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MIT Living Wage Calculator

livingwage.mit.edu

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Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#201

Post by zozbot234 »

bradlys wrote: post #196
bumby wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this then imply some jobs are not intended to supply a living wage? Eg does that quants internship get a lower pay because they are expected to graduate beyond it? If so, how do we define what jobs are stepping stones and which are long-term careers?

I think all full time jobs should at a minimum pay a true living wage where one can live comfortably, save for emergencies, etc. If the job cannot pay that then it shouldn't exist. There are many ways to accomplish this beyond simply raising wages. Better government programs, lower the cost of housing/medical/transportation/food/etc. (these are surprisingly simple but many vested interests don't want this to happen),…

The issue of "which jobs should exist" should be left to the market only. If typical low-end jobs throughout the country pay wages that do not guarantee a minimum living income, the government should simply make up the difference for everyone in a fair way (subject to clawback rates as earned income increases, in order to keep the overall arrangement viable).

(Lowering the cost of essential goods and services is also something that can be done by leveraging the open market. It doesn't take yet another wasteful government program, which is the typical approach in socialist and social-democrat countries.)

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#202

Post by mothballed »

kibwen wrote: post #167
prepend wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s obviously not required based on the evidence of many people who live and thrive without. $9000/year is a ton more than just having a car.

The average total cost of car ownership in the US in 2025 was about $12,000. $9,000 is already a huge underestimate of what the average person is paying.

I lived in a blizzard ridden area using just a 250cc motorcycle, year round, including riding it on the interstate. Layer enough layers, use heated gloves, etc you can easily get by with just a ninja 250, you're not going to burn more than $3-4k a year on that no matter hard you try.

You don't actually need a car unless you have a child or a tradesmen with tools or something like that, a small displacement motorcycle will still take you to 99.9% of the jobs in the lower 48.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#203

Post by [deleted] »

twoodfin wrote: post #197

This has been posted many times before, and AFAICT it’s fundamentally misleading, as it doesn’t account for transfer payments (refundable tax credits, food stamps, housing vouchers, ACA subsidies, …) That artificially inflates the “wage level” needed for the estimated living standard. It also makes the tax figures absurd. No two-parent, two-kid household making $110K is paying 15% of that net in taxes, subtracting de…

[deleted]

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#204

Post by etchalon »

bumby wrote: post #143
etchalon wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I agree that the very term "averages" implies "an average".

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#205

Post by legitster »

jltsiren wrote: post #145
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 other…

> Households that have to share housing with others have always been characterized as unusually poor, no matter the continent and the millennium.

Historically speaking this is incredibly wrong.

Nearly every culture evolved from some sort of shared communal longhouse to individual clan homes, to extended family homes. The idea of individual private rooms actually comes about explicitly from Manors in the late medieval ages. We really didn't see widespread individual homes until the industrial revolution. In places like the East, individual rooms were an import from the West.

Even in rare places where there were individual family homes (Ancient Egypt, for one). Privacy and individuality were just not concepts. Through the 1800s, you might have literally been sharing a bed with a stranger in a hotel.

There has also never, ever been a point in human history where living without some sort of roommate was common. Even in situations where you had lots of single workers, they almost always lived in bunkhouses or SROs.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#206

Post by daveguy »

twoodfin wrote: post #197

This has been posted many times before, and AFAICT it’s fundamentally misleading, as it doesn’t account for transfer payments (refundable tax credits, food stamps, housing vouchers, ACA subsidies, …) That artificially inflates the “wage level” needed for the estimated living standard. It also makes the tax figures absurd. No two-parent, two-kid household making $110K is paying 15% of that net in taxes, subtracting de…

A lot of the safety net also goes poof if you have the living wage. So I'm not sure exactly how your argument works. Are you saying the minimum wage should be under the poverty wage and everyone with that wage should depend on safety nets as it is now?

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#208

Post by legitster »

usui wrote: post #152
legitster wrote: post #130

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 h…

It needs to be because the US has leaned further into individualism relative to other countries. If society's golden metric of success means being able to acquire all of these luxuries or services purely through monetary means as transactional individuals, don't be too surprised when the expenses rack up.

I think it also reflects a lense of US academia. It kind of assumes a sanitized, formal, self-sufficient life, detached from others - and then assumes anything other than that is an aberration.

It's kind of like the physics joke about assuming a spherical cow in a vacuum.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#209

Post by socalgal2 »

paxys wrote: post #108
socalgal2 wrote: post #74

I think I'm mis-understanding. How is 1 adult + 3 children at $107.95 and 2 adults + 3 children at $63.97 5 people could require more money than 4. You could say in the 2nd case it's $63.97x2 but that doesn't make any sense either because the table also has 1 adult 0 children $29.31 and 2 adults 0 children at $41.81. Clearly they are not doing 2x to that $41.81 as it would be more than the $29.31 at 2x Was this AI ge…

There are separate columns for 2 ADULTS (1 WORKING) and 2 ADULTS (BOTH WORKING). I think you are mixing up the two. And the non-working adult is taking care of children, so reducing childcare expenses.

I am not mixing up the 2

First row, for https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/06075

    | 1 adult                                        | 2 adults (1 working)                          |
    | 0 Children | 1 Child | 2 Children | 3 Children | 0 Children |1 Child | 2 Children | 3 Children |
    | $29.31     | $61.37  | $83.72     | $107.95    | $41.83     | $50.47 | $54.77     | $63.97     |

    1 adult + 0 children  = $29.31
    2 adults + 0 children = $41.83
The only way these numbers make sense if if you assume one income. Then

    1 adult + 3 kids = $107.95
    2 adults + 3 kids = $63.97
Given the first example was one income, this 2nd one makes no sense. 5 people cost more than 4. These numbers are wrong.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#210

Post by bumby »

bradlys wrote: post #196
bumby wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this then imply some jobs are not intended to supply a living wage? Eg does that quants internship get a lower pay because they are expected to graduate beyond it? If so, how do we define what jobs are stepping stones and which are long-term careers?

I think all full time jobs should at a minimum pay a true living wage where one can live comfortably, save for emergencies, etc. If the job cannot pay that then it shouldn't exist. There are many ways to accomplish this beyond simply raising wages. Better government programs, lower the cost of housing/medical/transportation/food/etc. (these are surprisingly simple but many vested interests don't want this to happen),…

I’m not against that idea but there are some knock-on effects we should be careful of. For example, it will make it hard for younger people to get a job. If I have to pay a teenager the same as someone with a decade or more of work experience, that teenager probably won’t get a job.

With a lot of these discussions, we need to be careful about the seductively simple solutions.

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