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Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

money.yahoo.com

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Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#91

Post by bombcar »

nostrebored wrote: post #53
reilly3000 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I pulled a quote from an article that referenced that link, but in retrospect that landing page wasn’t citing my claim very well. The full report on page 17 shows hours needed to work per week to afford a 1BD apartment at minimum wage. The 93% number came from a prior year. > No local minimum wages are sufficient to afford a one-bedroom rental home at the Fair Market Rent with a 40 hour work week. https://nlihc…

Even their infographic doesn't align. You can see plenty of shades for the 40hr workweek. Note that they don't break down the state by state summary for 1BR. I personally know people living alone in low minimum wage major cities who defy this suggestion. Sure, not always in glamorous places. But I'm willing to bet across most of the east coast of the US you'll find counterexamples.

You can also see something interesting - at least in my state it shows a four bedroom as being about twice a "zero bedroom" - hence roommates likely are occurring.

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#92

Post by eurasiantiger »

joeberon wrote: post #71
eurasiantiger wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t compare things like that. 60% of your income is going straight into funding someone else’s investments and you have no choice but to pay. It is a sickness, a malaise of society.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Sure, I don't like landlords as a "profession", but on the other hand it is not unaffordable, which was the point in the article. It is a mistake to conflate whether or not it is morally okay to whether or not it is affordable. Even if it were affordable that doesn't mean that it is okay. Then again, in terms of my own life and living situation, I honestly can say I do not mind re…

The situation:

A) people need undisturbed shelter and a feeling of continuity to feel psychologically safe enough to commit to meaningful life

B) undisturbed shelter is a privilege that comes at a premium

C) we do not allow people to construct their own undisturbed shelter unless they pay various kinds of premiums

A + B + C => van life

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#93

Post by bryanrasmussen »

bojangleslover wrote: post #88
danaris wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. If that were true, it would be legally specified as "the minimum wage you can pay to someone without a family." Minimum wage was always intended to be a living wage. It just hasn't kept pace with inflation for the last several decades. There is absolutely nothing that makes it harder to pay someone with a family minimum wage, or easier for someone with a family to get a job with a better wage.

That's because having a family is a choice, plain and simple, and this would incentivize having more kids to get paid more.

also people who have families will never lose jobs and have to take minimum wage jobs, or condoms fail, or anything else inconvenient, so everybody better plan their lives well, because good planning keeps accidents from happening. Just look at any software development project!

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#94

Post by danaris »

bombcar wrote: post #90
danaris wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because many, many people are paid minimum wage: wages are not the same kind of distribution as prices. I don't know exact figures, but I'm absolutely certain that if you plotted the distribution of wages, you'd see a hugely disproportionate number at or just above the minimum wage. Y'know, because there's an artificial pressure (the law) preventing anyone from paying less. Housing prices, meanwhile, are not subject…

Everything I'm seeing indicates there's a "hump" starting at minimum wage and increasing to an amount around $20 an hour, where it begins dropping again, but I've only found state-wide graphs such as https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2018/sep/images... (Australian) I guess a minimum of 15 and a hump at 20 would be "at or just above" but 25% is a decent amount.

Well, and remember that in the US (which is where the article is about), minimum is less than half that.

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#95

Post by Volundr »

bojangleslover wrote: post #77
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They also are not arbitrarily constrained to follow good budgeting guidelines which specify not more than 30% of income to housing. poor people are not arbitrarily constrained to spend only 30% of their income for housing? Well that's true I guess, but I mean there's a reason why 30% is assumed as being good budgeting practice. >the arrangement which I very comfortably made it through grad school in is apparently no…

>I am an adult with a family Minimum wage is not meant to support a family

"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." - Franklin Roosevelt 1933

Personally I including having a family in a "decent living", and given the standards of the 1930s where women were generally expected to be homemakers I doubt Roosevelt intended this quote to suggest two working parents.

I realize that a segment of the population has been working to redefine the minimum wage and what it's for, telling us that it's for teenagers who don't need a living wage, but let's be clear: at it's inception minimum wage was supposed to provide a family a comfortable living.

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#96

Post by ac29 »

kortilla wrote: post #63
mft_ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Minimum wage is not the problem as this article seems to imply. People move up from those starter jobs, they don't stay there forever. [citation needed] The phrase 'starter job' may indicate where you're coming from, attitudinally. For many people, of all ages, there aren't starter jobs - they're the only attainable jobs. And I suspect many people bounce around between different similarly-poorly-paid jobs, without…

> For many people, of all ages, there aren't starter jobs - they're the only attainable jobs. Citation? I have family members that weren’t very ambitious and they work in these jobs. However, they don’t make minimum wage because nearly every company offers some raises for people who just consistently show up for 6 months+ straight. In order to be stuck at minimum you have to additionally have stability issues or issu…

> I have family members that weren’t very ambitious and they work in these jobs. However, they don’t make minimum wage because nearly every company offers some raises for people who just consistently show up for 6 months+ straight.

But what kind of raises? Starting at minimum wage and grinding out a 25c/hr raise each year for a decade is still going to leave you in poverty. No one starts at $8/hr and is making $35/hr for the same position 6 months later.

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#97

Post by danaris »

hh3k0 wrote: post #61
nostrebored wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An average household budget doesn't have a single earner. When you're broke, you have roommates. In more expensive places, until you find a partner to live with you often have roommates. This isn't a bad thing.

> This isn't a bad thing. Counterpoint: It absolutely is.

The way our society is set up right now, it is.

Our society right now is an outlier. Throughout most of history, people lived much more communally than we do now, and there is good reason to be trying to move back toward that; however, that's a pretty major shift, and it's not going to happen overnight. It's also probably outside of the scope of this discussion.

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#98

Post by joeberon »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #92
joeberon wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Sure, I don't like landlords as a "profession", but on the other hand it is not unaffordable, which was the point in the article. It is a mistake to conflate whether or not it is morally okay to whether or not it is affordable. Even if it were affordable that doesn't mean that it is okay. Then again, in terms of my own life and living situation, I honestly can say I do not mind re…

The situation: A) people need undisturbed shelter and a feeling of continuity to feel psychologically safe enough to commit to meaningful life B) undisturbed shelter is a privilege that comes at a premium C) we do not allow people to construct their own undisturbed shelter unless they pay various kinds of premiums A + B + C => van life

Okay, cool, I agree that trying to live in this world can suck. Not sure how that's relevant to this discussion though.

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#99

Post by eurasiantiger »

joeberon wrote: post #98
eurasiantiger wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation: A) people need undisturbed shelter and a feeling of continuity to feel psychologically safe enough to commit to meaningful life B) undisturbed shelter is a privilege that comes at a premium C) we do not allow people to construct their own undisturbed shelter unless they pay various kinds of premiums A + B + C => van life

Okay, cool, I agree that trying to live in this world can suck. Not sure how that's relevant to this discussion though.

Well, maybe if we actually did something about crime, life wouldn’t have to suck for so many people.

Re: Renting 'is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in every state,' study finds

#100

Post by nostrebored »

ChrisLTD wrote: post #78
nostrebored wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An average household budget doesn't have a single earner. When you're broke, you have roommates. In more expensive places, until you find a partner to live with you often have roommates. This isn't a bad thing.

The point is, these people shouldn’t be broke. After all, they have full-time work.

Broke is an expression here. I've lived in places where people are truly impoverished and I've lived in US cities with low minimum wage.

The difference is massive.

The fotm is life is better for poor people in the US now than it was even 50 years ago.

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