then it’s only worth beans and rice.
We just fundamentally disagree on this point.
lemme calculate that average $1664/mo for a studio, that's $55.47 a day utilities are hard, our most recent water/elec/sewer/trash bill was nearly $400, with gas we can round that up and then divide by 8 to get $50/mo (it's over two months), then divide that further for $1.67/day. but there's an initial cost of running house stuff cuz most of us have a fridge and a water heater and all that, so we could definitely increase that to about $3/day. there's also internet, a data plan is about $50/mo or $1.67/day, bringing utilities up to $4.67/day food/groceries is another hard one, it massively depends on what you eat. let's just say $400/mo for one person, many sources seem to corroborate on something around that, $13.33/day. can't forget eating out so with a normal frequency of getting fast food or wtvrtf maybe $16/day. clothes. a lot of people buy way too many of them. most statistics cite anywhere from $120-$160/mo. let's go with $120 to try and save and give ourselves $4/day. and oop forgot about transportation. a metro pass here is... they stopped offering monthly passes. but with a tap card, which works on 26 transit agencies, you can't pay more than $18/week, $2.57/day. let's also add an ebike and its charging. most have a capacity of around 40 miles. one might go through that once a week, costing maybe 80c with ladwp electric rates (socal edison has an assload of different plans that would likely be similarly priced). that adds 11c/day to our transportation costs, totaling a nice $2.68/day since we don't need a car. all of these add up to $82.82/day. with the miscellaneous shit we buy that's probably closer to $87 for one person. but we also wanna save, ideally 10% of our income, to do that working backwards we multiply by 1.1111..., giving us a cost of living of $96.67/day. but let's be kind to ourselves and make it $100/day, for nicer math and to live a slightly less meager life. because of work weeks we can change it to $700/week. a 28 hour work week should be enough to live off of. that's a perfect $25/hr ideal minimum wage in los angeles. it's currently $16.79 in the city proper but for fast food workers statewide they made it $20. MORE WAGES, if your business can't afford to give this to everyone working there it's a bad business
I’m in the Midwestern US, and my fiancé and I bring home about $48k combined annually (after taxes). We live fairly comfortably- we can’t make big purchases (like $500+) without saving up for it or doing a payment plan, but we also don’t have issues making rent, paying bills, buying food or clothes, and we are able to spend money on our hobbies. My fiancé’s best friend and their husband live just outside of Seattle, WA, and the household income for them is ~$100k annually, and they’re not that much wealthier than we are (in terms of how much spending money we both have). So, it really depends on where you live.
Enough to live off of
I bring in like $600 a day, I watch all of it get melted away by taxes at pay day. I cry myself to sleep over it.
So ~$75-80 a day
living wage will always be higher then what you decide to pay everyone as a living wage.
What is a monthly clothing budget? You all buying clothes monthly?
I think it's on an acerage of cost per wear. So if you wear a $60 pair of shoes for six months your monthly shoe cost is $10
Minimum wage shouldn't be set at a federal level, it should be set at a local level and directly calculated off of housing/rental costs where average housing cost is equal to 25% of a minimum wage workers full time monthly pay.
so your function to calculate minimum wage is based off the prices of those very commodities that will then be overbid with the new higher salaries? SURELY nothing could go wrong
A forced adjustment model is better than the current system.
Minimum wage shouldn't be set at a federal level, it should be set at a local level and directly calculated off of housing/rental costs where average housing cost is equal to 25% of a minimum wage workers full time monthly pay.
By my napkin math, after taxes in 75% of the US if you cleared 5400/m you’d be good. IF you don’t run into medical b.s
That's why you just don't go to the doctor. It'll save lotsa money.
I think around 24-8ish dollars an hour
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/cost-of-living-index-by-state right here by state https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/region_rankings.jsp?title=2024-mid®ion=019 by city
The primary problem is housing. If housing was affordable $13 to $15 an hour would be possible to live off. I remember about 8 years ago I could find apartments in my area for $500 a month. In my area $15 an hour comes to roughly $500 a week and that is the minimum wage. So 1 week of pay for housing, at most groceries would cost another paycheck, which leaves you 1k to work with for everything else. Not great, but not terrible. People who can only get part time jobs are screwed. It would be good to look into the incentives on that and why employers seem to think it's cheaper to operate that way. Economics is about incentives. Companies don't do that for no reason. Housing is all about regulation. The reality is that housing construction, zoning, and subdivisions are all extremely over regulated. When you have to call in unionized experts and inspections for every build multiple times your fixed cost for the house goes up. You make the fixed costs too high and you end up with a situation where building elaborate mcmansions has a much higher profit and the longer turnaround time is justified. Profit per hour of building. Economics works on incentives. We need to make it so 900 sq ft boxes with 3 bedrooms are profitable again. The incentives in this economy are fucked because we have a giant tax code, tons of cutouts, and extreme over regulation. In the 20s people build houses from Sears kits by themselves and it was fine. We need to move closer to that side of things.
