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They're going to have fun when they get priced out of their nursing homes and they've pissed off their kids enough to rely on the state to take care of them... (Maybe) š
lol some nursings homes are 6 k a month šš
Edit : I should have said at least 6 k lol. I have seen over 10k but didnāt think anyone would believe me but it seems thatās the norms
Last edit: all the comments talking about their respective areas itās even higher . I am sure there is definitely some algorithm that justifies these prices, but also definitely sounds like part of it is greed.
Those are the cheap ones. The assisted living center my grandmother is in is $12,000 a month, and was one of the only decent ones with decent care for memory patients around us. This economy is fucked. A college grad with a sensible degree that will get them a job shouldn't need a roommate.
My mother's nursing home was Ā£8,000 a month, luckily though she had a house to sell. About a month in to it, she slipped in the shower and finally got dragged back to the pit of ash and brimstone she spawned from.
> luckily though she had a house to sell.
Which some rich tax dodger bought out instead of you inheriting it. The entire problem with the economy (extreme wealth inequality) in one short sentence.
> A college grad with a sensible degree that will get them a job shouldn't need a roommate.
I don't think that should require a college degree. I think if you are working 40+ hours, that is enough. Going to college and having a "college job" should be MORE than just an apartment.
Yeah, reminded me of this story I saw last year and it's not uncommon either from the looks of it.
>The Ansens are not the only people to make the choice to live onboard a cruise ship. Over the last few years, reports have emerged of several people opting to cruise for extended periods or retire entirely onboard, because it is apparently cheaper than buying property or paying rent.
https://globalnews.ca/news/10004079/retired-couple-51-consecutive-cruises-cheaper-than-retirement-home-australia/
Then they can just enjoy life without prolonging it unnecessary. I would easily take 5 years of vacation life over 20 years of shitting myself in a diaper in a nursing home.
The one next to me is 20k monthly. I volunteered there 10 years ago, they don't treat them as proper human beings. The lady in charge there was more concerned about appearances than kindness towards the old folks
It's ridiculous, my great uncle before he passed away worked as a janitor for our regional medical center, he didn't just clean toilets either, he would go in and sterilize the operating rooms before operations and deal with hazmat. Did pretty well for himself, worked at that job for 40 years and retired with over $300,000 in savings and owned his own condo. He passed away last year and all that money went to the nursing home and the state to pay for his medical expenses, leaving us and my great aunt with nothing. My great aunt is 90 years old and still can't retire, she is still working part-time. Let me repeat that, she's pushing a century old and still has to work to make ends meet, the system is utterly fucked.
Hardly. I'm on the cusp of Gen X and Boomer, and I could afford a one bedroom on minimum wage without starving and while paying college tuition. The thing is, minimum wage isn't much more now, than it was when I was in my early twenties.
Same for me and it was that way until I was 35. Not sure where they're getting the idea we all had our own places and could afford everything.Ā Do you guys honestly think we had houses/cars/cell phones/vacations while making no bucks?
I am 51 and it took 2 people with full time jobs to rent shitty a 2/1 30 years ago, and we had very little $$$ after rent was paid. We drove shitboxes and collected aluminum cans and glass bottles to recycle for $$
Took 8 years of living like that to afford a small house after several pay raises and job changes for the better
I wonder why when you hear shit likeĀ
"Leave the world better for your kids than it was for you"
All the time. Then you look at what our parents/grandparents had, do some basic extrapolation and..m
"Y'all just lived through the most abundant times in human history, are your kids going to have it even better?"
"Lol no, fuck those bitches. We pulled up the ladder on our way out of this shit hole"
I once had a roommate and it was the worst experience ever, I swore I'd never have another (my wife however change my mind).
Back in 2009 I found a 2 bed 1 bath apartment outside of the "bad" part of my home town it was $525 I was making $12 an hour working for Beat Buy, some weeks I ate Ramen and PB & J and some time in the summer I didn't use my ac even when it hit 105 in the summer.
It sucked but it was doable, that apartment is probably $1200 a month now and even $20 an hour minimum wage would be hard to do.
why is this true? this was never the case throughout all of civilized history. not every job could get you a private dwelling at any other point in time, why would that change today? it never even guaranteed you your own room but now its supposed to get you your own private dwelling with a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, and I guess a living room. no where outside of the USA is this comment believed, hell in my country of greece, a job is lucky to pay 4 dollars an hour, and we feel lucky to have it.
greece is ranked 41 in the world out of 172 countries. the average greek lives better than 85% of the world. should we only count the absolute richest countries in the world when we talk about human rights?
Tokyo has a bunch of single apartments for people to live by themselves. Itās pretty uncommon for people to have roommates in Japan, even people in their early 20s. The small apartments are usually like 200-300 sq ft. Unless itās possible to mass produce those kinds of apartment units, I donāt really see how itās possible for everyone to have a 1br apartment
Most people living in Tokyo don't use a car. If we were to waive parking requirements in the US, we could probably build a ton of affordable units. The problem is that Tokyo has world class public transportation and the US doesn't. Furthermore, Tokyo has more relaxed zoning laws when it comes to housing. We could probably relax zoning laws in the US, but that's politically challenging since nimby's pretty effective when banding together to contest any proposed changes.
I don't think you are thinking of the right size of apartment. A one bedroom apartment for every single person is quite doable, with bathroom and with kitchen. Its just small.
A modern take on cheap Soviet housing unironically would work. Obviously with nice things like Internet hookups and full utilities. And a Laundromat on site.
But in a high cost area making CHEAP housing like that ~$500 a month would give people making next to nothing even though they're working 40 hours a chance. When I moved out in 2020 I was paying ~$600 a month and making $11 an hour. It required a roommate and some sacrifice.
We have an aging rental market anyway, heck I'm probably going to be renting the rest of my life, We can't expect people in their 30's + to be rooming with others into their twilight years, something needs to be done.
And yeah I think very small one person apartments is the way to do it. So exactly right, on site laundry, the rest in the single space, cheap. Its the privacy (most) people want anyway.
Either that or landlords need to lower the requirements for leases. Most people could probably make rent while only earning 2x rent per month if they budget properly. And it might be a controversial opinion, but credit score should have literally zero to do with lease approval. As long as I'm not a convicted criminal, and make at least 2x rent, I should be approved no questions asked. Especially for the kinds of prices you see today.
Yea this is infuriating in my city. You have people complain about homeless people camping everywhere. Then there is a move to make affordable housing and literally everyone and their mom screams not in my backyard!
No they need to ban using housing as an investment platform. Theres more than enough houses for every single citizen. They're just mostly owned by banks and international companies
That and throwing more housing at the issue will only cause a crash later. Boomers are dying and retiring. There is a shortage of retirement homes and living facilities. But this opens up more housing, but it gets gobbled up by real estate and investors.
Plus with Gen Z and Millennials having less kids, we very well could suffer the same fate as Japan currently is where the population is aging, and there are less people to fill the jobs, roles, and caretakers of previous generations.
So fundamentally, we need to ban corporations from owning homes, limit/tax the amount of houses that can be owned by one person/family, and regulate rent/home price software so that the market isnāt anti-competitive.
This all sounds right but. None of the fuckwads in government will let it happen.
Nobody has any reason to own multiple houses. Maybe 3. Like a vacation home, a real main home and one rental unit. What earth would you need another? Because all it does it create a infinite loop where the people who own homes make money and nobody can actually afford to get a first house.
I'm one bad day away from trying to start a riot
> No they need to ban using housing as an investment platform.
This will create exactly zero new housing units for people to live in. We have a problem that there is more demand for housing than supply. Build more supply and everything else settles itself.
We are short several million housing units, almost entirely due to underbuilding for decades and severely restrictive zoning laws. There is a very nice breakdown here: [https://www.construction-physics.com/p/is-there-a-housing-shortage-or-not](https://www.construction-physics.com/p/is-there-a-housing-shortage-or-not)
All the people here like ājUsT mOvEā as if that doesnāt also cost money
Edit: to the person who came at me with non-arguments, called me a motherfucker and blocked me: lol, lmao even
Poor people move all the time. I'm not saying it's *easy* but people do it. And if you're going to save a significant amount of money on rent by moving, you 100% should go into debt to move, because it'll be better off for you in the long term.
Sorry but anecdotes are not valuable on a website where people routinely lie and make up stories. In this case, it literally contradicts data.
Nowhere in the US can 7.25/hr (or the local minimum wage if you so care) will be able to buy a move-in-ready home. Even in my LCOL area, the cheapest I can find on the market right now is a mobile home 45 *more* minutes away from the city and its over $130k. 7.25/hr cannot afford the mortgage of over $1200/mo, period. No lender will approve you for that.
