A minimum-wage worker needs 2.5 full-time jobs to afford a one-bedroom apartment in most of the US

a reply to: CB328

What percent of min wage workers are the main income earners for them and their family.

originally posted by: Allaroundyou

originally posted by: SummerRain
I feel like playing Jones in the Fast Lane, again now.

Holy crap that is such a fun game! You are the first person outside of my close group of friends to have played it. Now I am going to play it again.

Link to game

Haha I actually went there after posting, but the audio was really bad, so downloaded it from there (instead of in browser), and played it in dosbox again. Problem is Jones STILL wins.

Grrrr..

originally posted by: sligtlyskeptical
It is because people like the Trumps continue to manufacture goods in China and bring them to the USA. And because people like Trump use guest workers instead of Americans at their resorts.

Damn, and it hasn't even been 2 years yet.

What else will this maniac, Trump, do to the world?

So far, created racism, caused global meltdowns and now forces poor people to work 2 jobs.

Silly, help me out here.

IMHO, the issue is not a lack of jobs that pay well. The problem is that, as time goes by, there are fewer and fewer people with the skills/education to fill the available positions.

Young people should go to a trade school if they don't want or can't afford college. Skilled, blue-collar jobs are wide open and have been so for many years. They pay extremely well, but you need the necessary training and expertise to do these jobs.

The bonus is that wages for these positions are high due to the high demand for skilled workers and the glut of available jobs.

originally posted by: CB328

yea, home prices are surely an issue. To some extent this could fall back on the FHA loan program and other economic variables

No it couldn't. What is wrong with you that you have a pathological need to blame the government for every problem in the world?

The two reasons are having a huge population, and letting business turn housing into a commodity. Both of which are conservative policies, though the government helps by letting lots of people immigrate here.

This response is so detached from reality, I don't even know what to say. 🤣

originally posted by: xuenchen
a reply to: CB328

Looks like the State of Washington needs to raise min wage to $22

Get going !! 🎃

I read somewhere that $21/22 per hour is the true living wage.

My town $425 plus utilities with a 5 minute walk to Lake Michigan. An hour west of Chicago. lots of work

As many have pointed out, the entire premise of the article is false. Minimum wage jobs aren't meant to provide you with a comfortable living. There's a reason they're considered entry-level. You're not supposed to do that for 50 years.

originally posted by: InTheLight

originally posted by: xuenchen
a reply to: CB328

Looks like the State of Washington needs to raise min wage to $22

Get going !! 🎃

I read somewhere that $21/22 per hour is the true living wage.

The true living wage depends on the state, which is why having a federal minimum wage is pointless. Cost of living is vastly different in different states. What I'm living on comfortably in Pennsylvania wouldn't even cover my rent in some states, let alone the rest of my bills. Minimum wage should be left up to the states. Even having a federal one causes people to get confused. It has to be set so low for states where cost of living is low that people in high COL states are like "I can't live on that!". We know, that's for people who live in other states. It's just silly. Leave it up to the states.

a reply to: face23785

Exactly. There are freely available cost of living calculators all over the internet. They are very easy to find and play with and the results are eye opening. I link to them all the time here, but it seems like some people have no clue or pretend they don't.

a reply to: InTheLight

I was making $15 an hour and had a 3 BR 1600SQFT house all to myself. So .. guess not. Depends on where you live.

Clearly the OP is young and hasn't supported himself for any length of time.
Look at any European country and see how they are doing.

Free Healthcare: Not the best doctors and months before surgery.
Free Retirement: Only if you put in enough years. Otherwise zero (ask me how I know)

Whenever the government says give us your money and we will make your life better, cover your butt hole.
Look at Obamacare. I had it for 2 years.
My premium was $125. My deductible was $6500. Then it covered 80%.
I would have to spend 25% of my after tax income B4 it paid a penny.
To add insult I had to add the $800/mth to my income at the end of the year.
That's $9600 I had to pay income tax on. Both Fed and State tax.
For zero benefits.

Just wait until you get a real job and buy a house and raise kids.
You will feel that IV needle in your wallet draining you for people refuse to grow up.

Last year Seattle spent $68,000,000 on homeless people.
That averages $5400 per homeless person.
They were looking to add another $47 million with a special tax on big business.
The net result is almost all of those homeless are still homeless.

You can work part time at TDCJ for some damn good health insurance. Two days per week. 10-12 hour days. Plus they get they easy visitation posts. There are other jobs that provide benefits for part time work.

Or go find a hard working job like me. I'm a wrecker driver. I'm on 24/7 except two days every other week. The hours are loooooong. Sleep is crap. There is an element of danger. But my wife is able to stay at home with the kids for a while until she gets restless and just needs to find work. Any income she brings in is just going to be bonus money.

And Oil field workers and tower climbers can earn more than me! Man up, get a tough jobs like these, and provide for your family. These jobs are not hard to find.

a reply to: CB328
In case you hadn't noticed we no longer live in a capitalist society. This is more akin to a plutocracy. Capitalism created the largest distribution of wealth and freedoms the world has ever seen. It's not perfect but it's definitely not communism in lipstick. As communism has killed hundreds of millions of people.