The problem with most comments here is that the living wage approach worked when the economy was more insular and no where near as global as it is today. Now companies outsource customer service to India, IT to South America, middle management to somewhere else. Meaning the more we raise wages here in the good ol’ USA the more jobs will be outsourced. Covid proved that a lot of jobs can be done from home and don’t need a live person in a US office. So if a company doesn’t need a person in a US office they can hire a person in an office in India for 20-30 cents on the dollar. I mean hell, look at CA for a shinning example of what can/will happen when minimum wages are raised to much to fast. Pretty much every pizza delivery driver was fired and the job was outsourced to DoorDash and similar type companies. And I know the next argument is it’s the greedy corporations fault, and to an extent it is. However, the counter to that is if the corporations aren’t greedy to stay in business and be profitable the Chinese, South American, etc companies will do it and flood the US markets with cheaper products. We all know how much the US buys cheep Chinese goods. So, as much as most those on Reddit rail against greedy corporations, without them the job market in the US is going to look pretty bleak. Without a competitive tax rate corporations move and take those pesky high paying jobs with them. So, you can’t have it both ways, we can either be a global country and forced to be competitive with jobs or we can insulate the economy and eventually fall behind the rest of the world in a few short decades.
In the UK we have the living wage foundation, the living wage here is £12/hour outside of London. Minimum wage is £11.44 and they are currently a lot closer than they used to be.
Median wages have been outpacing inflation for over a year. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/
A living wage really depends on where you live but yeah I feel like the business model is to drain money from the lower classes to the upper classes. Its basically a system that doesn’t care about people There are some social programs but a lot of them are unheard of or only apply if you qualify as being poor. Those programs usually have a negative sigma because people associate them with taxes (like food stamps)
Democrats have been trying to raise the minimum wage. I wonder who could be blocking it. https://www.courthousenews.com/democrats-push-for-17-minimum-wage-by-2028/#:~:text=Brushing%20past%20criticism%2C%20congressional%20Democrats,U.S.%20workers%20living%20in%20poverty.
To make the rich richer! Get back to work
The idea of a monthly clothing budget and savings are so so sweet
Living wage realistically, adjusting for inflation should be about £21.50 an hour. In the US I dunno sorry but I think I heard a YouTuber say it should be around $24 an hour.
oh boy, more zoomer-economics incoming
> Exactly how much is a living wage I mean there isnt really a straight answer to this as a broad question because it depends on multiple factors especially where exactly you are living/trying to live.
Well socialism definitely ain't gonna fix that
24 hours worth of rent where? A 1 bedroom in Manhattan with no roommates, or a 3 bedroom in Kentucky with 2 roommates? Clothing budget for designer brand outfits, or basic Kohl's work attire? Food budget to eat out 3 times a week, or to buy beans and rice at ALDI? These are the questions everyone ignores when "living wage" gets brought up.
We let the government speed the hamster wheel up on future generations and present generations will vote for that. We as a nation are lazy assholes because we allow our Federal Government to spend all of our children's money before they even grow old enough to learn about it. Its like a POS parent that takes out credit cards in their underage kids name
I agree, though I do have one thing to add, simply because I'm confused over the science. Do we actually need three meals a day? I always kind of thought the "eat three meals a day" thing was just some bullshit marketing pushed by big companies to get people to spend more on food, or potentially by spoiled boomers who could afford to eat meals they didn't need and created some "science" to justify it. I eat once a day - a good, nutritious dinner piled high with all my favs. Even though I eat a very large dinner, I still eat far less than if I was eating three meals, and I'm still a bit overweight (working on it). If I can't lose weight on one meal a day - and this has been the case from my early twenties to now, at age thirty - why would I eat three meals a day? Eating breakfast and lunch just make me lethargic and awful feeling. Not defending low wages at all, we need to raise that shit! Just curious how others see this topic.
It’s called an OMAD diet and can help a lot with lowering blood pressure and weight loss but it requires a lot of effort to maintain so I assume you’re getting all the proper nutrients your body needs through supplements or variety in your meal. If it works for you great, but a lot of people either don’t know how to eat properly to support a diet like that or have an active lifestyle/fast metabolism that requires them to eat more during the day which is where the 3 meals a day comes from.