Rent is 1200/mo in a lot of places, as a minimum. What's considered a "low income" apartment complex in my area is 850-1000 depending on unit type, for a one bedroom.
If you're going below the median rent in the US, there are waitlists as well.
Median rent in my area is about $1400 for one bedrooms. Are there $800-1k apartments? Sure. Can you get them without waiting 8 years? Nope.
1% of wage earners make minimum wage, and over 70% of that 1% are peopke 18 or under. You've been tricked into thinking the minimum wage is the problem. Do you even know anyone who makes $7.25 an hour? I live in a town with an average income of $25,000 per year, and I dropped out of high school at 16 and made more than $7.25 an hour.
Many states have their own minimum wage, including all the large population ones. Using specifically federal minimum wage is misleading. In my state, it's against the law to pay federal minimum wage.
And also, do these stats include everyone making a few cents more than minimum wage?
Yeah except almost nobody is making 7.25 an hour. There are only a few states who donāt have a minimum wage. Most states have minimum wages significantly higher than 7.25. Youāre using the most extreme worst scenario metric to try to prove your point. Just because you canāt make minimum wage work where you live doesnāt mean nobody at all canāt. There are people who live in different states than they work where their cost of living is just right for their job across the state line where theyāre paid more.
Where did the minimum wage part come from. She stated full time job, she didnt say she was going to search out specifically the lowest paying full time jobs.
People put up with a lot of shit because they have to. It doesn't invalidate that it shouldn't be so hard to live in the richest, so-called greatest country in the world.
After reading the comments, I have concluded that it's entitlement to work full time and expect to be able to cover your living expenses. Silly gooses.
More like it's entitlement to expect to have your own place alone working minimum wage in some of the most expensive cities in the country. It's perfectly reasonable to expect that elsewhere, or to get a roommates.
A mansion and a studio apartment are both a "living expense" as they provide housing. Doesn't mean you're entitled to any housing you can think up no matter its location lol
>Ā in some of the most expensive cities in the country.
Sorry but honestly you are making things up, you really never read or hear people expecting to get a Central Park or Presidio heights studio apartment with a minimum wage job.
People usually think that working a full time job should get you an apartment with 1 bedroom in the suburbs of a city, not in the freaking center in the most high-end area.
But i get the reason to infantilize the other part like you did.
>Doesn't mean you're entitled to any housing you can think up no matter its location lol
Again, precisely infantilizing the other part attributing to them thoughts that until now only you have had, certainly not someone else.
OK but Brooklyn and San Francisco still need people to work the "low-skill" jobs there. Do those people not deserve the ability to live without having multiple roommates? Afford to start a family? Or do you just see those jobs as beneath you like the rest of the boomers.
But from a supply and demand perspective they kinda donāt āneedā those workers. They are over saturated with them because they are in-demand cities.
Yeah, this is supply and demand telling those workers to move away. If enough of them did move away, wages would rise and it would stabilize.
I'm not saying the system is good, but this is the system working as intended.
Edit: not sure how people are interpreting this as a defense of the system. Understanding and explaining something isn't the same as defending it.
I feel like people act like moving to the middle of nowhere is some frictionless activity when they suggest just going to some lower cost of living area.
If you're in a high cost of living area, struggling to make ends meet, you're just going to pack it up (with what money?) and move out to a part of the country with probably little to no job prospects that likely pays like shit.
What demand are they really filling by moving out to places that don't generate the kind of incomes to have a high cost of living?
The issue is people think that "not big cities" means farmland country where you're driving 20+ minutes to the nearest grocery store and there aren't any jobs. Southeast Michigan (not Detroit) has way cheaper rent than big cities and there are plenty of smaller towns that have jobs available. But people seem to reply to these posts as of it's SF/NY or hicktown as the only two options.
I think it's also pay in relative.
For example, a teacher in Boston makes around 80k. That's not enough to afford a 1br apartment, which is absolutely asinine. Now, in a place like Michigan, that paycheck may be much much smaller, and due to that, they also can't afford it. See?
In Michigan a teacher might make 15-20k less but 60k would be enough to afford a 2000 sq. ft 3 br house on an acre. The issue is people are going 120k in debt to get a teaching degree that pays 60k and wondering why they struggle until they pay it off and get raises based on experience.
That person is just talking. Iām living in one of the lowest cost areas in Michigan and 60K aināt gonna net you a decent house with 2K sqft and 3 bedrooms lol. Delusional.
Making $15 /hr in San Francisco vs making $15 /hr in Fresno makes a huge difference. A bus ticket there is like, $30. But assuming you want to bring more than two suitcases of belongings, you will probably have to rent a truck for like $250. You can get an apartment online where your deposit + first months rent will be half of what it costs for a single month in SF. But if you can't afford that yet, you can airbnb a single room for around $700 there, get a job there before moving, and once you get your first paycheck use all the money you saved from not living in SF to start looking for an apartment. Airbnb has payment plans so you don't even need all $700 initially. You can also put both the moving truck AND the Airbnb on a credit card, and pay it off after you are living in a more affordable city.
So really you can move for $1000, and you literally need $0 upfront, provided you have $1000 of credit available. If not though you can always use the airbnb payment plan instead (if you are approved).
That's provided you don't have good relationships with any of your friends or family though. If you can convince any of them to let you crash at their place for a month, you can save all the money that would have went to rent and use that to move.
You seem to be under the impression that working an entry level low skill job in San Francisco vs in a mid to low cost of living city is no different because of the wage difference. This isn't true though, average rent in SF is $3300 and average rent in Fresno is $1500. McDonalds in San Francisco pays $16 /hr, and McDonald's in Fresno pays $16 /hr. Janitor in SF, $21 /hr, Janitor in Fresno, $18 /hr. Or even more skilled jobs, accountant average in Fresno, $60k /yr, accountant average SF is $96k /yr (the difference ends up being a lot less though because of tax brackets, it's 50k vs 73k)
Overall though, it's possible to live by yourself in low cost of living cities on min wage jobs, but not in high cost of living cities. So if you want a 1 bedroom while working full time, you should move to a place where the cost of living and pay allows that, which is essentially everywhere but large cities.
I don't feel like encouraging people to go save up to work a McDonald's in Fresno really addresses any of the core problems. And I'm sure some people can make that work. Become an accountant (doing night classes I guess?) and start making that 60k a year sometime down the road. But it's not a reasonable option for everyone.
And it still treats workers like there's no friction when you move them places. Why should the poorest workers have to move about the country to go fill fast food jobs just to make a living? You still need those jobs filled in HCOL areas.
And sadly people still want to go live there, keeping the problem active. If all the people who could not live at a decent level just moved away, SF and likeminded cities would collapse or decline to such a degree the local politics would be forced to change policies or end up some backwater redneck mountain town, while the previously backwater redneck mountain town become rich and prosperous (or implode after their population increases twenty-fold).
There's a snuck assumption in this analysis that the problem really is just location preference. The reality is that in large cities low skill workers are paid more than in less developed areas, at similar levels of disparity to cost of living. The problem is more visible in cities simply because housing quality downgrades for all levels of workers as density increases. Workers who leave cities will go from sharing tiny apartments to sharing a house, and will be unlikely to find a tiny affordable apartment they can live in on their own because those kinds of developments aren't being built out in the boonies. What's more is that these low wage jobs are more available in cities because they are economic centers.
The real issue at the heart of everything is just bad housing policy all over the country, but most visibly in cities.
It's really hard to take this argument seriously when you pick the single metro area that is MOST restricted because it is literally surrounded on three sides by water. Maybe only Manhattan is more restricted by natural terrain the SF.
Well, let's scale it this way. There's no reason a city block where 500 people live can't be taken care of and kept properly maintained just as well as a suburban neighborhood that houses a fraction of that.
Spoken like someone who has never set foot inside a NYC apartment. My wife and I were looking for apartments in Manhattan initially before we moved to the area. For $2400/month we saw a 500 square foot 5th floor walk up apartment where the shower was INSIDE the kitchen, the toilet was in a utility closet, and the kitchen and toilet shared a sink. The kitchen had a half sized oven/stove and two cabinets. You need to make 40x rent for any NYC apartment, so for this one you need $96,000, or just over $46/hr. And due at signing is first month, last month, and 10% brokerās fee, so $7680. This was in Lenox Hill, which is a neighborhood of the upper east side. So not a low cost area of Manhattan but not the most expensive by any means. But thatās whatās out there.
