We should look at things from the other direction... what are people in the city actually earning? How are they living? What trade-offs did they make? Are they satisfied with their life? Which trade offs are they most unhappy about?
> enough to live
The term is capitalised because it has an actual defined meaning beyond the etymology derived from its component words. If you think everyone earning just enough to keep themselves physically alive is a sufficient standard to strive to for modern society, then I would question your ethics.
The "living" in the term Living Wage is about being able to actually live a life, not just survive it.
> We should look at things from the other direction...
There is nothing about the Living Wage that precludes doing that: it's a quantitative metric to be accompanied by your qualitative suggestions, not to supplant them.
What alternative term would you suggest?
Given the goal, the name seems pretty descriptive, so what term would be much more descriptive?
It’s fair to say this framing has an emotional component. This is perhaps a reaction to the calculatedly emotion-free arguments being used to keep the minimum wage so low that people are going hungry and homeless at increasing rates.
"Living" doesn't always literally mean "to be alive". For example, the idiom "make a living" refers to making enough to keep a decent lifestyle (pay for food, rent, clothing, etc)[1]. I think most people would agree that if you have no income and you live on the street, then you are not making a living, yet you are still living.
Similarly, "living" in "living wage" refers to a standard of living that is deemed decent or acceptable by some measure -- of course this will depend on some subjective determination and that can be debated. But it does not mean literally to be alive (otherwise, the living wage would obviously be $0).
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/make%20a%20living
A bit dramatic? We are well last the survival aspect of living standards. No one is out in the weeds living off the land and wildlife and building shelters unless they absolutely want to.
There is ample food for anyone that wants it and shelter abounds. There’s a lot of help if you not able to do it on your own.
But after that it’s up to you. The government isn’t going to manage your life. You need to be an active participant in your own life.
What is the definition?
MIT have published a breakdown of it here that isn't written in the legalese of the Admin Code: https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/36
So what measure would satisfy you? It would seem that numbers coming from people that study the topic extensively is too "ivory tower" for you, so what measure is acceptable?
I took no issue with the term "ivory tower" (of course all legislature does tend to come from them), but rather positing that what had emerged from that ivory tower "must be wrong if 60% of the people living in NY don't hit the standard. If the city was populated by 60% people who do not earn enough to live" - that's positing that people should be satisfied with subsisting, and anyone who says otherwise "must be wrong".
MIT defines their definition here: https://livingwage.mit.edu/resources/Living-Wage-Users-Guide...
In summary, it's "likely minimum" rates of: food cost + childcare cost + insurance premiums + health care costs + housing cost + transportation cost + other necessities cost + civic engagement + broadband + taxes
If you look at the methodology, they will often include things like owning your own car, a private living space, private food consumption, etc.
A pertinent example is if you are from a culture that doesn't cherish individuality so much, you may be perfectly happy to put up with a shared/used car, roommates, communal cooking, etc.
Which explains why we might consider wages "sub-living", but people still come from around the world and still thrive on them.
While I totally agree that imposition of white, Western morality is commonplace, applying it to the idea of economic autonomy is somewhat obscene - autonomy is universal, not culturally specific.
> as determined by middle-class researchers
This is a somewhat hilariously (and depressingly) circular critique given the economic barriers to entry in US education. How can the researchers be anything but middle-class if we can't even agree people should earn enough to go to / send their kids to college.
> often include things like owning your own car, a private living space, private food consumption, etc.
This tends to reflect local infrastructure and available amenities - which, yes, are likely governed by white Westerners, but that isn't a commentary on people needing a car for individual reasons. If the public transport is poor & my economic circumstances force me to do things I need a car to access (childcare, healthcare, work commutes), then private car ownership becomes less a cultural choice and more a local white-Western-imposed necessity.
> if you are from a culture that doesn't cherish individuality so much
This is the most ridiculous part - bringing up individuality here is so odd, when the whole resistance to mutual support provided by regulated living wages is about individualistic ideals of "everyone fending for themselves".
> people still come from around the world and still thrive on them
Citation needed. Sure, you will always find some individual who'll claim that they're "thriving", particularly if they were also subsisting in their country of origin (NY isn't the only place where people are struggling - out of the frying pan, etc.), but stating this is universally the case is obvious nonsense. Keeping in mind many such folk send income home, making their overall needs even greater.
This is not something I am unfamiliar with. I did not grow up in America. I think you are putting too much of your reality on a set of numbers. Sure, housing is a lot cheaper in Romania! But it did not necessarily come with running water, or heat. Healthcare was free! If it existed for you. So you can do a heck of a lot more living in the US even without making a ton of money.
I don't know what you are going on about on mutual support. Mutual support means providing housing and meals and care for people you know. Using that as justification to pass economic laws seems exploitative
I think the owning your own car thing is pretty relevant here to your point - MIT's Living Wage calculator includes $7k in travel expenses for someone living in Manhattan. So in this particular case it's not reflective of local infrastructure. (It also seems unusually high - we own two cars and only budget $2500 a year for transportation).
I would actually encourage you to get to know some immigrants in your area. I think you will find they are doing better off than you think, even on wages lower than you would expect. Remittances are HUGE in most communities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittances_from_the_United_St...
