4 ms·

Can a 'living wage' ever be anything other than a misnomer? The two words, glued together, seem incompatible to me. Under capitalism you don't really get to 'l

Can a 'living wage' ever be anything other than a misnomer? The two words, glued together, seem incompatible to me. Under capitalism you don't really get to 'live' unless you break free from wages to an extent. That doesn't necessarily mean retirement, but it's somewhere above living paycheck to paycheck. Basically, you need to be in a situation in which your wages are refilling a tank that slowly leaks, rather than drinking directly from the hose. London has a "living wage". It's something like 9GBP. 40 hours a week with no holiday would get you 18700GBP. How is that a living wage in any sense? What do we mean by living here? Literally existing as a human being, grasping at straws thrown down by the capitalists? With that amount of income and no starting wealth it is totally impossible to buy a studio apartment anywhere within commuting distance of London. Not even 50sqft. (If you could find one cheap enough, the commuting costs would make it unviable). Is constantly moving around from cheap shit apartment to cheap shit apartment, worrying about how to move your belongings, obsessing over the bills, worrying about taking the metro to see a friend, living? Call it what it is. It's a 'starter wage'. It's existence level. 'Living' has connotations beyond simple existence.

gjm11 11y ago
I think "living wage" is a good term. It communicates (to me, at least) exactly what it needs to: this is how much you need to be able to live; if you're paid less than this, you are going to need further assistance besides what you earn. The government in the UK recently started using the words "living wage" but what they mean by it falls short of what other people consider a living wage. (No argument that being paid just barely enough to live is a pretty wretched existence.)
- stegosaurus 11y ago
  But you don't need the living wage to exist. You can always push further down the ladder; live out of the back of a van; bunk-beds; perform heroic cycling or driving feats from the North daily, etc. Perhaps it's just my odd take on things. I feel that security of housing* is a clear benchmark, whereas below that, you're kind of arbitrarily deciding on what level of comfort to accept. *(A caravan on a small plot of grass that you own would be acceptable to me, if that were a situation you could legally get away with in London!) Why housing, and not say, food? Because of the nature of how it generally works in Western countries. Housing is less fungible/liquid (lacking a good term here). If I want food, I can work for a bit, go begging, whatever, get a few quid, go and buy some food, eat it. Housing is fundamentally different; we enter into contracts to put a roof over our head and there's a reasonable expectation that it's the same roof each day/week/month. Housing is also priced differently... there's a discrete cliff-edge beyond which you go from 'roof and 4 walls' to 'tent/car/under a bridge'. Food scales back much more continuously; you can go all the way down to eating bread and dripping and experience a small degradation each step along the way. I'd much rather have a secure roof over my head, a place to call home, and have to hustle for food/electricity/whatever, than all the food and toys in the world but nowhere to stay. I think most people would agree (nomadic lifestyles excepted here because they're generally incompatible with the premise of working for a wage)

gjm11 11y ago

I think "living wage" is a good term. It communicates (to me, at least) exactly what it needs to: this is how much you need to be able to live; if you're paid less than this, you are going to need further assistance besides what you earn. The government in the UK recently started using the words "living wage" but what they mean by it falls short of what other people consider a living wage. (No argument that being paid just barely enough to live is a pretty wretched existence.)

stegosaurus 11y ago
But you don't need the living wage to exist. You can always push further down the ladder; live out of the back of a van; bunk-beds; perform heroic cycling or driving feats from the North daily, etc. Perhaps it's just my odd take on things. I feel that security of housing* is a clear benchmark, whereas below that, you're kind of arbitrarily deciding on what level of comfort to accept. *(A caravan on a small plot of grass that you own would be acceptable to me, if that were a situation you could legally get away with in London!) Why housing, and not say, food? Because of the nature of how it generally works in Western countries. Housing is less fungible/liquid (lacking a good term here). If I want food, I can work for a bit, go begging, whatever, get a few quid, go and buy some food, eat it. Housing is fundamentally different; we enter into contracts to put a roof over our head and there's a reasonable expectation that it's the same roof each day/week/month. Housing is also priced differently... there's a discrete cliff-edge beyond which you go from 'roof and 4 walls' to 'tent/car/under a bridge'. Food scales back much more continuously; you can go all the way down to eating bread and dripping and experience a small degradation each step along the way. I'd much rather have a secure roof over my head, a place to call home, and have to hustle for food/electricity/whatever, than all the food and toys in the world but nowhere to stay. I think most people would agree (nomadic lifestyles excepted here because they're generally incompatible with the premise of working for a wage)