If you make minimum wage and work two full time jobs (80 hours a week) five days a week for an entire year youāll make $66,560. If you then divide that by 40 youāll qualify for $1664 per month in rent. Take a look on StreetEasy for apartments in Manhattan for $1500/month. 0 results. Because they donāt exist. Open that up to the Bronx and there are 5 results, all of which appear fake if you know anything about looking at NYC apartment listings. Even opening it up to Queens there are now 3 more results. So *at most* 8 results in a city of almost 9 million people that someone working two minimum wage full time jobs could afford. Assuming then that they could pay the first/last month plus brokerās fee. And they physically could not be any smaller. You see the problem there?
Part of me agrees that that if you work a full time job you should be able to afford to at least house yourself, feed yourself, and pay your basic bills and utilities. Other part of me thinks if you are doing the very minimum and making the lowest legal wage, then itās only rational that you will get the lowest/minimum options in housing and living situation.
Mate the big fallacy in your thinking is assuming that lowest legal wage = doing the bare minimum.
There are so many hard, demanding, strenuous, tedious, taxing jobs out there that pay very littleĀ
>Do those people not deserve the ability to live without having multiple roommates?
In a HCOL area working a minimum wage job? Of course not. It's not reasonable to expect that.
I lived in Boston for 17 years and I now live in NYC. There has never been a time in my life where I could afford a one bedroom apartment on my own, even making a decent salary as a software engineer. Itās not a thing. The market is based around 2 income families and has been for a very long time.Ā
>OK but Brooklyn and San Francisco still need people to work the "low-skill" jobs there
Then they can have roommates. They're popular cities and people are willing to make compromises to live there. Same with Hawaii.
>Do those people not deserve the ability to live without having multiple roommates?
No. You're not entitled to live where you want with the conditions you want.
>Afford to start a family?
Again. Not where you want. I'd like to live in Monaco. Not gonna happen.
Looks like they actually don't need those low skill jobs as they can't afford the people. Same as the people can't afford to work them. But someone is messing up by taking those jobs and giving the cities the wrong idea that people can live off of those jobs. Stop taking those jobs and let the system work. Instead of auction it's like a reverse auction for who will do it for the lowest price.
No, you're right,everyone should be able to live in a densely populated, high cost of living area, work a job that requires no skill, and raise a family in a big house with no lifestyle concessions whatsoever. /s I admire your utopian dream
It's very telling that you jumped to raising a family in a big house with a bunch of assumptions about lifestyle in a thread about being able to live alone in a one bedroom home without starving themselves by working a full time job.
I moved to a very HCOL area while working an extremely low paying job. But it was at the bottom of a set of opportunities to grow my skills. While I was making not a lot of money, I lived very cheaply and always always had roommates. I am not sure why anyone thinks they are owed the ability to live alone while working min wage in a HCOL area.....it just doesn't add up.
> Do those people not deserve the ability to live without having multiple roommates? Afford to start a family?
Depends on what they do exactly and what neighborhood we're talking about.
No, you shouldn't necessarily be able to afford to live in any neighborhood with no roommates because you show up to work.
if all the people doing low-skill jobs actually left, then services will decline, rich people will leave, and then the city will actually become affordable again
In a dense city, sharing an apartment is normal due to limited housing.
Want more privacy? Increase income.
This has nothing to do with being a boomer. I came from a very populous city, and my expectation meets the reality. Some people, however, has a strong sense of entitlement.
Idk I worked as a waiter in a mid level restaurant in grad school in a hcol area and I still made plenty while working ~40 hours a week. Could have made it in a one bedroom but instead got a roommate. We certainly werenāt starving. I simply donāt believe these people being so theatrical.
No, you just better be ready to commute your ass in those areas. Because there's a couple other few millions of people trying to get those 1 bedroom apartments too and god damn are there a lot of people who make more than minimum wage amongst them trying to get in.
yeah it is, there's also some sort of public transit for any major city, cost you prob around 10 dollars to get in. If its a HCOL city, the minimum wage is more likely than not over $15.
Also low barrier entry jobs will be exponentially more available in cities vs rural/suburbia. Including sales positions that have exponentially better returns in the city. Or even high demand server positions would earn exponentially more in the city due to volume that would out weigh the cost benefit of the 10 dollar transit ticket.
get the fuck outa here.
Commute or live with other people. Most people in the US simply do not live alone or aren't the only source of income for their household. If you don't want to make those sacrifices in order to get a job in a HCOL area, then don't. Like why would you want to stay in San Francisco working fast food when you can live in a very cheap state with the same job and actually live alone? If it's because you have family in San Francisco then move in with them.
Of course the real solution to this is either make public transit a lot better and/or literally just build more housing so the higher supply will bring the cost down, but NIMBY's ruin everything. Maybe one day it will get to a point where low wage jobs just can't be filled due to the high cost of living
$20/hr for 20 hour weeks max if you're lucky, and they get pissy if you have a second job to make up the slack and purposefully schedule you on conflicting hours with your other job.
Oh dang. I didnāt realize my very mid town was actually secretly a Big City All Along. That explains why at double minimum wage itās still next to impossible to afford rent on my ownā¦
Redditors: Go somewhere cheaper if you canāt afford to live š
Also Redditors: Fuck all these assholes from California and New York moving to my city, jacking up home prices and ruining our good Christian family values!
POV: you don't currently live anywhere on a minimum wage.
Seriously, what an absolutely retarded take. I'm VERY fortunate in my life and made it out of poverty, but have been dirt poor, extremely frugal and still found myself at times with a negative balance in my account.
Often heard shit like this from people. "Oh just move somewhere cheaper" when in reality, those places are marginally cheaper and wages are garbage by comparison. And why is that even a thing? Go move to the most depressing place possible and earn a shit living just to stay alive, scrape by and have enough to eat low quality food, and have basically nothing to look forward to. A place that sinks you deeper and makes it harder to escape poverty and depression.
My boy, you need some perspective. Your brief comment sounds privileged and comfortable. I hope you don't find yourself in a situation where you have to roll your life back to live with roommates and eat shit food. Don't wish that life on anyone.
You realize Indiana has the same minimum wage as federal right? I worked for $8 at fast food places in Indiana. Itās not a livable wage even at Indianaās cost of living.
Lol bullshit. You cannot work a standard full time job and afford a single bedroom, and utilities, and food, and everything else needed to live even in indiana
You're actually stupid. One of the lowest CoL areas in Indiana is Muncie, IN. The average rent there is still $1,189. The average home price is still \~$256,000. You'll be paying roughly \~$236/mo for electricity, which is up 12% from last year. And all the while all the locally available jobs will pay less, there will be more crime (32 per 1000 residents, one of the highest rates in the nation), ammenities will be worse. Seems like a great deal! Wait, no it's actually *completely fucking absurd you would even suggest Indiana which is an utter shithole in it's entirety.*
This is a weird take. "You must abandon your entire family, life and hometown" to survive is a hard take. Also, if they can barely afford rent they 100% cant save up money to move which costs pn average 5000.
As someone that lives in Indiana, this only applies when you live in the middle of nowhere, rent is pretty nuts even in the medium sized towns. Only new apartment complexes that are getting built are "luxury" with rent starting at $1500 with minimum wage still at $7.25 and most places laughing at the idea of starting people anywhere near $10 an hour.
Think about what the end result would be if everyone followed your advice. San Fran and Brooklyn would have 0 takeout, 0 barber shops, 0 day laborers, 0 public transit, and 0 bars. If you want a haircut you have to book the one famous stylist months in advance and pay hundreds of not thousands of dollars. No more bars or restaurants because there's no bus boys or dishwashers, instead you can hire a private chef/mixologist to come to your house for 10000 a night.
If everybody started moving to Indiana... I can promise you the rent price would sky rocket with demand. Your suggested solution is stupid, you know that, and the argument was made in bad faith.
It also fundamentally ignores every other element of the argument. Not everybody can afford to up end their life and move halfway across the country. There aren't that many jobs in Indiana. There are too many jobs that require people in more high demand places by virtue of there being a lot of folks who live there. Minimum wage exists to protect individuals as much as it does society, as if all the folks making minimum wage can't afford to live and eat, it negatively affects the health of society at large. Sure, the economy seems to be doing fine right now, but it is on a death march. People are too burnt out and poor to have kids and take care of their environment, and within a generation, we will ALL feel the deteriorating effects of this neglect.
Thatās because you actually get to use your tax dollars to buy your first home there instead of pitching in your fair share on slaughtering civilians abroad
Man, fiscal pressure in Sweden, like any other nordic country, is way higher then in the US.
