Can a 'living wage' ever be anything other than a misnomer?
The two words, glued together, seem incompatible to me.
Under capitalism you don't really get to 'live' unless you break free from wages to an extent. That doesn't necessarily mean retirement, but it's somewhere above living paycheck to paycheck. Basically, you need to be in a situation in which your wages are refilling a tank that slowly leaks, rather than drinking directly from the hose.
London has a "living wage". It's something like 9GBP.
40 hours a week with no holiday would get you 18700GBP.
How is that a living wage in any sense? What do we mean by living here? Literally existing as a human being, grasping at straws thrown down by the capitalists?
With that amount of income and no starting wealth it is totally impossible to buy a studio apartment anywhere within commuting distance of London. Not even 50sqft. (If you could find one cheap enough, the commuting costs would make it unviable).
Is constantly moving around from cheap shit apartment to cheap shit apartment, worrying about how to move your belongings, obsessing over the bills, worrying about taking the metro to see a friend, living?
Call it what it is. It's a 'starter wage'. It's existence level. 'Living' has connotations beyond simple existence.
I think "living wage" is a good term. It communicates (to me, at least) exactly what it needs to: this is how much you need to be able to live; if you're paid less than this, you are going to need further assistance besides what you earn.
The government in the UK recently started using the words "living wage" but what they mean by it falls short of what other people consider a living wage.
(No argument that being paid just barely enough to live is a pretty wretched existence.)
But you don't need the living wage to exist. You can always push further down the ladder; live out of the back of a van; bunk-beds; perform heroic cycling or driving feats from the North daily, etc.
Perhaps it's just my odd take on things. I feel that security of housing* is a clear benchmark, whereas below that, you're kind of arbitrarily deciding on what level of comfort to accept.
*(A caravan on a small plot of grass that you own would be acceptable to me, if that were a situation you could legally get away with in London!)
Why housing, and not say, food? Because of the nature of how it generally works in Western countries. Housing is less fungible/liquid (lacking a good term here). If I want food, I can work for a bit, go begging, whatever, get a few quid, go and buy some food, eat it. Housing is fundamentally different; we enter into contracts to put a roof over our head and there's a reasonable expectation that it's the same roof each day/week/month.
Housing is also priced differently... there's a discrete cliff-edge beyond which you go from 'roof and 4 walls' to 'tent/car/under a bridge'. Food scales back much more continuously; you can go all the way down to eating bread and dripping and experience a small degradation each step along the way.
I'd much rather have a secure roof over my head, a place to call home, and have to hustle for food/electricity/whatever, than all the food and toys in the world but nowhere to stay. I think most people would agree (nomadic lifestyles excepted here because they're generally incompatible with the premise of working for a wage)
When I was growing up, having to get a release from school in order to be able to work before legal age, I never conceived minimum wage to be a livable wage.
I saw them as teenager jobs. Jobs teenagers did to earn some money to afford things or to augment household income. Seeing adults trying to live off it was "educational" and sad.
Personally, I don't think responsible adults should be working these kinds of entry level jobs, in a well rounded economy. They should have the education and aptitude to do more value added jobs, but I think as society we've failed in coaxing more people into being more curious and wanting to learn...
Many of my classmates barely graduated high school and some dropped out. Their outlook was one where they'd get a blue collar job, maybe a union job and enjoy "seniority". Some struggle and some are doing okay running their own business, but I think their outlook would have been better with an emphasis on education. Some of the parents of these latchkey kids simply thought sending them to school would be enough. As if education and preparation for the world began and ended with school.
On the other end of the spectrum we have helicopter parents...
One thing I think could help would be to have training programs to retrain workers as the economy shifts into new directions. Grant those in need of skills acquisition tools to learn new skills.
I used to think this way, then I looked at the numbers, and don't see how it can work this way.
First, I'm going to limit this to people < 18. Because once you're 18 you could legally be thrown out on your ass by your parents, and all of a sudden this "not supposed to be a living wage" has become your living wage.
