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MIT Living Wage Calculator

livingwage.mit.edu

1–10 of 305 posts

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#3
Pretty good, but not granular enough. For example, the area I grew up in is much cheaper to live in that the metro it is tagged to. The two areas are separated by 15 miles (~24km).

If you live in a large city, then it works great.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#5
Does this base itself on the metric started in 1963, that was eseentially a big guess that 3x starvation level was well off? because we have better numbers now. Avg us salary is 60k, but to take car of the needs of a family of 4, not in starvation range is ~$160k/year

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#6
2080 hours per year! That's 52 weeks of 40 hours per week. It's also inhuman.

Here in Norway we have five weeks of holiday plus various public holidays and only 37.5 hours per week adding up to about 1700 hours per year.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#10
I don’t think this is very accurate. In my county the “living wage” is $26.50 for a single adult with no children.

Many young people I know live on much less than this.

This is more like “optimal wage to live alone in my own apartment with a car.” Which of course, people would like to have but certainly isn’t required to be comfortable.

For example, transportation costs are $9000/year and housing is $20000/year. These are both way more than is necessary.

They need better branding because calling this a living wage is a misnomer and harming their cause.

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