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Mapping the Hourly Wage Needed to Rent a 2-Bedroom Apartment in Every U.S. State

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Re: Mapping the Hourly Wage Needed to Rent a 2-Bedroom Apartment in Every U.S. State

#21

Post by neuromancer2701 »

Brendinooo wrote: post #10

This sort of stuff rubs me the wrong way. I live about 20 minutes outside of Pittsburgh. When I graduated college 6 years ago, I held down a restaurant job while doing an internship that would eventually lead to my first full-time job in my field. I had a roommate who worked at a hotel. We found a two-bedroom apartment (a house split into 3 units) that was going for $425/month plus utilities. Because we split, I had…

In additional most of these lower wage job should be for younger high school age or college students. A grown adult(lets say 25) shouldn't be working the entry level position at MickeyD's. That should be an outlying case and policy shouldn't be decided on corner cases.

Youth unemployment is significantly higher than the national average and if wages are mandated even higher then no one will take the chance on a 15 year old.

Re: Mapping the Hourly Wage Needed to Rent a 2-Bedroom Apartment in Every U.S. State

#22

Post by frogpelt »

mhurron wrote: post #7
mrestko wrote: post #3

The article doesn't address why the hourly wage for 2-bedroom is relevant in relation to say, a 1-bedroom, studio, or mansion. Looking briefly at the BLS data, it seems that there are about equal numbers of single- and double-earner households. It's not clear to me that a single-earner household should expect to be able to rent a two bedroom apartment.

How dare single parent families expect to live somewhere decent.

They should expect to live somewhere decent. They should also expect to be responsible for making sure they have marketable skills and enough money to afford it.

Re: Mapping the Hourly Wage Needed to Rent a 2-Bedroom Apartment in Every U.S. State

#23

Post by frogpelt »

carlg wrote: post #9

The idea that you could calculate a meaningful number like this for the entire state is absurd. Perhaps if you could drill down into county or zipcode this would be more useful.

Using average or even median rent is not that meaningful either. Some people pay high rent by choice not because there aren't other options.

Re: Mapping the Hourly Wage Needed to Rent a 2-Bedroom Apartment in Every U.S. State

#24

Post by toomim »

The argument here is comparing the AVERAGE rental price with the MINIMUM wage, and then concluding that the minimum wage is less than the average rental?

Well no shit!

States that have rich people will have a higher average. But there are also plenty of cheap 2-bedroom apartments too!

Why don't you compare the MINIMUM available 2-bedroom price with the MINIMUM wage? Then you can see if our poor can afford to live.

Re: Mapping the Hourly Wage Needed to Rent a 2-Bedroom Apartment in Every U.S. State

#25

Post by forgottenpass »

Someone else already has already done the work for me, and written a bunch of reasons why the conclusions people tend to draw from this less-meaningful-than-you-think set of datapoints are faulty:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/04/lies-damned-lies-and-fa...

Re: Mapping the Hourly Wage Needed to Rent a 2-Bedroom Apartment in Every U.S. State

#26

Post by frogpelt »

pjonesdotca wrote: post #6
mrestko wrote: post #3

The article doesn't address why the hourly wage for 2-bedroom is relevant in relation to say, a 1-bedroom, studio, or mansion. Looking briefly at the BLS data, it seems that there are about equal numbers of single- and double-earner households. It's not clear to me that a single-earner household should expect to be able to rent a two bedroom apartment.

So then by your logic, all the single income families are consigned to only living in one bedroom apartments? This seems like a logic fail to me.

It's not logic fail. It's emotional fail.

Logic fail is claiming there is a logical reason why all single wage earners SHOULD be paid enough to afford a two-bedroom rental in their current location. Emotions might tell you that but logic does not.

Re: Mapping the Hourly Wage Needed to Rent a 2-Bedroom Apartment in Every U.S. State

#27

Post by maxerickson »

bpodgursky wrote: post #14
mhurron wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How dare single parent families expect to live somewhere decent.

This chart wouldn't take into account the various subsidies you would get if you were actually making $13/hr as a single parent -- housing assistance, food stamps, medicaid, welfare itself, etc. The effective income -- after all assistance is accounted for -- is going be far higher than the quoted hourly wage.