I'm not saying that we shouldn't help people in need - I certainly have accepted my share of handouts. But I find the attempt to make a "living wage" that's a proxy for financial hardship in general is such a backwards approach to the problem.
Not at all, apologies: it was all greyed out when I first replied. I guess things flipped - have removed that commentary so.
And what are your ethics? And why are you so sure you've got them right? If people are living so poorly in New York, they are free to leave, and yet they choose to stay there. There is no "human right" to live in New York. I certainly don't want to live there, and cost of living is only one of many reasons. Most importantly, it is certainly neither compassionate, nor wise, nor good, to subsidize people living there with other people's money, or, even worse, money we have to print from scratch or borrow from others, further driving inflation and national debt, which consequences affect the future and security of everyone.
Stop and consider that you may not be the compassionate hero you think you are. The great swindle of our times is to convince people to do very bad things in the name of empathy or compassion, all the while allowing them to feel good about themselves.
If you genuinely believe this to be true, then I think we can be sure my ethics are not aligned with yours.
Do you pay taxes? If you do, are you one of these folk that believes your contributions should only be spent on amenities for you to avail of, personally? God forbid any cent of what you "earn" should ever have any communal benefit for any of the other beings you share the planet with.
If one area gets stupidly expensive to live at, maybe people should get their affairs in order accordingly?
Are you one of those people that think your tax dollars should only be spent where you are locally?
I don't think I've ever met anyone personally that believes this, or even have encountered this position online throughout my entire life. Is this a freshly constructed straw man, or do you have a link to someone with actual influence who legitimately holds this idea?
> God forbid any cent of what you "earn" should ever have any communal benefit for any of the other beings you share the planet with.
I pay 10% of my pre-tax income voluntarily to my church, which uses some of its donations to help others with food, clothing, shelter, job/career training, and education. Some of it gets used to provide assistance across the planet. I have no issue with spending my money or my time for the benefit of others. You people really need to learn some humility. You're not the virtuous saint you might think you are, and the people who disagree with you are not the selfish, callous monsters you might make them out to be.
It is interesting to note, for instance, that conservatives on average are far more likely to donate to charity than progressives, and far more likely to give service out of their own time: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/conservatives-are-more-...
There are many differences between private and public charity:
* One is done by compulsion and force of arms, the other voluntarily.
* One is subject to marketplace forces and competition, while the other holds an unbreakable monopoly (unless you count moving out of the country, I guess?).
* If a private organization does a bad job, it tends to die out. If a government organization does a bad job, it convinces us to double its budget and try harder.
* private organizations tend to be far more efficient and innovative: https://digitalcommons.bridgewater.edu/honors_projects/140. The incentive structure in government bureaucracy could be described as antithetical to both!
* If a private organization runs out of money, it can't print more money or go into as much debt as it likes, putting a cap on the level of irresponsibility it can engage in.
* If a private organization fails, then the consequences are small. When governments fail under massive debt, inflation, price controls, and other poor decisions, everyone in the country suffers catastrophically.
* Government charity provides the opportunity for one group to vote to take away the money of another group. The relationship between votes and government handouts is so dangerous to a functioning society and yet gets entirely ignored.
There are so many pathologies to government wealth redistribution. On the whole, tremendous harm has been done and continues to be done through it. It's time to wake up and see that the other side not only doesn't have bad ethics, but, in fact, may hold a lot of wisdom that is so badly needed and sorely lacking in society today. Compassion is great, but compassionate foolishness ends up being about as disastrous as it sounds.
Having seen both sides of this equation, It's increasingly unclear to me whether wealth inequality has crossed the takeoff threshold where outcomes no longer correlate with Merit. Observationally, I encounter many in high status fields who got their due to familial wealth + guidance on pathway. I worry that we are seeing more people who are wealthy because their parents were wealthy, potentially to the point where labor is no longer required beyond perception maintenance.
Such an arrangement is fundamentally anti-productive to the economy. It removes capital from skilled individuals to support leisure. It reshapes the economy to support the leisurely whims of a few individuals. I don't think its a coincidence that as wages and inflation rose GDP growth rose. It's a reallocation of capital from unproductive sectors to productive sectors.
So you can 'live' below this if for example:
- You work more than 40hr/week, have a second job
- Have no children
- Commute long distance
- Spend less on stuff than they assumed is necessary in a hand-wavy calculation
You know.. the hand-wavy stuff.
I'm not defending these mitigating factors as a good solution to people's money problems in NYC, but like you say, "living wage" is a fraught term that conjures up vague and charged imagery inappropriate for a rigorous analysis.
Earning enough to live is a fuzzy idea. I'm not satisfied unless I'm maxing multiple retirement accounts, have a year of saved income, insurance, etc. I think the figure is believable if you're fine with not saving, not having insurance, dodging taxes, etc. An alarming number of people are okay with this.
you know the most disheartening thing I see in these discussions is that common people who are basically 'labor' to the core (maybe ahead of other labors by a bit) defending 'capital'. where its quite clear its a war between labor & capital and we are getting our ass handed to us in last 40 years.
If anything i would assume we have a disproportionately high number of people totally unaffected by the last three years.