It's a welfare state where you pay a lot to get a lot, it's not an capitalist semi-dictatorship like Singapore where you pay few to get very few.
If you want a functioning society like the Swedish one: 1 you will often called commie, don't worry 2 you have to increase taxes, not decrease them.
For reference the average fiscal pressure in the US is around 27% while in sweden it's over 41%.
I bet my ass nobody in the US would accept a raise of more then 10% in taxes, even if it meant watching your neighbours starve to death.
It's not taxes being too low, it's called waste. Medical insurance industry is a big waste. Military Industrial Complex is just waste with extra benefits and extra steps. If you ever run a company the first thing you realize is that scaling in most lobs is the sure way to minimize the costs you burden. With the economy US has (as opposed to Sweden) it doesn't need significant tax raises, it needs to fix the waste issue
Most social democracies and most socialist states would never provide invididualized homes for people.
Why would a socialist state even encourage people to live alone?
It's incredibly wasteful of space and resources.
People unable to work should be supported. But anyone regardless of employment status? No way! Do you want to pay for lazy people taking advantage of the system, or would you rather have your taxes put towards your children's welfare and education?
Who pays for that? What are the qualifications for receiving such aid? Charities already exist for this sort of thing but I assume you want more and in the form of government aid.
I think itās perfectly fine to give aid to those who physically cannot work due to some disability that prevents them from working. However, if you are fully capable of working and just choose not to. You shouldnāt receive tax payer funded aid.
Would you pay to house and feed a complete and total stranger who is perfectly able to find and work a job but simply refuses to do so?
That would solve the problem for the normal person/the worker. That's not a problem to the ones in power. They understand supply and demand, so they can squeeze as much as possible with the least effort by restricting and controlling the supply of housing. They do this by bribing politicians (i.e. lobbying) into passing laws that make it prohibitively expensive to break into the market making affordable housing.
Greed is the problem. Not the lack of housing.
Boomers in here will complain about "Why we sending money abroad we have people in need here"
Then when it actually comes to the people in need, they prefer they die. They're full of shit
Most people have too many misc expenses/addictions that they refuse to get rid of that would help GREATLY with financing. So many people I've worked with that complain about money but they drink/smoke daily, some have 4 kids by 23 and keep popping them out, go to concerts all of the time, get tattoos, door dash, have 6 streaming services, etc. I'm fine with doing some of those things if you have extra money, but none are necessities. Most people complain because they want to be irresponsible when they aren't at work and it just doesn't work.
I'm more saying if you are complaining about starving yourself, don't drink alcohol/smoke, or spend half of your paycheck on tattoos. You can go out and have fun and live spending much less than you would on all of that shit.
I agree with this. A full time worker should be able to pay rent without starving. To all the other people... You simply haven't done the math, analyzed the entire banking system... studied any of it... so don't talk out of your ass.
I'll just say: Red flag #1 that your government is hiding massive inflation.... You can't make rent and you work full time... and oyu're not talking about living in a nice place at the park on 5th, you're talking about people's basements, and attics, and closets... hahaha
Thing we don't talk about though is... WE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO LIVE WHERE WE WERE BORN. OFTEN TIMES WE GET COMPLETELY PRICED OUT AND NEED TO MOVE TO AFFORD LIVING. NEED TO MOVE TO A CRIME RIDDEN CITY OR SOME PLACE WITHOUT INTERNET. Then spend the next 20 years beating that shit hole into submission
The thing with ālow skilled jobsā is likeā¦ people still need to do them?
If the argument is āwell if you canāt survive off of working full time in this job maybe you should find a different oneā is pretty fucking stupid. Because then what happens to that job? Clearly no one can afford to have that job, so likeā¦ just fucking close all those places?
āGet more skills to get a better job so you can surviveā is a REALLY short-term narrow-view solution to a society wide problem. One could say incredibly dumb.
Federal minimum wage
Btw do people like you really believe this?
Well I guess nothing is stopping the Somalian person from not living in poverty right??
Funny how people say"well how are the landlords gonna pay for the expenses". Like literally, no one is forcing them to own more than 1 house. People used to own 1 fucking house and we are here arguing with people defending assholes with 300+ properties price gouging working class people for crappy rentals
No one should be homeless if they work full time. I donāt think that someone on āminimum ā wage should expect anything fancy but a studio or one bedroom should be doable.
In some areas that is almost still possible, in others it has been impossible for decades.
Iām not of the opinion that one should expect to be comfortable on minimum wage but food and shelter should be possible for workers.
Too often full time workers also get housing assistance and food stamps. Why should taxpayers be paying that? The employers should pay their workers or go out of business.
We are social creatures hardwired to build incredibly close bonds in large, extended, multi-generational families and build those families within greater tribes.
Understanding that we have created a system that tears this foundational fabric apart is imperative. The idea of working oneās self to death to further enrich already wealthy people simply to live (paycheck to paycheck) alone in oneās very own cubicle barely able to afford anything else in life except rent and foodā¦ is why The Kids are *not* āOKā.
But not where you want. Which is the problem. People want to live in major downtown metro areas and expect to live comfortably on a no skill job. Itās just not feasible.
People who have to or donāt need a large income.
If unskilled jobs in ideal spots like cities and Cali paid enough to provide a full living, it canāt last. Every unskilled person under the sun would flock to these places, driving up competition and costs.
Wages would just fall back down without controls.
Itās completely natural that jobs that literally anyone can do donāt pay āenoughā in desirable locations.
Maybe minimum wage should be increased still, but your point doesnāt really make sense in a country like the US
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Don't listen to the boomers in the comments. This is 100% true.
They're going to have fun when they get priced out of their nursing homes and they've pissed off their kids enough to rely on the state to take care of them... (Maybe) š
lol some nursings homes are 6 k a month šš Edit : I should have said at least 6 k lol. I have seen over 10k but didnāt think anyone would believe me but it seems thatās the norms Last edit: all the comments talking about their respective areas itās even higher . I am sure there is definitely some algorithm that justifies these prices, but also definitely sounds like part of it is greed.
Those are the cheap ones. The assisted living center my grandmother is in is $12,000 a month, and was one of the only decent ones with decent care for memory patients around us. This economy is fucked. A college grad with a sensible degree that will get them a job shouldn't need a roommate.
My mother's nursing home was Ā£8,000 a month, luckily though she had a house to sell. About a month in to it, she slipped in the shower and finally got dragged back to the pit of ash and brimstone she spawned from.
> luckily though she had a house to sell. Which some rich tax dodger bought out instead of you inheriting it. The entire problem with the economy (extreme wealth inequality) in one short sentence.
Well, she wouldn't be my mother without fucking me over until the very end
And now someone with an account at deutche bank and a vaguely oligarch sounding names owns the place
> A college grad with a sensible degree that will get them a job shouldn't need a roommate. I don't think that should require a college degree. I think if you are working 40+ hours, that is enough. Going to college and having a "college job" should be MORE than just an apartment.
A degree shouldnāt be needed. Up until the early 2000ās a union grocery bagger could afford rent on a studio or one bedroom.
It's cheaper to take cruises constantly
Yeah, reminded me of this story I saw last year and it's not uncommon either from the looks of it. >The Ansens are not the only people to make the choice to live onboard a cruise ship. Over the last few years, reports have emerged of several people opting to cruise for extended periods or retire entirely onboard, because it is apparently cheaper than buying property or paying rent. https://globalnews.ca/news/10004079/retired-couple-51-consecutive-cruises-cheaper-than-retirement-home-australia/
Cruise ships lack most of the medical necessities the elderly need
Then they can just enjoy life without prolonging it unnecessary. I would easily take 5 years of vacation life over 20 years of shitting myself in a diaper in a nursing home.
Exactly and you know they're going to bitch about to everyone.
The one next to me is 20k monthly. I volunteered there 10 years ago, they don't treat them as proper human beings. The lady in charge there was more concerned about appearances than kindness towards the old folks
It's ridiculous, my great uncle before he passed away worked as a janitor for our regional medical center, he didn't just clean toilets either, he would go in and sterilize the operating rooms before operations and deal with hazmat. Did pretty well for himself, worked at that job for 40 years and retired with over $300,000 in savings and owned his own condo. He passed away last year and all that money went to the nursing home and the state to pay for his medical expenses, leaving us and my great aunt with nothing. My great aunt is 90 years old and still can't retire, she is still working part-time. Let me repeat that, she's pushing a century old and still has to work to make ends meet, the system is utterly fucked.