At $13 an hour, TANF (the best match on "Welfare") would not be available. $25,000 per year is in the taper for the EIC, but would qualify for ~$2000 each of the first two children and a bit more for a third.

In some states, $25,000 per year would also disqualify a family of 4 from Medicaid (but ACA subsidies would still apply).

Re: Mapping the Hourly Wage Needed to Rent a 2-Bedroom Apartment in Every U.S. State

#28

Post by lotharbot »

Brendinooo wrote: post #10

This sort of stuff rubs me the wrong way. I live about 20 minutes outside of Pittsburgh. When I graduated college 6 years ago, I held down a restaurant job while doing an internship that would eventually lead to my first full-time job in my field. I had a roommate who worked at a hotel. We found a two-bedroom apartment (a house split into 3 units) that was going for $425/month plus utilities. Because we split, I had…

> "the underlying assumption ... seems to be that minimum wage should get you a 2BR apartment"

or, phrased another way, the underlying assumption is that if your labor isn't worth a full 2BR apartment to your employer, you shouldn't be allowed to work for part of it, you should be forced to rely on government entirely.

I think it's a good thing that low-wage employees are partially government-subsidized, not because I like government subsidies, but because I dislike hard thresholds and cutoffs that make people have to jump over a significant gap in order to make small net gains.

And, as you say, there's nothing inherently wrong with not being able to afford a 2BR apartment on your own. My sister can't afford a 2BR apartment, so she lives in a spare room in my house. My friends (teen parents) likewise can't afford a 2BR apartment, so they live in the other spare room in my house. There's certainly an argument to be made for doing more to subsidize corner cases (single unskilled mom with a few kids, no source of child support, etc.) but messing with the minimum wage isn't a particularly effective method.

Re: Mapping the Hourly Wage Needed to Rent a 2-Bedroom Apartment in Every U.S. State

#29

Post by ForHackernews »

neuromancer2701 wrote: post #21
Brendinooo wrote: post #10

This sort of stuff rubs me the wrong way. I live about 20 minutes outside of Pittsburgh. When I graduated college 6 years ago, I held down a restaurant job while doing an internship that would eventually lead to my first full-time job in my field. I had a roommate who worked at a hotel. We found a two-bedroom apartment (a house split into 3 units) that was going for $425/month plus utilities. Because we split, I had…

In additional most of these lower wage job should be for younger high school age or college students. A grown adult(lets say 25) shouldn't be working the entry level position at MickeyD's. That should be an outlying case and policy shouldn't be decided on corner cases. Youth unemployment is significantly higher than the national average and if wages are mandated even higher then no one will take the chance on a 15 ye…

> A grown adult(lets say 25) shouldn't be working the entry level position at MickeyD's. That should be an outlying case and policy shouldn't be decided on corner cases.

Maybe you think they shouldn't be, but statistics show they are. Good jobs are hard to come by and the median age of fast-food workers is 28[0] (meaning half are older than that). It's absolutely not a weird corner case. It's a very common thing, and if we don't want adults with kids working those jobs, we're going to have to reverse decades of economic trends and start creating lots of better-paying jobs for marginally skilled workers.

[0] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/mcjobs-s...

Re: Mapping the Hourly Wage Needed to Rent a 2-Bedroom Apartment in Every U.S. State

#30

Post by doc_holliday »

neuromancer2701 wrote: post #21
Brendinooo wrote: post #10

This sort of stuff rubs me the wrong way. I live about 20 minutes outside of Pittsburgh. When I graduated college 6 years ago, I held down a restaurant job while doing an internship that would eventually lead to my first full-time job in my field. I had a roommate who worked at a hotel. We found a two-bedroom apartment (a house split into 3 units) that was going for $425/month plus utilities. Because we split, I had…

In additional most of these lower wage job should be for younger high school age or college students. A grown adult(lets say 25) shouldn't be working the entry level position at MickeyD's. That should be an outlying case and policy shouldn't be decided on corner cases. Youth unemployment is significantly higher than the national average and if wages are mandated even higher then no one will take the chance on a 15 ye…

I dunno, I don't think it is an unreasonable aim of society that if you are supplying your labour to someone (why shouldn't this include McD's?), that you are able to at least live a reasonable life.

By that I mean secure accomodation (not large, but comfortable), food and transport.

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