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MIT Living Wage Calculator

livingwage.mit.edu

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Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#41

Post by sedatk »

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.

The web site also makes that distinction: living wage, poverty wage, and minimum wage.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#42

Post by etchalon »

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

Norway has many wonderful things American voters are terrified of giving people less they use them.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#43

Post by adam_beck »

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.

It would be interesting to know which percentage of full-time jobs in the USA get no paid vacation.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#44

Post by bumby »

etchalon wrote: post #35
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 the ability to live, not scrape by with the bare minimum possible.

I feel like I’ve eat pretty well, and my household food costs are almost half what the calculator shows. Similar for vehicle costs etc.

After looking at the method, I think the calculator probably has some bias towards “what society has convinced us we need”. To a certain extent that is a relative and subjective perception problem, and one exacerbated when you live in a society with a lot of consumer debt.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#45

Post by jrajav »

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 necessary? 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, while housing costs have soared in recent times. Yet this whole time, GDP continues to rise. It seems that our society can easily support much higher minimum wages (and this would likely have only a positive effect of stimulating the economy), but simply chooses not to.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#46

Post by chasd00 »

ninalanyon wrote: post #6

2080 hours per year! That's 52 weeks of 40 hours per week. It's also inhuman. Here in Norway we have five weeks of holiday plus various public holidays and only 37.5 hours per week adding up to about 1700 hours per year.

I think they just do that to get to an hourly rate. It’s probably better to look at the annual income and think of that number regardless of how many hours you worked during the year.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#47

Post by changoplatanero »

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.

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?

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#48

Post by dmd »

llmslave wrote: post #39
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.

Yeah I think people need to start asking the question, "Where is the money going". Its not just inexistent, its literally going somewhere other than your pocket.

They're not voting against their own self interest; they just have different interests than you. Their primary interest and goal is making sure their out-group is hurting, and that is what they are voting for, regardless of that happens to them.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#49

Post by cwillu »

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…

You're confusing poverty with living.

Re: MIT Living Wage Calculator

#50

Post by sdellis »

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…

Based on the data sources and the methodology, it looks about as accurate as you could get. They link to their methodology and technical documentation from that site. Even if some resourceful young people you know can get by on less, in general people should not have to live in abject poverty while working a full time job -- I would consider that to be a "Dying Wage".
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