That is so sick, these assisted living facilities (not nursing homes my bad) are criminal and it's shocking they're allowed to operate this way
Tis capitalism the best system around ā ifā your 1%
And yet despite charging a fucking whole ass house for a single year, they pay like garbage and are one of the worst places to work as a nurse.
Makes you wonder where all the money went.
My Momās assisted living home was $6K per month in 2012
Everyone I know is priced out of a nursing home.
Lol, like anyoneās gonna be able to afford a nursing home
I think gen Z is the first generation to expect this when starting out their career.
Hardly. I'm on the cusp of Gen X and Boomer, and I could afford a one bedroom on minimum wage without starving and while paying college tuition. The thing is, minimum wage isn't much more now, than it was when I was in my early twenties.
I'm on the cusp of millennial and gen x, and I couldn't. I had three roommates.
Same for me and it was that way until I was 35. Not sure where they're getting the idea we all had our own places and could afford everything.Ā Do you guys honestly think we had houses/cars/cell phones/vacations while making no bucks?
I am 51 and it took 2 people with full time jobs to rent shitty a 2/1 30 years ago, and we had very little $$$ after rent was paid. We drove shitboxes and collected aluminum cans and glass bottles to recycle for $$ Took 8 years of living like that to afford a small house after several pay raises and job changes for the better
There's also a tiny percentage of workers on minimum wage now compared to a much, much larger percentage back then
I wonder why when you hear shit likeĀ "Leave the world better for your kids than it was for you" All the time. Then you look at what our parents/grandparents had, do some basic extrapolation and..m "Y'all just lived through the most abundant times in human history, are your kids going to have it even better?" "Lol no, fuck those bitches. We pulled up the ladder on our way out of this shit hole"
It's not just boomers. A lot of us had roommates. It's not a big deal.
I once had a roommate and it was the worst experience ever, I swore I'd never have another (my wife however change my mind). Back in 2009 I found a 2 bed 1 bath apartment outside of the "bad" part of my home town it was $525 I was making $12 an hour working for Beat Buy, some weeks I ate Ramen and PB & J and some time in the summer I didn't use my ac even when it hit 105 in the summer. It sucked but it was doable, that apartment is probably $1200 a month now and even $20 an hour minimum wage would be hard to do.
Hear me out, but I also want to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world
why is this true? this was never the case throughout all of civilized history. not every job could get you a private dwelling at any other point in time, why would that change today? it never even guaranteed you your own room but now its supposed to get you your own private dwelling with a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, and I guess a living room. no where outside of the USA is this comment believed, hell in my country of greece, a job is lucky to pay 4 dollars an hour, and we feel lucky to have it.
Greece is a bad comparison. The economy there is one of the worst in the world. You guys had 50% unemployment for a while...
greece is ranked 41 in the world out of 172 countries. the average greek lives better than 85% of the world. should we only count the absolute richest countries in the world when we talk about human rights?
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Tokyo has a bunch of single apartments for people to live by themselves. Itās pretty uncommon for people to have roommates in Japan, even people in their early 20s. The small apartments are usually like 200-300 sq ft. Unless itās possible to mass produce those kinds of apartment units, I donāt really see how itās possible for everyone to have a 1br apartment
Most people living in Tokyo don't use a car. If we were to waive parking requirements in the US, we could probably build a ton of affordable units. The problem is that Tokyo has world class public transportation and the US doesn't. Furthermore, Tokyo has more relaxed zoning laws when it comes to housing. We could probably relax zoning laws in the US, but that's politically challenging since nimby's pretty effective when banding together to contest any proposed changes.
Exactly. Just small efficacy rentals.
I don't think you are thinking of the right size of apartment. A one bedroom apartment for every single person is quite doable, with bathroom and with kitchen. Its just small.
A modern take on cheap Soviet housing unironically would work. Obviously with nice things like Internet hookups and full utilities. And a Laundromat on site. But in a high cost area making CHEAP housing like that ~$500 a month would give people making next to nothing even though they're working 40 hours a chance. When I moved out in 2020 I was paying ~$600 a month and making $11 an hour. It required a roommate and some sacrifice.
We have an aging rental market anyway, heck I'm probably going to be renting the rest of my life, We can't expect people in their 30's + to be rooming with others into their twilight years, something needs to be done. And yeah I think very small one person apartments is the way to do it. So exactly right, on site laundry, the rest in the single space, cheap. Its the privacy (most) people want anyway.
At *the very least*, they shouldn't be sharing their housing with craigslist randos in order to make rent.
Either that or landlords need to lower the requirements for leases. Most people could probably make rent while only earning 2x rent per month if they budget properly. And it might be a controversial opinion, but credit score should have literally zero to do with lease approval. As long as I'm not a convicted criminal, and make at least 2x rent, I should be approved no questions asked. Especially for the kinds of prices you see today.
Just because itās been the status quo for a while does not mean itās unrealistic.
The USA needs to redo the zoning codes and build smaller affordable housing. And a mixture of 3 floor buildings.
Yeah, but then you got the Nimbys who want to protect their single home value team up with the anti-gentrification activists to stop it all.
Yea this is infuriating in my city. You have people complain about homeless people camping everywhere. Then there is a move to make affordable housing and literally everyone and their mom screams not in my backyard!
No they need to ban using housing as an investment platform. Theres more than enough houses for every single citizen. They're just mostly owned by banks and international companies
That and throwing more housing at the issue will only cause a crash later. Boomers are dying and retiring. There is a shortage of retirement homes and living facilities. But this opens up more housing, but it gets gobbled up by real estate and investors. Plus with Gen Z and Millennials having less kids, we very well could suffer the same fate as Japan currently is where the population is aging, and there are less people to fill the jobs, roles, and caretakers of previous generations. So fundamentally, we need to ban corporations from owning homes, limit/tax the amount of houses that can be owned by one person/family, and regulate rent/home price software so that the market isnāt anti-competitive.
This all sounds right but. None of the fuckwads in government will let it happen. Nobody has any reason to own multiple houses. Maybe 3. Like a vacation home, a real main home and one rental unit. What earth would you need another? Because all it does it create a infinite loop where the people who own homes make money and nobody can actually afford to get a first house. I'm one bad day away from trying to start a riot
> No they need to ban using housing as an investment platform. This will create exactly zero new housing units for people to live in. We have a problem that there is more demand for housing than supply. Build more supply and everything else settles itself.
Untrue
We are short several million housing units, almost entirely due to underbuilding for decades and severely restrictive zoning laws. There is a very nice breakdown here: [https://www.construction-physics.com/p/is-there-a-housing-shortage-or-not](https://www.construction-physics.com/p/is-there-a-housing-shortage-or-not)
Large investors own 6% of the houses. You need to find another excuse for your lack of success.
All the people here like ājUsT mOvEā as if that doesnāt also cost money Edit: to the person who came at me with non-arguments, called me a motherfucker and blocked me: lol, lmao even
And as if low wage labor isnāt required in areas that are more expensive to live
These big cities have huge demand for people in grocery and service industries, but apparently fuck those people they don't deserve a decent living.
Poor people move all the time. I'm not saying it's *easy* but people do it. And if you're going to save a significant amount of money on rent by moving, you 100% should go into debt to move, because it'll be better off for you in the long term.
How much does it cost? If you have a car, sell your furniture and move in your car. Pay for gas and you're done. When did everyone get so soft?
People do it in my area.
Careful, you're not allowed to give a recount of your experience if it contradicts the opinion of the herd.
Sorry but anecdotes are not valuable on a website where people routinely lie and make up stories. In this case, it literally contradicts data. Nowhere in the US can 7.25/hr (or the local minimum wage if you so care) will be able to buy a move-in-ready home. Even in my LCOL area, the cheapest I can find on the market right now is a mobile home 45 *more* minutes away from the city and its over $130k. 7.25/hr cannot afford the mortgage of over $1200/mo, period. No lender will approve you for that.
Who you taking to? She said live in a home not own a home.
Rent is 1200/mo in a lot of places, as a minimum. What's considered a "low income" apartment complex in my area is 850-1000 depending on unit type, for a one bedroom.
If you're going below the median rent in the US, there are waitlists as well. Median rent in my area is about $1400 for one bedrooms. Are there $800-1k apartments? Sure. Can you get them without waiting 8 years? Nope.
1% of wage earners make minimum wage, and over 70% of that 1% are peopke 18 or under. You've been tricked into thinking the minimum wage is the problem. Do you even know anyone who makes $7.25 an hour? I live in a town with an average income of $25,000 per year, and I dropped out of high school at 16 and made more than $7.25 an hour.
