You can afford a 2 bedroom apartment now though. You just need to sleep in your car because you live 300 miles from work.
That is one good thing that WFH did. I know several people who moved from LA to our middle of nowhere town where a nice 3br house is under $150k.
3 bed room houses were $86k in my town 5 years ago. No influx of people have come here, in fact less are moving here because the colleges are struggling, but housing proces have doubled.
Say it with me now: Fuck the family income metric!
FUCK THE FAMILY INCOME METRIC!
how many millions of single people/perpetually single people are out there? We're defining the economic health of our population by a metric that demands a dual income. So yes, 2x the typical salary is enough for a person to get by on. 2 people have to share resources to make ends meet.
For someone like myself who is perpetually and indefinitely single, working full time in a psudo-managment position, it's beyond insulting that I'm "forced" to live in people's basements or garages if I want to keep the slightest glimmer of hope of retirement... A "legitimate" apartment would cost the entirety of my income not even the sadly "typical" 3/4ths.
(don't castrate me for the management thing lol. I'm not the coffee holding office whip cracker, I'm working directly along side my team in a factory doing most of the heavy lifting so they don't need to.)
What older folk often forget is that not only could they easily afford a house in the 60s and 70s, but they likely also could on a single income. Many people nowadays are having trouble affording a house on dual incomes.
Housing keeps going up and couples are now having to split them with other couples just to raise a family. My sister and her fiance live in the basement of a house where his brother and sister-in-law live upstairs with a toddler and twins on the way. They won't have enough room soon and can't afford anything larger, and my sister wants to start having kids soon but the basement isn't exactly larger either.
That's one house for 4 working adults and potentially 4 children, when back in the day you could have a full house with 2 adults and 3-4 children on a single income.
My grandpa worked as a landscaper/gardener and was still able to support his stay-at-home wife and 3 children.
the minimum wage should be enough to afford a house...like it was for boomers.
Genuine question:
Is minimum wage being rent for a 2br/1ba actually the goal? Why?
I assume the idea is to be able to support a family and the sad logic that it often comes out "cheaper" to have one parent work and one stay at home rather than try to afford daycare.
But rent is just a drop in the bucket when you are raising a kid. Which gets back into the mess of how you can afford to have a family on minimum wage.
If the idea is just cost of living then the answer is actually a one bedroom (which would also, theoretically, help with housing shortages). If the idea is to be able to have a family then it needs to be a whole lot higher than a two bedroom (unless you work in NY and commute from one of the last remaining cheap parts of Jersey, I guess?).
This is saying that minimum wage should be enough to afford a 2br apartment. If all your money goes to rent, you can't afford it.
Yeah, ideally rent should be around 1/3rd of your income. In my town, a conservative 2br 1ba apt is gonna cost you about $2000. That means minimum wage would have to be around $34.
Alternatively, with our minimum wage currently at $15.45, that means a two bedroom apartment would have to be priced below $900.
Spoilers: I live in Germany, not the US.
Is minimum wage being rent for a 2br/1ba actually the goal? Why?
I would argue, if you are single, then minimum wage should be enough so that you could afford to live close to where you work in a 1 bedroom apartment. And live comfortably - so that by the end of the month, you don't have to count the change in your pocket. So that you can afford a healthy diet. Some socialising activities. Putting back something for the future.
If you have a kid, it should be enough to afford a two bedroom apartment, whilst you and your kid live comfortably. If you are a couple, one income should still be enough to afford that. If you have x kids, it should be enough to afford an x+1 bedroom apartment.
Why? Because no matter what you work, whether you are in service or fast food or in finance, you still put a significant amount of your daily time doing something you would not do for the sake of it. If you work full time (however this might be defined), no matter what you do, you contribute these hours to society, and this makes you deserving of a life worth living. And especially your kids. Your kids are kids and they have no control in what you work and what family they are born into. But they absolutely deserve to live a livable life. We all do. No matter what we do.
And we cannot all be finance attorneys. I'm not even going to start with the obvious aspects like necessary service work, nurses and other essential workers being underpaid, inequality and inequity, chances etc. I'll just ask this - if a person is really simply not smart enough, if they don't have what it takes to be successful, be it low IQ or mental problems or lack of qualities or whatever - are they not deserving of a life worth living? Why are we even debating this? Should you not be paid proportionally to the time you put in rather than to how much luck you had in Life Lottery?
I mean, I'm not necessarily an advocate of big apartments, let alone houses. I don't really get the idea of every kid needing a room of their own. But as for now, this seems what society deems appropriate (here, you get problems with CPS if brother and sister of a certain age share a bedroom). Therefore, this should be made available - for everyone to the degree that is necessary and appropriate. (I also think sharing an apartment when you are single is a great thing actually, ecologically and socially - but that's not the majority's opinion so nevermind.) This seems to only work if we decouple the idea of income from daily necessities and expenses such as housing and food, but maybe others have better ideas.
It seems grotesque and absurd that a society would allow the question of whether or not to have kids - or how many kids to have - to become an economic one. Like, even for the most greedy capitalist assholes, what exactly is the plan when cheap labor cannot afford to have kids that will then provide cheap labor?
