8 ms·

It’s completely possible to live on a minimum wage job and not be a miser. The trick is to not live in a coastal megacity. Source: myself, after college, worki

It’s completely possible to live on a minimum wage job and not be a miser. The trick is to not live in a coastal megacity. Source: myself, after college, working at a bakery in a Midwestern city.

api 6y ago
Ahh, yes, but don't you know that if you don't live in San Francisco, LA, Seattle, or New York you can't do anything and nothing happens? You have to live in one of those four cities. /sarcasm
- hapless 6y ago
  We are discussing a memoir of a man's life working in the Bay area and living just outside the same. This memoir was not about Topeka, Kansas. Not that struggling to make rent doesn't happen in Topeka. Not that Topeka isn't filled with people living vibrant lives. Just, this particular story occurred in the Bay area.
  - api 6y ago
    I know. I was speaking to the parent, and the 2000-2020 "you have to be in one of four cities" zeitgeist they are talking about.
hapless 6y ago
Yes, but, this particular guy was working in the suburbs of an expensive coastal city, while living in an exurb. That's obviously not universal. But it is certainly the story of THIS guy, as well as many tens of millions of other Americans.
- keiferski 6y ago
  I’m certainly not arguing that rising inequality isn’t a bad thing, but your comment wasn’t about this guy, it was about Americans at large. Contrary to popular coastal belief, fly-over country actually has people, and culture, and life. The average American doesn’t live in NYC/LA/SF, they live in a small to medium size town. It is absolutely possible to live a frugal but reasonable lifestyle on a minimum wage job in most of the country.
  - hapless 6y ago
    Forty five million people live in the NYC and LA metro areas alone. NYC is about 3% of the national population. Los Angeles is another 2.5%. The average American lives in a fairly considerable city, depending on your definition of "large." The vast majority live in cities of 100,000 or more. Almost half of Americans live in the 100 largest MSAs. For perspective, the #100 MSA is Fort Wayne, Indiana, at roughly 500,000 people. Not to mention, struggling to make rent, homelessness, and poverty don't just vanish when you step away from the most expensive cities. Living in "Santa Luna" (which I assume was actually Santa Cruz) instead of the suburbs where he worked didn't make his rent affordable in 1994, and it certainly wouldn't today, in 2020.
    - keiferski 6y ago
      I’m not really sure what you’re arguing for. I didn’t say anything of those things were non-problems, I said that having a minimum wage job isn’t some kind of homeless death sentence. It is completely possible to survive on a minimum wage job in many cities across the country. It isn’t luxurious, it isn’t fair, and it certainty isn’t ideal, but exaggerating the facts to make a sociopolitical point only makes the opposition have a stronger foothold.
      - hapless 6y ago
        I think it's very plain that holding a minimum wage job implies a tenuous ability to house and feed oneself in much of the country. It is not a complex thesis. I'm glad you were able to get by on the cheap in an unspecified midwestern city, but that doesn't change the picture for tens of millions of other people
      - Jetrel 6y ago
        He's arguing that this statement is false: > The average American doesn’t live in NYC/LA/SF, they live in a small to medium size town. http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-cities-factsheet http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-cities-factsheet "It is estimated that 83% of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, up from 64% in 1950." Demographic shifts are weird, man. I'm part of this big shift - I moved from a rural town in flyover country, to a giant metro area in flyover country. That metro area is most of the population of my state. It's sobering - you add up all the little rural towns and the number of people there just doesn't add up to much. That wasn't true, in the past. And it's like this in almost every state. We all moved to the city because all the farming jobs and factory jobs dried up.
troupe 6y ago
There are some places you can go to college while working a part time minimum wage job during the school year and full time in the summer and graduate with only a few thousand dollars of debt while paying all your expenses. Just because an expensive new car is very expensive does not mean that a vehicle is out of reach of everyone who can't afford an expensive new vehicle. The market will only adjust wages if people are behaving rationally. Staying in a very expensive place with low wages breaks the market because it isn't rational behavior.