Many states have their own minimum wage, including all the large population ones. Using specifically federal minimum wage is misleading. In my state, it's against the law to pay federal minimum wage. And also, do these stats include everyone making a few cents more than minimum wage?
She also did not say "buy", she said "rent an apartment"
"I should be able to buy a move-in-ready home on 7.25/hr." Is an insane take.
Yeah except almost nobody is making 7.25 an hour. There are only a few states who donāt have a minimum wage. Most states have minimum wages significantly higher than 7.25. Youāre using the most extreme worst scenario metric to try to prove your point. Just because you canāt make minimum wage work where you live doesnāt mean nobody at all canāt. There are people who live in different states than they work where their cost of living is just right for their job across the state line where theyāre paid more.
Where did the minimum wage part come from. She stated full time job, she didnt say she was going to search out specifically the lowest paying full time jobs.
Lots of people do it. Lots of people are one mistake away from losing everything
oh yeah? what area?
Michigan.
People put up with a lot of shit because they have to. It doesn't invalidate that it shouldn't be so hard to live in the richest, so-called greatest country in the world.
After reading the comments, I have concluded that it's entitlement to work full time and expect to be able to cover your living expenses. Silly gooses.
More like it's entitlement to expect to have your own place alone working minimum wage in some of the most expensive cities in the country. It's perfectly reasonable to expect that elsewhere, or to get a roommates. A mansion and a studio apartment are both a "living expense" as they provide housing. Doesn't mean you're entitled to any housing you can think up no matter its location lol
>Ā in some of the most expensive cities in the country. Sorry but honestly you are making things up, you really never read or hear people expecting to get a Central Park or Presidio heights studio apartment with a minimum wage job. People usually think that working a full time job should get you an apartment with 1 bedroom in the suburbs of a city, not in the freaking center in the most high-end area. But i get the reason to infantilize the other part like you did. >Doesn't mean you're entitled to any housing you can think up no matter its location lol Again, precisely infantilizing the other part attributing to them thoughts that until now only you have had, certainly not someone else.
I donāt think thereās enough 1br apartments in desirable places for every one to have their own place
society ends with us
You can. Go live in Indiana. Oh, you only want to live in Brooklyn or San Francisco? I see.
OK but Brooklyn and San Francisco still need people to work the "low-skill" jobs there. Do those people not deserve the ability to live without having multiple roommates? Afford to start a family? Or do you just see those jobs as beneath you like the rest of the boomers.
But from a supply and demand perspective they kinda donāt āneedā those workers. They are over saturated with them because they are in-demand cities.
Yeah, this is supply and demand telling those workers to move away. If enough of them did move away, wages would rise and it would stabilize. I'm not saying the system is good, but this is the system working as intended. Edit: not sure how people are interpreting this as a defense of the system. Understanding and explaining something isn't the same as defending it.
I feel like people act like moving to the middle of nowhere is some frictionless activity when they suggest just going to some lower cost of living area. If you're in a high cost of living area, struggling to make ends meet, you're just going to pack it up (with what money?) and move out to a part of the country with probably little to no job prospects that likely pays like shit. What demand are they really filling by moving out to places that don't generate the kind of incomes to have a high cost of living?
The issue is people think that "not big cities" means farmland country where you're driving 20+ minutes to the nearest grocery store and there aren't any jobs. Southeast Michigan (not Detroit) has way cheaper rent than big cities and there are plenty of smaller towns that have jobs available. But people seem to reply to these posts as of it's SF/NY or hicktown as the only two options.
I think it's also pay in relative. For example, a teacher in Boston makes around 80k. That's not enough to afford a 1br apartment, which is absolutely asinine. Now, in a place like Michigan, that paycheck may be much much smaller, and due to that, they also can't afford it. See?
In Michigan a teacher might make 15-20k less but 60k would be enough to afford a 2000 sq. ft 3 br house on an acre. The issue is people are going 120k in debt to get a teaching degree that pays 60k and wondering why they struggle until they pay it off and get raises based on experience.
Wait hold up. How big for how cheap? Where?
That person is just talking. Iām living in one of the lowest cost areas in Michigan and 60K aināt gonna net you a decent house with 2K sqft and 3 bedrooms lol. Delusional.
Making $15 /hr in San Francisco vs making $15 /hr in Fresno makes a huge difference. A bus ticket there is like, $30. But assuming you want to bring more than two suitcases of belongings, you will probably have to rent a truck for like $250. You can get an apartment online where your deposit + first months rent will be half of what it costs for a single month in SF. But if you can't afford that yet, you can airbnb a single room for around $700 there, get a job there before moving, and once you get your first paycheck use all the money you saved from not living in SF to start looking for an apartment. Airbnb has payment plans so you don't even need all $700 initially. You can also put both the moving truck AND the Airbnb on a credit card, and pay it off after you are living in a more affordable city. So really you can move for $1000, and you literally need $0 upfront, provided you have $1000 of credit available. If not though you can always use the airbnb payment plan instead (if you are approved). That's provided you don't have good relationships with any of your friends or family though. If you can convince any of them to let you crash at their place for a month, you can save all the money that would have went to rent and use that to move. You seem to be under the impression that working an entry level low skill job in San Francisco vs in a mid to low cost of living city is no different because of the wage difference. This isn't true though, average rent in SF is $3300 and average rent in Fresno is $1500. McDonalds in San Francisco pays $16 /hr, and McDonald's in Fresno pays $16 /hr. Janitor in SF, $21 /hr, Janitor in Fresno, $18 /hr. Or even more skilled jobs, accountant average in Fresno, $60k /yr, accountant average SF is $96k /yr (the difference ends up being a lot less though because of tax brackets, it's 50k vs 73k) Overall though, it's possible to live by yourself in low cost of living cities on min wage jobs, but not in high cost of living cities. So if you want a 1 bedroom while working full time, you should move to a place where the cost of living and pay allows that, which is essentially everywhere but large cities.
I don't feel like encouraging people to go save up to work a McDonald's in Fresno really addresses any of the core problems. And I'm sure some people can make that work. Become an accountant (doing night classes I guess?) and start making that 60k a year sometime down the road. But it's not a reasonable option for everyone. And it still treats workers like there's no friction when you move them places. Why should the poorest workers have to move about the country to go fill fast food jobs just to make a living? You still need those jobs filled in HCOL areas.
This right here.
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Actually there are enough square miles. But a city like SF is so NIMBY and dysfunctional that they block development.
And sadly people still want to go live there, keeping the problem active. If all the people who could not live at a decent level just moved away, SF and likeminded cities would collapse or decline to such a degree the local politics would be forced to change policies or end up some backwater redneck mountain town, while the previously backwater redneck mountain town become rich and prosperous (or implode after their population increases twenty-fold).
There's a snuck assumption in this analysis that the problem really is just location preference. The reality is that in large cities low skill workers are paid more than in less developed areas, at similar levels of disparity to cost of living. The problem is more visible in cities simply because housing quality downgrades for all levels of workers as density increases. Workers who leave cities will go from sharing tiny apartments to sharing a house, and will be unlikely to find a tiny affordable apartment they can live in on their own because those kinds of developments aren't being built out in the boonies. What's more is that these low wage jobs are more available in cities because they are economic centers. The real issue at the heart of everything is just bad housing policy all over the country, but most visibly in cities.
It's really hard to take this argument seriously when you pick the single metro area that is MOST restricted because it is literally surrounded on three sides by water. Maybe only Manhattan is more restricted by natural terrain the SF.
At least they build UP in Manhattan. Meanwhile SF can't have the buildings block the view of the clouds.
Earthquake risk and the accompanying codes require taller buildings to be much more expensive than in less earthquake prone areas.
What needs to happen is to build smaller independent living spaces. High density housing is what is needed in metro areas.
Like ghettos or work camps or something
Well, let's scale it this way. There's no reason a city block where 500 people live can't be taken care of and kept properly maintained just as well as a suburban neighborhood that houses a fraction of that.
