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MIT Living Wage Calculator

livingwage.mit.edu

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Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#111

Post by SideQuark »

still-learning wrote: post #96
losvedir wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a private room is not the same as living alone (having a private apartment/house). I think it's reasonable for young people to have flatmates and share an apartment, for example.

Its reasonable, but as we've advanced humanity in so many other fields (medical, technical, agricultural) why shouldn't the base standard of living also be increasing.

The base standard of living has increased throughout pretty much all of humanity over the past 50 years, and through huge parts of humanity over even 20 years.

Theres also lots more people, and as more people consume more resources it does not follow that better technology in some field will translate to increased every aspect of life.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#112

Post by RobotToaster »

prepend wrote: post #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. Thes…

You're confusing staying alive with living

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#113

Post by adventured »

losvedir wrote: post #77
jrajav wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is a debatable goalpost. It seems more reasonable to me to assume that meeting basic shelter needs includes having a private room to oneself. The only reason to argue otherwise is to try to drive down the wage further, and is that at all neces…

Having a private room is not the same as living alone (having a private apartment/house). I think it's reasonable for young people to have flatmates and share an apartment, for example.

Historically it's reasonable for anybody to have roommates. It's a modern scenario where having your own place is supposed to be the standard.

Historically housing was much smaller. And people lived with their families for a lot longer commonly. A lot less was also spent on domestic appliances (not just washer & dryers) and at-home entertainment (a lot less was spent on entertainment in general).

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#114

Post by cbdevidal »

The problem with defining “living wage” is you must trust that the person defining it has your best interests in mind, and is calculating it while including _your_ needs.

For example, you don’t want me to be the one to define “living wage.” I’ve been a prepper/bushcrafter for 20 years… the ACTUAL “living wage” is _zero_. There are innumerable resources all around you if you know how to find and use them.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#115

Post by zozbot234 »

throwway120385 wrote: post #110
zozbot234 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that someone is mostly government, which is a growing and increasingly wasteful fraction of GDP. We really need to start reining in the national debt and government spending. Drain the swamp.

No, it's rentiers. The government takes about a quarter but the rentiers easily take 2 times as much in interest, monthly fees, and other costs that I have to pay in perpetuity. You just don't consider that because you think those people are necessary for living a good life. In reality their purpose is to extract as much money from you for as little work as possible.

Yes, the rent is too damn high. The way to address that is BUILDING MORE! Which is what YIMBY is all about.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#116

Post by etchalon »

bumby wrote: post #80
etchalon wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My household food costs are about 20% more than what the calculator shows (and that's a very minimal budget) Behold, "averages" are not perfect.

Are you following the USDA thrifty food plan like the methodology assumes?

I don't perfectly weigh our groceries every week to hit the exact counts they recommend, no.

But we stick to the essentials, utilize different stores for the lowest prices we can get, and don't purchase nonsense.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#117

Post by marcyb5st »

changoplatanero wrote: post #47
burkaman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single nation on Earth has mandatory paid vacation, except for the United States and three tiny islands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b... . Edit: And looking into it a little, I'm pretty sure two of those islands actually do have mandatory paid leave after a minimum period of employment.

I don't get what the big deal is about mandatory paid vacation. My view is that your total compensation will be set based on the market value of your labor. Some portion of that compensation is given to you in the form of ordinary wages and some portion in the form of paid vacations. If the government mandated paid vacations would it increase many people's total compensation?

In my European mind (I have 25 mandated days off per year), if there was not a mandatory paid vacation limit two things would happen:

1. Further exploit desperate people since those that don't need to work at any cost would steer clear of jobs that have 0 holidays. 2. You would further penalize people with families where both parents work. It is well understood that if your kid is sick you can't really use your sick days and so must use your PTO days. Having 0 available days doesn't play well with having kids (personal experience).

And finally, having mandated PTO allow you to actually take holidays. I heard too many times of companies that offer unlimited PTO and when the employer tries to take some they sabotage him/her or plainly threaten his/her job security.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#118

Post by Jtsummers »

bradlys wrote: post #98

I'm going to base it off of the peninsula (San Mateo County) in the Bay Area for a single person. https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/06081 By my estimations, it's not a great calculator. $2.5k/month for all housing costs. I'm not saying it's not possible to find a studio + utilities but that's not a fun place to live. No AC, no insulation, built for a different climate which was 70 years ago, laundromat or (hopefull…

> This calculator does not include retirement savings, emergency saving, etc. It just assumes you'll comfortably live paycheck to paycheck until you die and never save a dime. In our country, you will not be getting $60k/yr post tax from social security. So, this is a stupid calculator unless you plan to never retire or never experience job loss (max payout is $450/week for unemployment in CA), etc.

It doesn't include those things because those aren't the things that are covered by a "living wage". Living wage sounds like something good, but it's literally just enough to cover what's needed. Can you afford housing, childcare, medical care, transportation for work, etc. It's a low bar, not a good target, for a society to try to hit. It means people at that wage shouldn't be going hungry or without shelter, but they won't necessarily be thriving.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#119

Post by pyrale »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #27
ninalanyon wrote: post #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.

Urban workers in China do 3,744 hours per year; farmers do 2400 hours Norwegian workers do 1,418 hours per year, one of the lowest in the world

> Urban workers in China do 3,744 hours per year

For reference, that's 10:15 per day, 365 days a year. Or 996 without vacations, if you intend to have one day off.

996 has never been a standard work duration for urban workers in China, aside from some tech companies that promoted performative work ethics. And even there, people do take vacations.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#120

Post by burkaman »

changoplatanero wrote: post #47
burkaman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single nation on Earth has mandatory paid vacation, except for the United States and three tiny islands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b... . Edit: And looking into it a little, I'm pretty sure two of those islands actually do have mandatory paid leave after a minimum period of employment.

I don't get what the big deal is about mandatory paid vacation. My view is that your total compensation will be set based on the market value of your labor. Some portion of that compensation is given to you in the form of ordinary wages and some portion in the form of paid vacations. If the government mandated paid vacations would it increase many people's total compensation?

The easiest answer is yes, since many Americans currently earn minimum wage with no paid vacation, minimum wage with mandatory vacation would be an increase in total compensation. I don't know how paid leave regulations impact wage growth in general, I'm sure there is research on this but I didn't immediately find anything.

Another way to think about it: why do we have building codes? We don't want to incentivize builders to cut corners that would risk an electrical fire or falling down in an earthquake or something in order to offer a cheaper price, so we make it illegal. If unsafe buildings are allowed, it makes it difficult for safe builders to stay in the market. Similarly, we don't want to incentivize workers to sell their labor with zero leave in order to offer a cheaper price, because that risks unhealthy and insular communities (literally unhealthy if people can't take sick leave), poor mental health, unhealthy childcare practices, an unhealthy civic environment if people can't take time off to vote or volunteer, etc. The labor market is competitive and people will sacrifice paid leave if they have to, because they need money to live, so we should make it illegal to remove the incentive.

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