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1) One person earning minimum wage needs 1 bedroom, not 2. So cut the rent in half and assume they’ve got a roommate.
2) A person who is earning the minimum possible should be renting at the cheapest, most minimalistic place possible - not a median or market rate apartment.
Where do you find those cheap places?
Every apartment is a market rate apartment for a given area.
Illegals are a bogeyman in this conversation to distract from the point. No person should struggle to pay for housing, food, clothing, medical care, child care, and education while working a 40 hour week. Anything short of that is an excuse.
There is no real world evidence that raising minimum wage has the severe impact suggested by pure supply/demand curves.
We'll just flood in more illegals and pay them less than minimum wage like they've already been doing.
Oh, and in many states we'll feed, house, educate and give medical care to their kids making lower wages etc. even more attractive.
So yes, by all means continue to prop up a framework where US citizens in the blue collar areas have their wages undercut by illegals and then wonder why progress never comes for them.
Notice I'm not arguing against a higher min. wage. I'm pointing out that they are just a political Maguffin designed to distract as a solution that they will not actually be. (It will help some, it will render others nigh unemployable, see CBO non-partisan analysis)
P.S. Also please note that via substitution, even if no illegals work at your widget factory doesn't mean that their working at the local chicken facility doesn't impact the labor pool at the widget factory.
So in 40 years, the minimum wage has only risen by $4/hr...but rent has more than tripled.
YOU do the math.
Workers are screwed.
Minimum wage in Florida is currently $8 an hour. It won’t be $15 an hour until 2026. God only knows what rent will be in 5 years.
Thank you!
Forty years ago my husband and I rented a lovely three bedroom in Park Slope, Brooklyn for $155.00 per month.
Rents in that area now start around $3000.00 per month!
Yes, that may be an extreme example, but it’s playing out similarly all over the country.
The fact is that income has not kept pace with housing prices.
Math pop quiz....has it kept pace with housing payments?
My first house (mid 1990's) was a 140k mortgage at 9.25% interest, payment = 1,151
Interest rates near 3.5% in some cases and a payment of 1,151 equates to a mortgage over 250k.
Also, you're measuring the peak of a housing bubble.
Does this help people understand that mapping house price to wages in wildly different interest rate environments and against a backdrop of supply\demand short term bubbles is grossly anti-science?
So you have to ask yourself, have the people pushing this narrative to you taken these considerations into their analysis or are they not sufficiently educated on the topic to do a proper analysis or are they aware but shading the truth to push their agenda dishonestly?
We'll just flood in more illegals and pay them less than minimum wage like they've already been doing.
Oh, and in many states we'll feed, house, educate and give medical care to their kids making lower wages etc. even more attractive.
So yes, by all means continue to prop up a framework where US citizens in the blue collar areas have their wages undercut by illegals and then wonder why progress never comes for them.
Notice I'm not arguing against a higher min. wage. I'm pointing out that they are just a political Maguffin designed to distract as a solution that they will not actually be.
P.S. Also please note that via substitution, even if no illegals work at your widget factory doesn't mean that their working at the local chicken facility doesn't impact the labor pool at the widget factory.
To repeat, illegals are irrelevant to this topic. That a small part of the economy is worked by illegal immigrants has nothing to do with the fact that minimum wage isn't something people can live on. The problem with workers in blue collar areas are that ultra wealthy keep the profits, and play up bogeyman like illegal immigrants as an excuse to not pay a fair wage. I've seen enough of that in real life to know the reality of what I'm saying.
How long ago?
Could you buy your house today making $12.00 an hour?
Assuming a couple, $24 x 40hrs x 4weeks x .8remove taxes = approx. 3k of which about 1/4 could go for mortgage or around 750.
That's a mortgage of around 165k at 3.5% interest for 30 years.
That's very doable in many parts of the country.
One key area where this forum struggles is the complete and utter lack of geographic diversity so many posters have in their life experience. The world is not comprised of east and west coast urban areas and suburbs where a starter home is north of 500k in many places.
If anyone doubts that 165k gets a house today, just pick out any number of towns around the midwest.
1) One person earning minimum wage needs 1 bedroom, not 2. So cut the rent in half and assume they’ve got a roommate.
2) A person who is earning the minimum possible should be renting at the cheapest, most minimalistic place possible - not a median or market rate apartment.
If they are just one person, yes. If they have kids, the story gets different. And before anyone says, who told them to have kids if they were working minimum wage, stick it. We don't know what got them to this point. Perhaps they escaped an abusive partner. Perhaps they had their partner die tragically die young.
I wish Disney could do what Universal is working on and open housing for their workers who need apartments. Without it, their pool of workers gets slimmer and slimmer.
"Minimum wage work" has expanded beyond fast food joints.
Yes it has...pretty much any "service" industry job will start you out at minimum wage. You want a better job...get a better education.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81
Nowhere did the article specify that minimum wage workers are single, or without children.
Let me guess you are for a "living wage". So what does that mean? You can't be talking about paying someone based on their demographics. Where a person with a kid and a spouse gets paid more than a single person. After all, didn't women fight for decades to get "equal pay for equal work"?
You then must mean that we need to base the "living wage" on a set demographic. Perhaps we should base the minimum wage on a person who has a spouse and 2 kids and wants to live in a middle-class neighborhood, in a 3 bedroom apartment and 2 cars. That's great for the single guy working his way through college sharing an apartment with 3 other guys. Should we base the minimum wage on a Full-Time or Part-Time job? After all how can a person "live" on Part-Time hours?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81
Do you have a crystal ball? Do you know for certain what the future holds?
So of course because someone may need a 2 bedroom apartment at some point in the future they should get one now...just in case. Here is a thought...get a cheaper apartment now and put money in savings. I know that is some radical thought for some.
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