More of a sidenote:
I assume the idea is to be able to support a family and the sad logic that it often comes out "cheaper" to have one parent work and one stay at home rather than try to afford daycare.
It is a sad logic only in the fact that you cannot choose. Where I live it is definitely not cheaper to stay at home. Being able to truly choose whether you want to work or raise your kid yourself (up to a certain age) or a combination of whatever percentage would be freedom. Being financially obliged to do either is shit.
If you stay at home with a baby or a toddler, you are putting less burden on an overloaded childcare system, and you are raising future adults to be healthy, happy, and, from an economic perspective, functioning. You are not exactly having a lot of free time. It is enjoyable and fullfilling but not for everyone (which is why outsourcing a part of it if you don't want to do it 100% is great). You got to be able to handle tantrums and lose your autonomy and perform understimulating activities a lot. Being a stay at home parent, at least for little kids, is not easy. Hell you can't even take a pee break unless they allow it (and when they allow it). You don't have holidays or weekends or nights off. I can't believe this kind of care work is still not financially compensated. And I can't believe that people who want to do that, who want to have kids and stay at home with them and raise them for their first years, just have to pass on all of this because of money.
I get where you're getting at since it's a minimum standard of living. Two bedrooms basically means parents in one room, 1-2 kids in another. With two children being the default. Once you get to three or more, or for people who don't want mixed gender siblings in the same room/heavy age differences, then the two bedroom becomes the three bedroom.
I definitely err on your side of the logic though. That is technically minimum. In reality, there's enough money for that three bedroom, the rich just hoarde it all. Most landlords got nothing to do with that lol.
I am a lot more skeptical of how high a "minimum wage" could even be considering the further automation of even "skilled" fields at this point. Which is why I am a strong advocate for Universal Basic Income to decouple survival from labor.
But if you are fighting the minimum wage fight: At least fight for something that would actually cover cost of living.
Does min wage even support a studio apartment and like other basic needs?
This was more than a decade ago for me. But I worked 2 jobs doing fast food, lived with four roommates, and wasn't able to contribute to my IRA, go on vacation or have much in savings. And where I could have gotten a studio apartment, then I'd downgrade to eating ramen.
I think the idea of the meme is that this should be the bare minimum starting point from which we begin to negotiate higher, via our elected representatives who should be fighting for meaningful improvements to our lives as opposed to increased shareholder value for their donors.
A two bedroom for minimum wage?! Hmmm suppose that's only ridiculous if you think that little should not be allowed to live inside and ALSO eat for working at what should be a living wage
No certain I agree 2 bedroom for minimum, but definitely getting a single bedroom or studio near where they work makes a whole lot of sense.
That sounds ok until you realize how many people have kids at least half time, but no adult partner. And a lot of those people don’t make much above min wage.
Even if they make slightly more than minimum now, a rising tide lifts all ships.
Plus minimum wage was intended to be the lowest single wage a family could be supported on. Just requiring it cover a 2br apartment is a far cry from the original intent
Why don't you agree with the 2 bedroom? Why can't the working class have some leg room?
Fuck it. Let's make it 3 and build a gym for the whole complex while you're at it.
What gingeybook said, with the addendum, if there was an option to bring up minimum wage to allow that wage to rent a 2 bedroom i would totally vote for it over voting against it, because itd better than nothing for sure.
Either raise the minimum wage or restrict rents to meet it.
Minimum wage goes up with inflation with a 1932 basis and rent is restricted to 1/3rd of monthly wages at minimum wage with obvious exeptions for students and those on a fixed income for one bedroom apartments.
Or put in a way that the conservatives can understand: if a person works full time for a company, the tax payers should not have to subsidize that company by supplying the necessary benefits to bridge the pay gap for basic necessities.
(Unfortunately, their leaders would easily convince them how good an idea it is to give tax dollars back to the corporations, and how it is a social good to humiliate lesser people that don’t deserve full personhood, in order to inspire them to be more valuable resources for their employers)
Average in the US for a 2 bedroom is $1317 per statista.
Triple that for a monthly income = $3951
x12 for annual = $47,412
/2080 for hourly full time = $22.79/hr
A 1 bedroom (or 2br with a $200/mo UBI) at $1100ish brings the minimum to $19ish.
A 2 bedroom but working 60hrs/week or using 50% of income on rent instead of 33% is around $15/hr.
Just trying to play around with the numbers to see what a real political proposal might look like. Feels great to meme a declaration, people start disagreeing when you start putting numbers to it.
That's not how supply and demand works. If you raise minimum wage so that it can pay for a two bedroom apartment, then demand for two bedroom apartments will skyrocket pushing the price put of range once more. The only way to do this is to couple the wage increase with artificial availability by creating rent controlled, minimum wage housing.