I think the NY state estimation that states you need to make $25.65 an hour is wrong for NYC area. You need more than that.

I haven't seen this many homeless people in NYC since the 80's.

I wonder if the worker w minimum wage in WA can get some sort of subsidized apartment with a minimum wage job?

I knew from an early age that you need a way to earn a decent living.

I started working when I was 12. I worked minimum wage jobs while in high school. I put my se. lf through college. I lived in a trailer court while in college.

Got a degree in engineering.

It's not too hard to get the skills you need to make a decent living.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
a reply to: CB328

Id say not staying in a minimum wage level job is the ticket. Otherwise, roommates.

Its not capitalism. Its fiat economy. Your seeing trees and not forest.

Roommates don't solve the issue. There's two problems at work here, one is stagnant wages but the other issue is that the rental market is utterly ridiculous. At the company I work for, we start people who are in the product R&D division (software engineers, phd chemists, etc) at a little over $100k/year in the Bay Area. At that rate, they can barely even break even splitting a place with 3 other roommates... the typical place usually being 2.5k/month as your share of the rent (or 50% of after tax income) with a 2 hour commute to and from work each day. It's so bad we've started building corporate housing they can rent at more reasonable rates.

Virtually every city has some absolutely insane rental issues going on right now.

Even my small town has seen it. I've been living here from 2002-2014 and back again in 2018. Around 2012 we hit an oil boom from fracking and rent went out of control. In 2010 I was paying 350 a month plus cable for a modest 1 bedroom. In 2012 I was paying 450 a month plus utilities for a 200 sqft apartment and the place didn't even have hot water (had black mold too). I moved away in 2014 and got a place in a neighboring town, 2200 sqft, 450 with all utilities paid. Now I'm back into the boom down and it's 650/month for 1800 sqft plus another 300 for utilities.

The rental market is the big problem because low wages aren't going anywhere.

a reply to: Creep Thumper

Young people should go to a trade school if they don't want or can't afford college. Skilled, blue-collar jobs are wide open and have been so for many years. They pay extremely well, but you need the necessary training and expertise to do these jobs

bls.gov

National estimates for this occupation: Top
Employment estimate and mean wage estimates for this occupation:

Employment (1) Employment
RSE (3) Mean hourly
wage Mean annual
wage (2) Wage RSE (3)
23,140 3.7 % $15.30 $31,830 1.2 %

welp, I work in the trades as a carpenter, residential and commercial, work on 2 year long union jobs and small home remodels or repairs

the unions were and probably still are struggling, they have recently consolidate all of their field offices to one state location and the pensions have unfunded liabilities, just saying

in residential the jobs pay about the same as they have for decades, for those of us that survived the 2008 recession, residential has never been the same since then

worked on a job that was union for a few weeks because a union crew needed their asses saved by me and my uncle (huge tile job), so we worked the job for a few weeks buttoned it up for them and left but I talked to the electricians who were there and were taking a $9 an hour pay cut to drive 3 hours from jersey to work on a job to stay busy

just saying

originally posted by: strongfp
"Yea just work hard and you'll get there!" Says only the people who got lucky in the upper / middle class people.

Let me share a story with you. Growing up, I had the best grades in school, possibly the best grades in the state, nearly perfected my ACT's. My family was split, my mom who I lived with 4 days the week was working class. My dad was the CEO of a major business you have definitely heard of. Between my grades and the money, I had a lot of options in life. So what did I do? I went to a lower tier school that accepts anyone, never submitted my ACT's. Never took family money to pay tuition. Lived under a bridge for a couple years because it was tuition or shelter.

Things eventually got better over time, but I continued to goto school debt free (doing so by paying as I go). The end result is that it took me from 19 to 36 to finish... 17 years. In that time I obtained 7 degrees in Computer Science, Simulation and Game Engineering, Business, Interactive Digital Technology, Computer Graphics, Web Programming, and Math.

Finished my schooling and got recruited right out of university by a company I never applied to, but that had heard of me. They wanted me to the the head developer for a whole new product family of VR content. So I did that, and I've been working there for a bit over a year now. My salary is 6 figures in a low cost of living area. It's comfortable enough for now.

Now, here's the twist in my story. Remember how I mentioned my family has money? I've got a trust fund worth over $20 million that I can access any time I want. If it were what I wanted I could avoid working every day for the rest of my life. But, that's not what I want. I would rather prove that I could do it without those advantages because I don't believe in the concept of generational wealth.

originally posted by: InTheLight

originally posted by: xuenchen
a reply to: CB328

Looks like the State of Washington needs to raise min wage to $22

Get going !! 🎃

I read somewhere that $21/22 per hour is the true living wage.

Depending on the objects being measured, purchasing power of minimum wage in 1967 is equal to about $22 today. This is why the push for $15 was a failed societal movement. After the decade it takes to get to 15, when 22 is where they needed to be, that 15 is going to be insufficient and it will need to be 30.