81–90 of 305 posts
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> This is more like “optimal wage to live alone in my own apartment with a car.” An appartment and a car aren't exactly luxury goods. Cars are often needed to work, and well, having a roof over your head is usually required for a decent living. Sure, if you fancy living in a cardboard box located next to your work, your living standards are going to be much easier to attain.
This is such a US centric take.
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"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.
Housing data is flawed. Even if you’re single, no kids, you’re limited to what is available and 1 bedrooms in my state can’t be had for less than $1500/mo anywhere in the state. Yet this says housing costs annually would be $12000. How? I think the data this is based off of is super stale.
I'm guessing it uses the cost of a studio for a single person.
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Urban workers in China do 3,744 hours per year; farmers do 2400 hours Norwegian workers do 1,418 hours per year, one of the lowest in the world
3744 hours. Dayum! Just going off basic numbers: - 3744/52/5 = 14.4 hour day if they work 5 days a week - 3744/52/6 = 12 hrs if they work 6 days a week - 3744/52/7 = 10.3 hrs if they work 7 days a week.
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Yeah, oil nations are different. Norway's resources are well-managed, but oil nations with outsourced defence just have different constraints.
I’m not sure that’s the key factor. Resource wealth helps, but it doesn’t automatically translate into shorter workweeks or generous leave. Countries with far fewer natural resources—such as Germany, the Netherlands, or Denmark—still manage shorter working hours, strong labor protections, and substantial paid vacation. Those outcomes depend much more on labor policy, bargaining power, and what governments choose to p…
Where do you think the term "Dutch disease" came from?
Housing data is flawed. Even if you’re single, no kids, you’re limited to what is available and 1 bedrooms in my state can’t be had for less than $1500/mo anywhere in the state. Yet this says housing costs annually would be $12000. How? I think the data this is based off of is super stale.
I never rented a 1-bedroom apartment until I was married. A studio/efficiency is fine for singles, or even a room.
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
Put in an area and see for yourself. In general, yes this calculator is closer to what you're describing. For example, Skamania County, a pretty rural county of Washington state with a very low population of 12,000 people, still has a "required living wage" for 1 breadwinner + 1 homemaker + 3 children of $104,292 per year: https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/53059 That feels pretty close to accurate.
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.
Yeah, oil nations are different. Norway's resources are well-managed, but oil nations with outsourced defence just have different constraints.
Anecdotally, I found some of the costs like food and food to be inflated. When I looked at the methodology, some is based on consumer surveys so it may be more reflective of over-consumption. In other words, it prices in what people want or what they’re used to, not what they need. The counterpoint is that maybe some wealthy countries should be pricing in a higher quality of life, but the “living wage” then becomes a…
Yes, that's what makes it a living wage instead of a poverty wage, let alone a starvation wage.
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> 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 neces…
Having a private room is not the same as living alone (having a private apartment/house). I think it's reasonable for young people to have flatmates and share an apartment, for example.
These are all real situations that make me think that pinning "living wage" to a level where you have to have roommates is not a good goal. You're basically asking people to survive by accepting unstable living conditions and potentially taking strangers into their homes, which isn't exactly "having your needs met."