- hapless 6y ago
  It may surprise you to learn that moving is expensive and difficult
  - troupe 6y ago
    There definitely is a cost associated with moving to a place where the skills you have are valued enough to support yourself. If the pain of changing is greater than the pain of staying where you are, then it is completely rational to stay where you are.
- pydry 6y ago
  Some of the most desperate people I know are ones who grew up poor in a HCOL city (NYC, London, etc.) and who fell into low wage jobs. At the same time as supporting the cities they live in doing all of the most fundamental work (cooking, cleaning, etc) they are regularly disrespected and told to fuck off somewhere else if they're struggling - away from the support network they rely upon and the friends and family who give their life meaning. And yeah, some of them did move away but that sometimes made things worse because even though they might be financially slightly better situated in a different city, they didn't have a support network there. Expensive housing is a political choice. Watering down the minimum wage was a political choice. These people falling through the cracks and suffering was the outcome of those deliberate choices to prioritize pumping up asset prices and profit margins over actual people.
  - Jetrel 6y ago
cortesoft 6y ago
This is kinda true, but leaves out the part that it is very hard to just move to the Midwest if you are poor in an expensive big city. First, you have to gather enough money to actually move. You will need a car and gas, and/or a moving truck. You will need first and last months rent (not to mention how will you find a cheap place in a city you have no connections in without being there?) Then, you are leaving your entire support system when you move. When you are poor, your support system is how you live. Friends watch each other's kids while they work, they share needed things, they find jobs for each other, they lend money to each other when unexpected things happen, they let people crash on their couch when they lose their house. Telling poor people to abandon their social support system to move somewhere cheaper is really underselling how hard that is.
- Mary-Jane 6y ago
  You are making very general statements and treating them as if they apply to the entire homeless population. If you have an interest in fixing problems you should appreciate that people's circumstances vary and so will solutions. The parent's solution will work for many people in poverty: most poor people are young, and most young people do not have children, so moving to a cheaper locale is in fact viable for many homeless. Also, you don't necessarily have to up and leave everything you know; living an hour from the city is often sufficient.
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    Most poor people are young without kids? Have anything to back this up?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- BeetleB 6y ago
  > You will need a car and gas, and/or a moving truck. Or a bus/Amtrak ticket, and some money to ship your stuff. This is me, twice. It's not that expensive. It's not even painful. It's normal - what most people do. > You will need first and last months rent (not to mention how will you find a cheap place in a city you have no connections in without being there?) I have never paid first and last month's rent for deposit. Having dabbled in real estate, I do know this is a thing and not that unusual. I also know this is not the norm. I've often paid deposits of amounts like $200. These are decent apartments - not crap ones, but not high end ones either. I remember the one time someone asked more than one month's rent, I simply found a comparable apartment a few blocks away. It didn't require much of a search because probably over 80% of the apartment complexes in that neighborhood did not charge that much. As for finding a "cheap" place, all it takes is the Internet. > Telling poor people to abandon their social support system to move somewhere cheaper is really underselling how hard that is. Both having done this, and seeing others do this from the now expensive place I live in: I can assure you the success stories outnumber the fail stories 10 to 1. Easily. Your support system in the expensive city is not much use if you cannot afford to pay rent. Your argument has validity if you're moving between comparable cities, but we're talking about people who are, in a sense, already below 0. The baseline sucks, despite whatever social support they have. Of course, if you're starting with $0 in hand, you're screwed no matter where you are. Barring medical expenses or similar sudden expenses, most people who end up there do so via the boiling frog syndrome. The trick is to get out when you see that your finances are dropping.