I live in the "Greater Jackson Hole" metro area which includes two Teton counties. One in Wyoming and one in Idaho (Wydaho). Our area is full of billionaires as well as double and triple digit millionaires. You will never see a "conservative" area with more aggressive nature conservation efforts than here. Why? Because the area is paradise and the billionaires have bought all the land in order to keep it pristine (and get a nice tax break). Unfortunately, everyone tried to move here during and after lockdown and now prices are ludicrous. The thing is that the rich still need services and workers to keep that quality of life up. What was the fix? They built affordable housing for the local workforce. Some of these include store/shop spaces on the first floor for practically zero rent as long as your business is helpful to the community or raises the quality of life. So many artisinal bakeries, coffee shops, yoga/Pilate's studios, high end dog supplies and grooming, cultural artifact shops, etc. Seriously, the entire population of the area is roughly about 30k and I have access to more top tier coffee shops here than I did in the infamously hipster Austin, Texas.
If you ever want to know what systems will be effective, just look at what the mega-rich do for their own self-interest.
EDIT: During the early days of the lockdown, private jets were flying in with medical equipment (respirators) and supplies for the entire community. A billionaire couple donated some of the first COVID-19 blood test machines in the nation. If you tell me that in five years this area will have government subsidized living wages and free healthcare for all, I will believe you...as long as the program is tied to local service industry employment because the mega-rich won't do anything unless it benefits them somehow.
Permanently Deleted
Yes. That's literally what I am trying to say. In a capitalist system, it is not enough to increase wages because the system will automatically adjust. Billionaires in my area inadvertently proved that the best way to increase quality of life is by introducing heavily subsidized programs. GASP...socialism
People looking out for themselves is in their nature. Animals do the same. People cooperate when they see that it is to their mutual advantage to do so, just as many animals evolve to do. People are animals. Animals are nature!
Calling people sociopaths for looking out for their own interests is to stretch the word so far it becomes meaningless. Everyone is a sociopath, except you and your friends, right? Right.
The cost of a 2 bedroom apartment always costs what someone working for minimum wage makes plus $100. Why? Because landlords don't want people making minimum wage living at their apartments - never mind the (perceived)increased maintenance and crime - people working minimum wage are people that don't have income security and more likely to miss payments or need to be evicted.
If you raise minimum wage, the price of rent just goes up. Now that isn't a argument against raising it more that an argument against renting and an argument for housing reform, but that is a whole different post.
The cost of a 2 bedroom apartment always costs what someone working for minimum wage makes plus $100.
It doesn't, though; it's way more. You are so out-of-touch...
If you raise minimum wage, the price of rent just goes up
That's not how that works. Landlords and property managers can ask for more, but it doesn't mean they'll get it. What would happen is people would have more money for literally everything but rent and the economy as a whole would improve. I don't work for minimum wage, yet raising it would benefit me, along with everyone else. It hasn't even come close to keeping pace with inflation.
They can ask for more, and they will, and someone will pay it. Because now everyone has more, and everyone still needs to live somewhere. A landlord for profit isnt going to suddenly want less profit for no reason other than to help everyone else out, or they wouldnt be a landlord for profit.
As someone who is currently living in a 2 bedroom apartment and has seen the price change through out the years, I think I am in touch with what it costs.
It ain't the "market" that sets prices, it's the owners. The owners set prices to fill up the apartments, sure, but they would rather it sit empty then rent it out to someone that would cost more money to evict and repair then they would pay in rent.
I know you guys are talking about the US and some things work differently over there, but why should a minimum wage cover more than... the minimum? Want more, do more.
The problem is these are full time jobs. Its not like you are putting in minimum effort.
Why is one roommate the minimum? Why not 10, or 20, or 50?
Because the idea was always that we need a living wage.
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
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9075220-it-seems-to-me-to-be-equally-plain-that-no
1 person requires 2 rooms now
also a fountain
Define minimum…
You ever worked minimum wage jobs? Loads of them suck and many have to work harder than the better paid jobs.
What would you like the minimum standard of living to be?
Minimum amount that can be paid to support a decent quality of living.
Single parents with children.
Ability to have both a bedroom and an office space, for remote work that requires dedicated space. (Not even anything fancy, some call center or support line jobs.)
Like, I understand the thought of "why should minimum wage afford luxuries!?", but that isn't what is being implied here, and yes, minimum wage should afford some luxuries anyway.
You didn't stutter but I'm not sure you understand cost of living differences.
I mean the minimum in minimum wage is meant to be the absolute minimum wage necessary to balance cost of living.
If cost of living goes up then so should the minimum wage.
What I understand the least is how businesses need to pay for resources to make their products yet for some reason human workers aren't considered resources and therefore aren't treated as part of the cost of owning a business.
If you can't make a profit while paying a living wage looks like you don't get to own that business ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The problem is that people are considered resources and are sourced like resources instead of humans. Companies pay as little as possible for both widgets and people and our Congress is just letting them.
Because the ruling class destroyed working class solidarity and gave everyone anxiety disorders so no one has the chutzpah to go to their boss and negotiate higher pay. Your boss can negotiate prices with suppliers because that's the established culture. Everything, and i mean everything, in this world is negotiable if you understand what leverage each party possesses.
