Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MIT Living Wage Calculator

livingwage.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 305 posts

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#121

Post by FrustratedMonky »

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…

“optimal wage to live alone in my own apartment with a car.”

If you can't live alone with a car? Then what do you think you are doing?

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#122

Post by Aunche »

jrajav wrote: post #45
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…

> 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…

> Renting a private room was possible on nearly any wage 50 years ago, and the only reason it seems out of reach for many now is because purchasing power has been slowly stagnating for decades

50 years ago, in high cost of living areas, you could rent an SRO, but now they're either banned or practically banned because they're strongly disincentivized against. Combine this with not building enough new housing and you get a recipe for rent increases. Even if a minimum wage works as intended, it can only subsidize demand, which would do nothing when the bottleneck is the supply.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#123

Post by bradlys »

zozbot234 wrote: post #115
throwway120385 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As long as collusion exists, I don't see this changing. Manhattan is more expensive than it was a 100 years ago but less people actually live there now. Not a little less either - 700,000 people less. We've built way more housing at the same time. And yes, people have more square footage per person now but the housing doubled and the population went down dramatically.

Rent is always going to go up there even if they build more. Same in other places. As long as rent setting tools exist to collude - we will see the rent not go down. You're not gonna dump $100m in new buildings and not maximize your return.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#124

Post by istillcantcode »

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…

I have found if you scroll all the way to the right, you get the living wage with multiple roommates and bumming a ride to work or waiting for the bus. My area most of the full-time entry level fast food/Walmart/gas station jobs pay about a dollar less than that number.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#125

Post by irishcoffee »

imperio59 wrote: post #75
pyrale wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is more like “optimal wage to live alone in my own apartment with a car.” An appartment and a car aren't exactly luxury goods. Cars are often needed to work, and well, having a roof over your head is usually required for a decent living. Sure, if you fancy living in a cardboard box located next to your work, your living standards are going to be much easier to attain.

This is such a US centric take.

Dell me you didn’t click the link without… ah fuck it who cares, almost nobody around here does.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#126

Post by digiown »

0sdi wrote: post #24

Someone is siphoning your value. It's quite obvious when you track the productivity, or ask questions about how did your great-grandpa survive at all without machines. Just stating the obvious, don't mind me.

It's rent seeking, the antithesis of capitalism. It's always been. Enabled by abuse of government power. And no, it's not a partisan issue.

You see this pattern across the American economy. The boomers locked in their house values by passing all the zoning regulations to artificially restrict the supply of housing. AMA artificially restricts the supply of doctors to increase their wages. Accreditation pushed ever higher costs on universities which increased costs, and the availability of loans basically cut off the brake cable. And who do you think is really benefitting from all the companies enshittifying everything and pushing up costs? The billionaires and retirees of course. And the young/working people are paying for it.

The solution for individuals is arbitrage. Remote work, get healthcare abroad, and avoid college tuitions. The fact that these things make sense at all shows how broken the markets are.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#127

Post by kevinyang222 »

beambot wrote: post #84
racl101 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3744 hours. Dayum! Just going off basic numbers: - 3744/52/5 = 14.4 hour day if they work 5 days a week - 3744/52/6 = 12 hrs if they work 6 days a week - 3744/52/7 = 10.3 hrs if they work 7 days a week.

That is, indeed, what 9-9-6 means: 9am-9pm (12hrs) * 6 days per week.

9-9-6 is also not full productivity for 9-9-6.

Office workers will eat lunch, take a 1-2hr nap in the afternoon, and also eat dinner with their coworkers within the common 9-9-6 rhythm. It still takes a significant chunk of time, but the actual working time butt-in-chair is closer to 54 hours

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#128

Post by FrustratedMonky »

andiareso wrote: post #32
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…

I disagree. Living wage is not minimum wage.

That is the point isn't it.

The minimum wage is far below what it takes to actually 'live', like have a place to live and a car.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#129

Post by pyrale »

imperio59 wrote: post #75
pyrale wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is more like “optimal wage to live alone in my own apartment with a car.” An appartment and a car aren't exactly luxury goods. Cars are often needed to work, and well, having a roof over your head is usually required for a decent living. Sure, if you fancy living in a cardboard box located next to your work, your living standards are going to be much easier to attain.

This is such a US centric take.

Because the calculator is an US-only calculator.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#130

Post by legitster »

The older I get the more I realize how fraught the idea of a "living wage" is.

Through mid life, your financial health is not as determined by wages, but by your family/connections. Do you have access to a grandmother who can babysit? A decent second-hand car? A good roommate situation? Just look at the expense table - any one of these things could be worth up to 20% of your income!

And you see that literally right here - are any of us actually comfortable with the idea that the value of your labor should be determined by your marriage status and number of children?

It's kind of telling that countries with "successful" minimum wages either don't have one and just institutionalize collective bargaining, or they do some fancy calculations that start with prevailing median wages and welfare eligibility. The idea of trying to get this number from the bottom up by building expenses just doesn't seem very robust.

Post reply on HN