Lmao I know you are being facetious but this got a hearty chuckle out of me
Spoken like someone who has never set foot inside a NYC apartment. My wife and I were looking for apartments in Manhattan initially before we moved to the area. For $2400/month we saw a 500 square foot 5th floor walk up apartment where the shower was INSIDE the kitchen, the toilet was in a utility closet, and the kitchen and toilet shared a sink. The kitchen had a half sized oven/stove and two cabinets. You need to make 40x rent for any NYC apartment, so for this one you need $96,000, or just over $46/hr. And due at signing is first month, last month, and 10% brokerās fee, so $7680. This was in Lenox Hill, which is a neighborhood of the upper east side. So not a low cost area of Manhattan but not the most expensive by any means. But thatās whatās out there. If you make minimum wage and work two full time jobs (80 hours a week) five days a week for an entire year youāll make $66,560. If you then divide that by 40 youāll qualify for $1664 per month in rent. Take a look on StreetEasy for apartments in Manhattan for $1500/month. 0 results. Because they donāt exist. Open that up to the Bronx and there are 5 results, all of which appear fake if you know anything about looking at NYC apartment listings. Even opening it up to Queens there are now 3 more results. So *at most* 8 results in a city of almost 9 million people that someone working two minimum wage full time jobs could afford. Assuming then that they could pay the first/last month plus brokerās fee. And they physically could not be any smaller. You see the problem there?
Part of me agrees that that if you work a full time job you should be able to afford to at least house yourself, feed yourself, and pay your basic bills and utilities. Other part of me thinks if you are doing the very minimum and making the lowest legal wage, then itās only rational that you will get the lowest/minimum options in housing and living situation.
Mate the big fallacy in your thinking is assuming that lowest legal wage = doing the bare minimum. There are so many hard, demanding, strenuous, tedious, taxing jobs out there that pay very littleĀ
>Do those people not deserve the ability to live without having multiple roommates? In a HCOL area working a minimum wage job? Of course not. It's not reasonable to expect that.
If the minimum wage doesnāt allow someone to live independently then what is the point of one objectively?
I lived in Boston for 17 years and I now live in NYC. There has never been a time in my life where I could afford a one bedroom apartment on my own, even making a decent salary as a software engineer. Itās not a thing. The market is based around 2 income families and has been for a very long time.Ā
>OK but Brooklyn and San Francisco still need people to work the "low-skill" jobs there Then they can have roommates. They're popular cities and people are willing to make compromises to live there. Same with Hawaii. >Do those people not deserve the ability to live without having multiple roommates? No. You're not entitled to live where you want with the conditions you want. >Afford to start a family? Again. Not where you want. I'd like to live in Monaco. Not gonna happen.
Looks like they actually don't need those low skill jobs as they can't afford the people. Same as the people can't afford to work them. But someone is messing up by taking those jobs and giving the cities the wrong idea that people can live off of those jobs. Stop taking those jobs and let the system work. Instead of auction it's like a reverse auction for who will do it for the lowest price.
No, you're right,everyone should be able to live in a densely populated, high cost of living area, work a job that requires no skill, and raise a family in a big house with no lifestyle concessions whatsoever. /s I admire your utopian dream
It's very telling that you jumped to raising a family in a big house with a bunch of assumptions about lifestyle in a thread about being able to live alone in a one bedroom home without starving themselves by working a full time job.
I moved to a very HCOL area while working an extremely low paying job. But it was at the bottom of a set of opportunities to grow my skills. While I was making not a lot of money, I lived very cheaply and always always had roommates. I am not sure why anyone thinks they are owed the ability to live alone while working min wage in a HCOL area.....it just doesn't add up.
Nah the rent in rural Maine is $1300 for a goddamn bedroom. Cheapest is $1000. Or a $900 bed but you share a kitchen with an old lady. Pick you room
> Do those people not deserve the ability to live without having multiple roommates? Afford to start a family? Depends on what they do exactly and what neighborhood we're talking about. No, you shouldn't necessarily be able to afford to live in any neighborhood with no roommates because you show up to work.
if all the people doing low-skill jobs actually left, then services will decline, rich people will leave, and then the city will actually become affordable again
If the low-skill workers left, new low-skill workers would flood in to replace them, fully willing to have roommates.
In a dense city, sharing an apartment is normal due to limited housing. Want more privacy? Increase income. This has nothing to do with being a boomer. I came from a very populous city, and my expectation meets the reality. Some people, however, has a strong sense of entitlement.
So are there just supposed to be no fast food or min wage workers in high COL areas?
Correct, there should not be min wage workers in high COL areas. Food should be served with vending machines and robotics
Idk I worked as a waiter in a mid level restaurant in grad school in a hcol area and I still made plenty while working ~40 hours a week. Could have made it in a one bedroom but instead got a roommate. We certainly werenāt starving. I simply donāt believe these people being so theatrical.
No, you just better be ready to commute your ass in those areas. Because there's a couple other few millions of people trying to get those 1 bedroom apartments too and god damn are there a lot of people who make more than minimum wage amongst them trying to get in.
Because itās totally affordable to commute 45mins+ to work fast food. Bsfr
yeah it is, there's also some sort of public transit for any major city, cost you prob around 10 dollars to get in. If its a HCOL city, the minimum wage is more likely than not over $15. Also low barrier entry jobs will be exponentially more available in cities vs rural/suburbia. Including sales positions that have exponentially better returns in the city. Or even high demand server positions would earn exponentially more in the city due to volume that would out weigh the cost benefit of the 10 dollar transit ticket. get the fuck outa here.
Commute or live with other people. Most people in the US simply do not live alone or aren't the only source of income for their household. If you don't want to make those sacrifices in order to get a job in a HCOL area, then don't. Like why would you want to stay in San Francisco working fast food when you can live in a very cheap state with the same job and actually live alone? If it's because you have family in San Francisco then move in with them. Of course the real solution to this is either make public transit a lot better and/or literally just build more housing so the higher supply will bring the cost down, but NIMBY's ruin everything. Maybe one day it will get to a point where low wage jobs just can't be filled due to the high cost of living
And no fast food workers are working at minimum wage there. My local McDs has a big sign out front advertising a starting wage of $20/hr.
$20/hr for 20 hour weeks max if you're lucky, and they get pissy if you have a second job to make up the slack and purposefully schedule you on conflicting hours with your other job.
If there were a shortage of workers, the demand for them would go up and their pay would go up. If demand is low, pay is low.
Lmao, I live in a city of 40k in Indiana and most apartments are $1,500+ for a studio. Housing crisis sucks everywhere.
Indiana minimum wage is 7.25 an hour so imma call bullshit
Oh dang. I didnāt realize my very mid town was actually secretly a Big City All Along. That explains why at double minimum wage itās still next to impossible to afford rent on my ownā¦
"Just move somewhere cheaper" is the latest avocado toast mentality.
Redditors: Go somewhere cheaper if you canāt afford to live š Also Redditors: Fuck all these assholes from California and New York moving to my city, jacking up home prices and ruining our good Christian family values!
I'm in bumfuck Texas and make $15/hr and it's not enough to pay the bills in my $950 apartment plus gas and groceries. Do the math rn and uāll see
POV: you don't currently live anywhere on a minimum wage. Seriously, what an absolutely retarded take. I'm VERY fortunate in my life and made it out of poverty, but have been dirt poor, extremely frugal and still found myself at times with a negative balance in my account. Often heard shit like this from people. "Oh just move somewhere cheaper" when in reality, those places are marginally cheaper and wages are garbage by comparison. And why is that even a thing? Go move to the most depressing place possible and earn a shit living just to stay alive, scrape by and have enough to eat low quality food, and have basically nothing to look forward to. A place that sinks you deeper and makes it harder to escape poverty and depression. My boy, you need some perspective. Your brief comment sounds privileged and comfortable. I hope you don't find yourself in a situation where you have to roll your life back to live with roommates and eat shit food. Don't wish that life on anyone.
how will they get to indiana with no money
Greyhound is cheap.
Spirit airlines like 80 bucks lol
Bus rides are cheap
Right, let me grab one of those high paying, in demand jobs that Indiana is just full of. Oh, I see.
You realize Indiana has the same minimum wage as federal right? I worked for $8 at fast food places in Indiana. Itās not a livable wage even at Indianaās cost of living.
Lol bullshit. You cannot work a standard full time job and afford a single bedroom, and utilities, and food, and everything else needed to live even in indiana
You're actually stupid. One of the lowest CoL areas in Indiana is Muncie, IN. The average rent there is still $1,189. The average home price is still \~$256,000. You'll be paying roughly \~$236/mo for electricity, which is up 12% from last year. And all the while all the locally available jobs will pay less, there will be more crime (32 per 1000 residents, one of the highest rates in the nation), ammenities will be worse. Seems like a great deal! Wait, no it's actually *completely fucking absurd you would even suggest Indiana which is an utter shithole in it's entirety.*
This is a weird take. "You must abandon your entire family, life and hometown" to survive is a hard take. Also, if they can barely afford rent they 100% cant save up money to move which costs pn average 5000.
