How did we get to a point where we think that the minimum amount you get paid from a company should also be enough to pay half of an average two-bedroom apartment? Why is it not "the minimum possible wage should pay for splitting a room in a lower end apartment"?
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Like, shouldn't the lowest possible tier of pay correspond to the lowest possible tier of living? A lot of ppl I knew in the bay area were two to a room, in cheaper areas/houses, and they had functional, normal lives.
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No adult should ever have to split a room. People need their private space.
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When our parents were kids they could all buy homes etc with most jobs. That’s not the case now.
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Is it not? If you move outside of a major city and buy a small house it's not that hard right?
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because artificially raising wages en masse would just lead to more unemployment.
"requiring that every house be sold with a pool doesn't mean everyone gets a pool, but that fewer people get houses"
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Also, we’ve legally eliminated the actual lowest tiers (e.g. SROs, cheap hotels, and other kinds of mass housing). We do this out if “compassion” but eliminating options you find distasteful doesn’t address the demand for those options.
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I think the idea is that you should be able to support a family / dependents (say, ill parent) on a full time job, regardless of the job. Does that help reframe it? So the rational is a job should at least be able to pay for yourself +1 (dependent).
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