According to the BLS, there are 3 million jobs at or below federal minimum wage (I don't think this stat includes jobs from states with higher minimum wages though). In 2015-16, 3.3 million high schoolers are expected to graduate. So that's (very roughly) 13.2 million people in high school (it's probably a bit higher). Let's ignore that some high schoolers are 18.
So if they all worked full time, you would need 23% of your high schoolers to be employed. This ignores hours though, and to realistically attend high school while working and also being able to fill all the required jobs would be at least 46%, and probably be closer to 75%. I don't see this happening anytime soon.
One of the issues is, once you cross a cost threshold, it's cheaper to automate. We're automating all kinds of things which used to be pretty hard (harvesting), translating, (sports) reporting, and even burger flipping, for the price point.
I would really like to know how a single adult is supposed to live in SF on $14.37/hour. My calculator says $14.37 * 40 * 4 = $2299.20 So, before taxes[1] this person can't even afford to pay rent in the median studio or 1br, and can barely afford to share the median 2br or 3br (keep in mind this is before taxes). While I'm sure our hypothetical "living wage" earner probably isn't living in a median quality apartment, I doubt that even a 20th percentile apartment is affordable on this wage.
Yes, I don't understand this. Living wage in this map goes no lower than $20 for anywhere in America, whereas it's a shade over $30 for the most pricey part of the Bay Area.
From experience (Ohio vs Bay Area), the discrepancy between housing prices in these two areas is not 50%-- it's more like 200%. I'd like to understand more how this calculation works.
Maybe individuals aren't supposed to live as "single adults" in such a place/market? You know, nothing wrong with staying with parents/roommates until you are making a salary that allows you to live by your own. That is the problem with these back of the envelope calculations, they never take into account the ingenuity and resourcefulness of humans.
Did you notice that even sharing the median 2 or 3 BR apartment doesn't work on the so-called "living wage"? To make the argument that people making a "living wage" should be supported by someone in order to have the privilege of living in SF is paternalistic at best and borderline ridiculous at worst.
My argument isn't that people making $14/hour should be able to live on their own; it's that we shouldn't call $14/hour a "living wage" unless it enables someone to live on their own (or, at least with roommates).
I don't have a good answer for bridging the gap between what it costs to live somewhere and what low-end jobs pay, but I'm of the opinion that in aggregate, supply and demand tells us the correct wage for a particular job in a particular location. This wage may be above someone's definition of a "Living Wage" or it may be below. It is what it is. Any amount above the market-determined wage and what someone declares to be a Living Wage is a subsidy. If we decide that society needs to provide this subsidy, who pays it? In the US, we currently subsidize it through a forced Minimum Wage, an earned income tax rebate, "food stamps", health care subsidies, etc.
Interesting. The map seems to suggest that a minimum wage job is available in these rural counties (an assumption I'm not so sure about). And it ignores "DINK" or "dependant adult living with parents" relationships entirely.
Under capitalism you don't really get to 'live' unless you break free from wages to an extent. That doesn't necessarily mean retirement, but it's somewhere above living paycheck to paycheck. Basically, you need to be in a situation in which your wages are refilling a tank that slowly leaks, rather than drinking directly from the hose.
London has a "living wage". It's something like 9GBP. 40 hours a week with no holiday would get you 18700GBP. How is that a living wage in any sense? What do we mean by living here? Literally existing as a human being, grasping at straws thrown down by the capitalists?
With that amount of income and no starting wealth it is totally impossible to buy a studio apartment anywhere within commuting distance of London. Not even 50sqft. (If you could find one cheap enough, the commuting costs would make it unviable).
Is constantly moving around from cheap shit apartment to cheap shit apartment, worrying about how to move your belongings, obsessing over the bills, worrying about taking the metro to see a friend, living?
Call it what it is. It's a 'starter wage'. It's existence level. 'Living' has connotations beyond simple existence.