281–290 of 305 posts
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> US citizens don't get anything good out of their debt Partly because they're paying for drug innovation and defense for other countries.
Nobody asked them to do that lol. Keep coping.
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…
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Sounds like you need to get the government’s definition of appropriate foods changed. And then come back to the question of livability. It must be more nuanced than you say, as millions of people reach old age without sharing your concern.
The definition of appropriate foods is not binary. It’s alright that the government sets a minimum standard of appropriateness and individuals can opt for higher quality than what the government mandates.
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I agree that the very term "averages" implies "an average".
It’s the second time you’ve had a snarky reply so I can’t tell if you’re having a good faith conversation. The average wealth between me and Elon is several hundred billion dollars. That gives you very little information about me. Which is why people can hang too much inference on a simple average. Like Nate Silver said in The Signal and The Noise, the real discussion for the data literate is about uncertainty in mod…
You're able to purchase groceries for your family, for your diet, in your locality, from your available stores, for less than the stated average.
You think the diet should be different, and blame "society!" for the nutrition goals not resulting in a lower budget.
This is not a serious criticism. It is an unverifiable anecdote coupled with generic contrarianism.
The fact some people spend more or less on groceries is already factored into the data, as it's an average of prices. Averages are imperfect. The fact it's an average of prices (instead of spending) makes it slightly better, but anecdotal data doesn't meaningfully contribute to a discussion about it.
The diet, too, is probably imperfect, but the tool needed to normalize costs, not assemble a Costco rice-and-beans nutritionally complete diet to minimize costs.
So I have absolutely no idea what point you're trying to make beyond "I like to sound smart."
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…
Why is it the responsibility of private industry to support a “living wage?” Should we index on a single person living alone? A teenager living with their parents? A single mom of three kids? A single mom with a single disabled kid? Private industry should concentrate on paying people their market wages. Government should tax industries and individuals and provide a safety net. Let me tell you from first hand experie…
> “It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.”
> FDR
It was supposed to be a "living wage".
Letting companies pay less than a living wage and providing a robust government safety net just subsidizes businesses using government tax money. The biggest beneficiaries of this are companies like Wal Mart, who gets effectively subsidized to the tune of $6B+ a year because so many of its employees are on SNAP and similar low income programs[1].
[1] https://www.ufcw.org/press-releases/wal-mart-has-highest-num...
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> Because if they don't, they are externalising the true costs of labour to the government, or the community. Does this mean anything or is it a circular definition? If we decide we'd like people to have at least the standard of living of a single person earning $40/hour, does that make $40/hour the "true cost of labor"? Could we just as easily raise our standards and say $50/hour is the true cost? The living wage is…
No. Prices are not arbitrary; they're determined by market forces. I don't really agree with the idea that the minimum wage should be intended to support an adult (I think our welfare systems should be reformed to eliminate cliffs), but if you set it to the average price of a bunch of stuff in a region it's gonna be an actual number. You can change the set of stuff, but it's much harder to cheat if you actually have…
I'm asking about the sentence I quoted. What makes the living wage the "true cost" of labor? Why consider it to be a cost that private industry should rightfully pay, and if they don't, they're "externalising" it to the government?
By the same logic, isn't nearly all government spending just externalized costs? When the government pays for roads or police, are these also externalized costs that private industry should pay for?
It sounds like a minarchist viewpoint, where government spending is kept to a minimum and services are privatized.
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Why is it the responsibility of private industry to support a “living wage?” Should we index on a single person living alone? A teenager living with their parents? A single mom of three kids? A single mom with a single disabled kid? Private industry should concentrate on paying people their market wages. Government should tax industries and individuals and provide a safety net. Let me tell you from first hand experie…
From when minimum wage was first established: > “It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than…
Everyone loves bringing up Walmart. But should that franchiser who is only netting $70k a year now also be paying $35 an hour?
And again, I find it rich that tech workers living off the tits of VC funding can tsk tsk about companies that need to actually have a profitable business model can’t pay their workers $75k a year (the living wage for Forsyth county, GA) no matter what their job is.
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>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. I don't know many people who would rather live in a house without climate control than an apartment. A house from 1936 with no improvements is worth very little. When purchasing a house like that you'…
>Because 100 years of data says that this is a difference in expectations vs people being poorer. Yeah housing is more expensive than it should be due to regulation but despite that people are still much better off. People would raise a family on a single income. Boomers would work brain dead job and afford more than what a white collar worker can today, not to mention you could change careers when you wanted. Land w…
Why do you have so much certainty about what it's like in the US now vs 70 years ago when you're not American?
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If this is meant to truly calculate the wage someone needs to live, it should at least attempt to assess transfer payments from the government, the same way it estimates living costs.
I'm not sure what part of "the safety net goes away if you have the living wage" you don't understand. The living wage is the wage that you need. Because you're not getting any "transfers" from safety nets at that point. If we had a perfect safety net you could claim any minimum wage, even $0/hr, is the "living wage". But that's not the point. The point is -- what wage would you need to live completely self sufficien…
There are massive tax deductions and credits available to the middle class (and beyond!) for health care, child care, education …
Transfer payments aren’t just for the destitute.
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I don't buy anything in bulk, that isn't a prerequisite. There is no getting around the fact that $12/day buys a lot of good groceries even in expensive cities. Cooking is trivially learned, especially these days with the Internet. The people claiming that eating on $12/day is challenging are really saying that they can't support their affluent lifestyle on $12/day. Which is true! But it reeks of learned helplessness…
I used to live 80 minutes from my workplace and I had to get there by public transport because I didn't have a car, cooking at home and taking my food to work was not always possible, especially during the summer. And I used to live with three other flatmates and we shared a small fridge. I'm not making this up, it was my life a few years ago. I ended up spending more than what I wanted eating out because preparing m…
Are you aware that many people do this every day? This is a solved problem.