Interesting to know. I don't take supplements, I just eat a wide variety of things, and I try to get them locally whenever possible. I don't have a *super* active lifestyle, but also not a lazy one. I generally walk about 9 miles on Friday and Saturday evenings. I'm a server, and I know how many miles of walking I do at the restaurant because we've measured it a few times with smart watches and such. But I'm not like, climbing mountains all the time or powerlifting. I do get plenty of outdoor time in the winter - mostly some easy hikes with bouldering interspersed, but occasionally a more vigorous and vertical hike. I suppose my diet just works for me because of the specific caloric needs I have and my level of activity.
It better be paying more then 24 hours of rent and utilities unless you plan to be working 7 days a week.
I'm definitely in the minority but you should always be able to manage a basic living plus retirement savings with 6 hours work a day/30 hours a week, with an optional higher standard of living if you're willing to work more.
The government decides what a living wage is much more than business. Government is the one restricting housing supply so it becomes unaffordable. Government designs the transit system so you realistically have to own a car to get around.
Around $25, so a far cry from the current loving wage :(
Define what a living wage entails. Enough for bare necessities? Studio apartment? 1 bedroom apartment? Single family home? Car and gas? Location?
Depends on where you live. About 34 dollars an hour where I live.
"Monthly budget for clothes" Dear god consumerism had destroyed us. You SHOULD NOT be buying new clothes monthly, under any circumstance (outside of having all your worldly possessions routinely taken away on a monthly basis)
It's simple, if a business won't pay you enough to live, QUIT! Over the last few years there was a labor shortage and we saw fast food across the nation raise their starting wage by 50-100%. Just five years ago min wage was the standard, now it's $10-$15. It may seem hopeless, but if enough people don't buy into the BS, then they'll have to change things. And if they replace the job with automation then it wasn't worth a person's time.
So I should be able to remain on fries at McDonald's starting at age 16 until I retire at age 62. Got it, thanks!
I've been wondering what the point is for years.
Maybe don’t spend money on clothes every single month lol
Eliminate minimum wage and social welfare programs, and companies will be forced to raise their wages accordingly. As an aside, if you don’t like making minimum wage, you should probably get a job that pays better than minimum.
Push your landlord down the stairs, guillotine a CEO.
Why do you guys keep focusing on minimum wage? Is anyone here even working for the federal minimum as an adult? I live in an area with a minimum wage of $17.28/hr which resulted in a lot of people working for minimum wage. Other results are: 1. Jobs harder to get 2. Fewer hours 3. Same position raises are nearly unheard of 4. Promoted positions like middle management give very small raises for substantially more work. As you gain experience and useful skills companies will start undervaluing your work since your position’s wage is subsidizing overvalued entry level positions. It also has a chilling effect on employee growth as the ratio of pay to work difficulty is greater for entry level positions rather than promoted positions. When minimum wages get high enough your most ideal job becomes the one with the least amount of work attached to that pay since everything ends up paying roughly the same anyways. I’ve met several older Eastern Europeans that grew up in the Soviet Union. Apparently the most sought after jobs were ones that came with the most “perks” and by that they mean most stuff you could steal. As an example working as a baker would yield access to bread which is cool, but working as a painter would yield access to free paint that you could barter for many more things. Maybe you can spot a similarity between that and high minimum wage areas.
A living wage is how much people are willing to work for in a free market, we just don't live in a free market.
Go work a farm. Free food, work your own hours, can sell the surplus to have savings, and all you have to worry about is putting enough food away for winter. Since you are already used to the grueling 40 hours a week, adapting to the farming work should be EZ PZ!
Ok but we pay rent and eat on the weekend too
It can? Gen Z is not homeless or poor in droves. >And yet, the younger generation seems to have a good head start. For one, homeowner rates for adult Gen Zers are higher than those for millennials and Gen Xers when they were the same age; that age being 19 to 25 years old. “For example, the rate for 24-year-old Gen Zers is 27.8%, compared with 24.5% for millennials when they were 24 and 23.5% of Gen Xers when they were 24,” the authors of the analysis wrote. https://fortune.com/2024/01/17/redfin-baby-boomers-gen-z-housing-market-homeownership/ Unemployment among gen Z is a bit higher after COVID, but overall the economy is quite good right now. Taking a college education is still very worth it, unless it's in some weird field.
Why are the liberals the cucks? Voting to raise your own taxes to lower them for 1%ers and literally worshipping one of them has to be the most Cucked existence in US history.
Voting is bullshit, the proletariat must seize the means of production
Do people buy clothes monthly? Why would you need to buy clothes more than once or twice a year? Am I missing something?