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MIT Living Wage Calculator

livingwage.mit.edu

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Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#141

Post by lp4v4n »

JamesBarney wrote: post #63
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.

They lived in a house or apt with a third the sqft/person that was far more likely to catch fire and didn't have AC. If they had a car they most likely shared it. It was far less safe, didn't have AC, guzzled gas and polluted. Never ate out and spent a third of earnings on cheap grocery store staples. College and healthcare was much cheaper, and they got a lot less of it. We're benefiting greatly from the increase in…

>They lived in a house or apt with a third the sqft/person that was far more likely to catch fire and didn't have AC.

But at least they could afford a house, right? I think a lot of people would accept living in a house without AC and more likely to catch fire. Is a house like that cheap today? No, right? It's crazy expensive as well.

>If they had a car they most likely shared it. It was far less safe, didn't have AC, guzzled gas and polluted.

Car technology in the past was worse, we know that. Cars were more affordable though.

>Never ate out and spent a third of earnings on cheap grocery store staples.

Like today then.

>We're benefiting greatly from the increase in productivity. We just view our great-grandfather luxuries as our necessities.

Young people are rotting at home unable to go ahead with their lives because wages nowadays are not enough to pay for a house and a family. Why do people try to deny this obvious reality? Productivity didn't benefit everyone equally and people in the past had more opportunities to build a life inside a standard that was socially acceptable.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#142

Post by Aurornis »

reactordev wrote: post #137
Aurornis wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet this says housing costs annually would be $12000. How? Having roommates is extremely common. There are also a lot of room-for-rent situations that don’t show up on the websites listing apartments. If you’re tapped into local networks of younger people there’s always someone with a room for rent or a group of friends looking for someone to take over a room in a house they’re renting together. Not helpful for som…

Roommate listings are for $1000/mo. I still think it’s grossly under what a typical person would need.

Read the second half of my comments: You're not going to find these roommate situations on public websites. The publicly listed ones are intentionally high.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#143

Post by bumby »

etchalon wrote: post #116
bumby wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would you agree that large uncertainties can bring into question the validity of a model?

Ie “averages” with large variances are not often very informative

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#144

Post by cozzyd »

gs17 wrote: post #73
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…

> For example, transportation costs are $9000/year and housing is $20000/year. These are both way more than is necessary. Even on the smaller things. "Internet & Mobile" for where I am jumped out to me. Based on the difference between 1 adult and 2 adults, it's $582 per person-year for mobile (which I guess isn't far off if you get a good new phone every 2 years, it's reasonable enough) and with that subtracted, inte…

yeah, I spend $30/month on internet (the 100 Mbps Google Fiber, since I realized I didn't really need 1 Gbps at home now that I go into the office every day...)

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#145

Post by jltsiren »

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…

"Living wage" means what a household needs for a dignified life, not just for bare subsistence.

If you need roommates because you can't afford an apartment on your own, you are poor by definition. That's probably the most universal definition of poverty that has ever existed. As long as there have been houses, the baseline household has had a housing unit of their own. Households that have to share housing with others have always been characterized as unusually poor, no matter the continent and the millennium.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#146

Post by cucumber3732842 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #63
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.

They lived in a house or apt with a third the sqft/person that was far more likely to catch fire and didn't have AC. If they had a car they most likely shared it. It was far less safe, didn't have AC, guzzled gas and polluted. Never ate out and spent a third of earnings on cheap grocery store staples. College and healthcare was much cheaper, and they got a lot less of it. We're benefiting greatly from the increase in…

All you've done here is take the tired dishonest "kids these days and their darn avocado toast and smartphones" trope and used different goods/services to spin it in a way to appeal to the median commentor on HN.

You're ignoring the gorilla in the room. Why can't one live in a comparable manner today and bank the difference? Because those things aren't available? Why aren't those things available?

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#147

Post by jandrewrogers »

burkaman wrote: post #20
renewiltord wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, oil nations are different. Norway's resources are well-managed, but oil nations with outsourced defence just have different constraints.

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.

Mandatory vacation, like education, mandatory IDs, and myriad other laws are the sole jurisdiction of the individual States to decide. There will never be a "US" law about these things. Most questions that start with "why is the US the only country..." can be explained by the fact that the States decide and the US government can't force the States to make laws.

Similarly, there is no US law against most crimes. It doesn't mean those laws don't exist in every State.

That said, there is no State with mandatory paid vacation either AFAIK.

Given the political diversity of the States, this suggests that mandatory paid vacation is either not considered an important issue by people across the political spectrum or there are existing regulations that would create real problems if there paid vacation was mandated without changing those regulations first.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#148

Post by the_gastropod »

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?

Unless you have a union, there's a dramatic power imbalance between you (the employee) and the employer at the negotiating table. I'd urge you to read up about the 19th century labor movement and what conditions prompted it.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#149

Post by downrightmike »

ninalanyon wrote: post #22
downrightmike wrote: post #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

How can you need that much money to not starve? According to Wikipedia[1] median household income in the US and Norway is only about a quarter of your 160 kUSD. I'm pretty sure that most of the people living near me in Norway are not high earners but I don't see any signs of starvation either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

USA site. USA metrics. USA Comment. I vote to get the same things you all have, but your assumption is that Norway matters in this context is foolish

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#150

Post by zozbot234 »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #146
JamesBarney wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They lived in a house or apt with a third the sqft/person that was far more likely to catch fire and didn't have AC. If they had a car they most likely shared it. It was far less safe, didn't have AC, guzzled gas and polluted. Never ate out and spent a third of earnings on cheap grocery store staples. College and healthcare was much cheaper, and they got a lot less of it. We're benefiting greatly from the increase in…

All you've done here is take the tired dishonest "kids these days and their darn avocado toast and smartphones" trope and used different goods/services to spin it in a way to appeal to the median commentor on HN. You're ignoring the gorilla in the room. Why can't one live in a comparable manner today and bank the difference? Because those things aren't available? Why aren't those things available?

> Why can't one live in a comparable manner today and bank the difference?

You can do this. Just move to a sparsely populated area and work remote. Rural and semi-rural areas are basically the "poor", lower productivity areas within any given country, if you can arbitrage the incomes difference via remote work you stand to gain quite a bit.

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