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MIT Living Wage Calculator

livingwage.mit.edu

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Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#291

Post by prepend »

lp4v4n wrote: post #213
prepend wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can easily cook all my meals for $12/day. I don’t consider daily or even weekly restaurants part of a necessity for life.

People have commutes and work shifts that don't always allow them to buy food in bulk and cook their own food. Not everybody is like you. Restaurants have never been a necessity for life, but I guess that for a lot of people you should be upper class to eat out once a week.

What about commutes stops you from bringing lunch?

You don’t need to buy food in bulk. Just buy regular food, cook it, and take it to work.

Either take stuff that doesn’t need refridge (pb&j, hummus, etc), or insulated lunchbox, or thermos.

This is not a complicated problem to solve. Ride the bus sometime and look at the lunches people bring long distances.

Eating out isn’t a necessity. But at $12/day food budget you definitely have money left over to eat out every once in a while. And that if you cook only for yourself. If you’re part of a household who can share food, it’s even easier.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#292

Post by claudiulodro »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #287
claudiulodro wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So I ask you the same question, should the minimum wage be $35 in Forsyth County for a single person and should they automatically get a raise to $45/hour if they have a child? 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…

Looks like Forsyth County is the richest county in Georgia and has a median household income of apparently $140k/yr (and median home price of ~$500k), so ballpark something close to that hourly rate does seem necessary if you want to have a median life *within that county*.

But nobody is advocating for setting the minimum wage equal to what it would cost to comfortably live in the wealthiest part of a state.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#293

Post by daveguy »

twoodfin wrote: post #289
daveguy wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The child tax credit phaseout for a married couple is at $400,000 AGI. 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.

The point isn't whether the subsidy is for the destitute. It's whether it matters for incomes below the living wage or poverty wage. You can't buy milk and bread with a school voucher and the meager child tax credit is a pittance compared to the cost of raising a kid. It's just not relevant to wages below a living wage. Also, what makes you think the numbers for living wage with children don't include those pittances? Child tax credit would make about a $1/hr difference even if it isn't accounted for. We still have a complete failure of a safety net and a failure of basic minimum wage in the US.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#294

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

claudiulodro wrote: post #292
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I ask you the same question, should the minimum wage be $35 in Forsyth County for a single person and should they automatically get a raise to $45/hour if they have a child? 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…

Looks like Forsyth County is the richest county in Georgia and has a median household income of apparently $140k/yr (and median home price of ~$500k), so ballpark something close to that hourly rate does seem necessary if you want to have a median life *within that county*. But nobody is advocating for setting the minimum wage equal to what it would cost to comfortably live in the wealthiest part of a state.

So now we want to set it to the poorest county in the state? The middle? Where there are no jobs? Do the people who work at the Walmart in Forsyth not deserve to a “livable wage”?

I didn’t randomly choose Forsyth County. I use to live there.

Or should they have to do an hour commute from a lower cost of living area in metro Atlanta?

What is living wage based on single? Head of household with kids?

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#295

Post by bumby »

etchalon wrote: post #284
bumby wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm being snarky because your criticism of the tool, and its data sources, is a weird form of nut-picking. 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 unverif…

Methodology is THE main criticism of research; it’s the most important piece. It’s more important than nit-picking results or anything else. Unless your the type to believe in starting with a conclusion and working backwards, but that’s bad science.

And that doesn’t mean the method has to be perfect. But if it doesn’t reflect the true problem, or if is too weak to drawn conclusions from, it’s just story-telling.

The point I’m making is we should acknowledge the model assumptions. If we’re saying, for example, a living wage is expected to provide the average car, we need to acknowledge it now becomes the floor and is no longer the “average”. That’s a fine point to debate, but it requires some data literacy that is absent in this discussion.

And, as an aside, if you think snark is somehow justified because someone is criticizing a tool or method in legitimate way that you don’t like, you need to revisit the HN guidelines.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#296

Post by etchalon »

bumby wrote: post #295
etchalon wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm being snarky because your criticism of the tool, and its data sources, is a weird form of nut-picking. 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 unverif…

Methodology is THE main criticism of research; it’s the most important piece. It’s more important than nit-picking results or anything else. Unless your the type to believe in starting with a conclusion and working backwards, but that’s bad science. And that doesn’t mean the method has to be perfect. But if it doesn’t reflect the true problem, or if is too weak to drawn conclusions from, it’s just story-telling. The…

You're not criticizing the methodology. I think you think you are, but you're not.

All you have said is "the average doesn't match my experience" and "diet bad."

Neither of those are methodological criticisms.

They're just saying things.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#297

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

silverlake wrote: post #273
cam_l wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why is it the responsibility of private industry to support a “living wage?” Because if they don't, they are externalising the true costs of labour to the government, or the community. Which is fine, by the way, but they cannot then turn around and oppose the cost of taxation needed for gov programs which support people who aren't receiving that living wage. Nor, and worse still, oppose a living wage and then force…

The true cost of labor is paid for by taxes. The bottom 50% in the US pay little to negative taxes due to government benefits. Most taxes are paid by the rich. Therefore, the true cost of labor is paid for by the rich, rather than by consumers in the form of higher prices.

That always ignore the 8.5%% everyone pays in taxes for FICA that really just goes into the general fund - or the additional 8.1% in taxes that your employer pays in on your behalf. If you are an independent contractor - like even an uber driver is - you pay the entire 16.2%

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#298

Post by [deleted] »

etchalon wrote: post #296
bumby wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methodology is THE main criticism of research; it’s the most important piece. It’s more important than nit-picking results or anything else. Unless your the type to believe in starting with a conclusion and working backwards, but that’s bad science. And that doesn’t mean the method has to be perfect. But if it doesn’t reflect the true problem, or if is too weak to drawn conclusions from, it’s just story-telling. The…

You're not criticizing the methodology. I think you think you are, but you're not. All you have said is "the average doesn't match my experience" and "diet bad." Neither of those are methodological criticisms. They're just saying things.

[deleted]

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#299

Post by twoodfin »

daveguy wrote: post #293
twoodfin wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The child tax credit phaseout for a married couple is at $400,000 AGI. 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.

The point isn't whether the subsidy is for the destitute. It's whether it matters for incomes below the living wage or poverty wage. You can't buy milk and bread with a school voucher and the meager child tax credit is a pittance compared to the cost of raising a kid. It's just not relevant to wages below a living wage. Also, what makes you think the numbers for living wage with children don't include those pittances…

Transfer payments are 15% of GDP, they’re not a “pittance”:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1bE47

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#300

Post by ninalanyon »

downrightmike wrote: post #149
ninalanyon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My assumption was the the US numbers that I quoted mattered, they simply happen to be roughly the same as Norway's.
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