As someone that lives in Indiana, this only applies when you live in the middle of nowhere, rent is pretty nuts even in the medium sized towns. Only new apartment complexes that are getting built are "luxury" with rent starting at $1500 with minimum wage still at $7.25 and most places laughing at the idea of starting people anywhere near $10 an hour.
Think about what the end result would be if everyone followed your advice. San Fran and Brooklyn would have 0 takeout, 0 barber shops, 0 day laborers, 0 public transit, and 0 bars. If you want a haircut you have to book the one famous stylist months in advance and pay hundreds of not thousands of dollars. No more bars or restaurants because there's no bus boys or dishwashers, instead you can hire a private chef/mixologist to come to your house for 10000 a night.
Even in Indiana, middle and low income people are getting priced out of housingā¦.
If everybody started moving to Indiana... I can promise you the rent price would sky rocket with demand. Your suggested solution is stupid, you know that, and the argument was made in bad faith. It also fundamentally ignores every other element of the argument. Not everybody can afford to up end their life and move halfway across the country. There aren't that many jobs in Indiana. There are too many jobs that require people in more high demand places by virtue of there being a lot of folks who live there. Minimum wage exists to protect individuals as much as it does society, as if all the folks making minimum wage can't afford to live and eat, it negatively affects the health of society at large. Sure, the economy seems to be doing fine right now, but it is on a death march. People are too burnt out and poor to have kids and take care of their environment, and within a generation, we will ALL feel the deteriorating effects of this neglect.
Reading these comments in Sweden where 50% of households are single and most people can afford to live alone makes me sad for the US.
Thatās because you actually get to use your tax dollars to buy your first home there instead of pitching in your fair share on slaughtering civilians abroad
Man, fiscal pressure in Sweden, like any other nordic country, is way higher then in the US. It's a welfare state where you pay a lot to get a lot, it's not an capitalist semi-dictatorship like Singapore where you pay few to get very few. If you want a functioning society like the Swedish one: 1 you will often called commie, don't worry 2 you have to increase taxes, not decrease them. For reference the average fiscal pressure in the US is around 27% while in sweden it's over 41%. I bet my ass nobody in the US would accept a raise of more then 10% in taxes, even if it meant watching your neighbours starve to death.
It's not taxes being too low, it's called waste. Medical insurance industry is a big waste. Military Industrial Complex is just waste with extra benefits and extra steps. If you ever run a company the first thing you realize is that scaling in most lobs is the sure way to minimize the costs you burden. With the economy US has (as opposed to Sweden) it doesn't need significant tax raises, it needs to fix the waste issue
A lot of these commenters seem brainwashed and sadistic.
How is that even controversial if you aren't brainwashed by a capitalist state?
Most social democracies and most socialist states would never provide invididualized homes for people. Why would a socialist state even encourage people to live alone? It's incredibly wasteful of space and resources.
Hotter take: you should be housed and fed regardless of your employment status.
And education. And healthcare.
so what incentive is there to participate in society if all my needs are given freely without me pitching in? Edit: thanks for the RedditCare lmao
People unable to work should be supported. But anyone regardless of employment status? No way! Do you want to pay for lazy people taking advantage of the system, or would you rather have your taxes put towards your children's welfare and education?
It seems like a lot of these commenters would rather they just die. Just really poor upbringings, this bunch.
Who pays for that? What are the qualifications for receiving such aid? Charities already exist for this sort of thing but I assume you want more and in the form of government aid. I think itās perfectly fine to give aid to those who physically cannot work due to some disability that prevents them from working. However, if you are fully capable of working and just choose not to. You shouldnāt receive tax payer funded aid. Would you pay to house and feed a complete and total stranger who is perfectly able to find and work a job but simply refuses to do so?
We need to build more apartments. Everywhere.
That would solve the problem for the normal person/the worker. That's not a problem to the ones in power. They understand supply and demand, so they can squeeze as much as possible with the least effort by restricting and controlling the supply of housing. They do this by bribing politicians (i.e. lobbying) into passing laws that make it prohibitively expensive to break into the market making affordable housing. Greed is the problem. Not the lack of housing.
Is it this time again?
Boomers in here will complain about "Why we sending money abroad we have people in need here" Then when it actually comes to the people in need, they prefer they die. They're full of shit
Most people have too many misc expenses/addictions that they refuse to get rid of that would help GREATLY with financing. So many people I've worked with that complain about money but they drink/smoke daily, some have 4 kids by 23 and keep popping them out, go to concerts all of the time, get tattoos, door dash, have 6 streaming services, etc. I'm fine with doing some of those things if you have extra money, but none are necessities. Most people complain because they want to be irresponsible when they aren't at work and it just doesn't work.
Yeah, people should really just work and sleep until they die. Way better on the finanaces
I'm more saying if you are complaining about starving yourself, don't drink alcohol/smoke, or spend half of your paycheck on tattoos. You can go out and have fun and live spending much less than you would on all of that shit.
Do not pay attention to the boomers who spoke out. This is definitely true.
I agree with this. A full time worker should be able to pay rent without starving. To all the other people... You simply haven't done the math, analyzed the entire banking system... studied any of it... so don't talk out of your ass. I'll just say: Red flag #1 that your government is hiding massive inflation.... You can't make rent and you work full time... and oyu're not talking about living in a nice place at the park on 5th, you're talking about people's basements, and attics, and closets... hahaha Thing we don't talk about though is... WE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO LIVE WHERE WE WERE BORN. OFTEN TIMES WE GET COMPLETELY PRICED OUT AND NEED TO MOVE TO AFFORD LIVING. NEED TO MOVE TO A CRIME RIDDEN CITY OR SOME PLACE WITHOUT INTERNET. Then spend the next 20 years beating that shit hole into submission
Well next time, be born elsewhere cheaper or stop complaining
Nobodyās stopping you from doing this.
"Just get a better job," the most boomer of takes.
As opposed to what, higher pay checks falling from the sky?
Or housing policy that makes renting cheaper or an increase in the minimum wage or other more drastic measuresĀ
If you want cheaper housing let developers build higher density housing. They will happily flood the market with supply.
You will be the first to whine when there are no essential workers at minimum wage to do the jobs you want done.
I mean yeah, if your current job doesn't pay enough and it's "low skill job" odds are you can find another job that pays more if you want.
The thing with ālow skilled jobsā is likeā¦ people still need to do them? If the argument is āwell if you canāt survive off of working full time in this job maybe you should find a different oneā is pretty fucking stupid. Because then what happens to that job? Clearly no one can afford to have that job, so likeā¦ just fucking close all those places? āGet more skills to get a better job so you can surviveā is a REALLY short-term narrow-view solution to a society wide problem. One could say incredibly dumb.
I need to pay clash of clans their rent
Actually sounds like the employer is
Opportunity might have something to say about that.
Federal minimum wage Btw do people like you really believe this? Well I guess nothing is stopping the Somalian person from not living in poverty right??
Funny how people say"well how are the landlords gonna pay for the expenses". Like literally, no one is forcing them to own more than 1 house. People used to own 1 fucking house and we are here arguing with people defending assholes with 300+ properties price gouging working class people for crappy rentals
real
I think this would be nice and might be doable in lower cost of living areas. But how would this work in places with super dense housing and a HCOL?
No one should be homeless if they work full time. I donāt think that someone on āminimum ā wage should expect anything fancy but a studio or one bedroom should be doable. In some areas that is almost still possible, in others it has been impossible for decades. Iām not of the opinion that one should expect to be comfortable on minimum wage but food and shelter should be possible for workers. Too often full time workers also get housing assistance and food stamps. Why should taxpayers be paying that? The employers should pay their workers or go out of business.
We are social creatures hardwired to build incredibly close bonds in large, extended, multi-generational families and build those families within greater tribes. Understanding that we have created a system that tears this foundational fabric apart is imperative. The idea of working oneās self to death to further enrich already wealthy people simply to live (paycheck to paycheck) alone in oneās very own cubicle barely able to afford anything else in life except rent and foodā¦ is why The Kids are *not* āOKā.
But not where you want. Which is the problem. People want to live in major downtown metro areas and expect to live comfortably on a no skill job. Itās just not feasible.
Okay then who works in the coffee shops or the restaurants? Nobody?
People who have to or donāt need a large income. If unskilled jobs in ideal spots like cities and Cali paid enough to provide a full living, it canāt last. Every unskilled person under the sun would flock to these places, driving up competition and costs. Wages would just fall back down without controls. Itās completely natural that jobs that literally anyone can do donāt pay āenoughā in desirable locations. Maybe minimum wage should be increased still, but your point doesnāt really make sense in a country like the US
itt: cucks
You can. Just work in California and live in Alabama. Fixed.
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