It’s completely possible to live on a minimum wage job and not be a miser. The trick is to not live in a coastal megacity. Source: myself, after college, working at a bakery in a Midwestern city.

api 6y ago

Ahh, yes, but don't you know that if you don't live in San Francisco, LA, Seattle, or New York you can't do anything and nothing happens? You have to live in one of those four cities. /sarcasm

hapless 6y ago
We are discussing a memoir of a man's life working in the Bay area and living just outside the same. This memoir was not about Topeka, Kansas. Not that struggling to make rent doesn't happen in Topeka. Not that Topeka isn't filled with people living vibrant lives. Just, this particular story occurred in the Bay area.
- api 6y ago
  I know. I was speaking to the parent, and the 2000-2020 "you have to be in one of four cities" zeitgeist they are talking about.

hapless 6y ago

Yes, but, this particular guy was working in the suburbs of an expensive coastal city, while living in an exurb. That's obviously not universal. But it is certainly the story of THIS guy, as well as many tens of millions of other Americans.

keiferski 6y ago
I’m certainly not arguing that rising inequality isn’t a bad thing, but your comment wasn’t about this guy, it was about Americans at large. Contrary to popular coastal belief, fly-over country actually has people, and culture, and life. The average American doesn’t live in NYC/LA/SF, they live in a small to medium size town. It is absolutely possible to live a frugal but reasonable lifestyle on a minimum wage job in most of the country.
- hapless 6y ago
  Forty five million people live in the NYC and LA metro areas alone. NYC is about 3% of the national population. Los Angeles is another 2.5%. The average American lives in a fairly considerable city, depending on your definition of "large." The vast majority live in cities of 100,000 or more. Almost half of Americans live in the 100 largest MSAs. For perspective, the #100 MSA is Fort Wayne, Indiana, at roughly 500,000 people. Not to mention, struggling to make rent, homelessness, and poverty don't just vanish when you step away from the most expensive cities. Living in "Santa Luna" (which I assume was actually Santa Cruz) instead of the suburbs where he worked didn't make his rent affordable in 1994, and it certainly wouldn't today, in 2020.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    I’m not really sure what you’re arguing for. I didn’t say anything of those things were non-problems, I said that having a minimum wage job isn’t some kind of homeless death sentence. It is completely possible to survive on a minimum wage job in many cities across the country. It isn’t luxurious, it isn’t fair, and it certainty isn’t ideal, but exaggerating the facts to make a sociopolitical point only makes the opposition have a stronger foothold.
    - hapless 6y ago
      I think it's very plain that holding a minimum wage job implies a tenuous ability to house and feed oneself in much of the country. It is not a complex thesis. I'm glad you were able to get by on the cheap in an unspecified midwestern city, but that doesn't change the picture for tens of millions of other people
    - Jetrel 6y ago
      He's arguing that this statement is false: > The average American doesn’t live in NYC/LA/SF, they live in a small to medium size town. http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-cities-factsheet http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-cities-factsheet "It is estimated that 83% of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, up from 64% in 1950." Demographic shifts are weird, man. I'm part of this big shift - I moved from a rural town in flyover country, to a giant metro area in flyover country. That metro area is most of the population of my state. It's sobering - you add up all the little rural towns and the number of people there just doesn't add up to much. That wasn't true, in the past. And it's like this in almost every state. We all moved to the city because all the farming jobs and factory jobs dried up.

troupe 6y ago

There are some places you can go to college while working a part time minimum wage job during the school year and full time in the summer and graduate with only a few thousand dollars of debt while paying all your expenses. Just because an expensive new car is very expensive does not mean that a vehicle is out of reach of everyone who can't afford an expensive new vehicle. The market will only adjust wages if people are behaving rationally. Staying in a very expensive place with low wages breaks the market because it isn't rational behavior.

hapless 6y ago
It may surprise you to learn that moving is expensive and difficult
- troupe 6y ago
  There definitely is a cost associated with moving to a place where the skills you have are valued enough to support yourself. If the pain of changing is greater than the pain of staying where you are, then it is completely rational to stay where you are.
pydry 6y ago
Some of the most desperate people I know are ones who grew up poor in a HCOL city (NYC, London, etc.) and who fell into low wage jobs. At the same time as supporting the cities they live in doing all of the most fundamental work (cooking, cleaning, etc) they are regularly disrespected and told to fuck off somewhere else if they're struggling - away from the support network they rely upon and the friends and family who give their life meaning. And yeah, some of them did move away but that sometimes made things worse because even though they might be financially slightly better situated in a different city, they didn't have a support network there. Expensive housing is a political choice. Watering down the minimum wage was a political choice. These people falling through the cracks and suffering was the outcome of those deliberate choices to prioritize pumping up asset prices and profit margins over actual people.
- Jetrel 6y ago

cortesoft 6y ago

This is kinda true, but leaves out the part that it is very hard to just move to the Midwest if you are poor in an expensive big city. First, you have to gather enough money to actually move. You will need a car and gas, and/or a moving truck. You will need first and last months rent (not to mention how will you find a cheap place in a city you have no connections in without being there?) Then, you are leaving your entire support system when you move. When you are poor, your support system is how you live. Friends watch each other's kids while they work, they share needed things, they find jobs for each other, they lend money to each other when unexpected things happen, they let people crash on their couch when they lose their house. Telling poor people to abandon their social support system to move somewhere cheaper is really underselling how hard that is.

Mary-Jane 6y ago
You are making very general statements and treating them as if they apply to the entire homeless population. If you have an interest in fixing problems you should appreciate that people's circumstances vary and so will solutions. The parent's solution will work for many people in poverty: most poor people are young, and most young people do not have children, so moving to a cheaper locale is in fact viable for many homeless. Also, you don't necessarily have to up and leave everything you know; living an hour from the city is often sufficient.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  Most poor people are young without kids? Have anything to back this up?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
BeetleB 6y ago
> You will need a car and gas, and/or a moving truck. Or a bus/Amtrak ticket, and some money to ship your stuff. This is me, twice. It's not that expensive. It's not even painful. It's normal - what most people do. > You will need first and last months rent (not to mention how will you find a cheap place in a city you have no connections in without being there?) I have never paid first and last month's rent for deposit. Having dabbled in real estate, I do know this is a thing and not that unusual. I also know this is not the norm. I've often paid deposits of amounts like $200. These are decent apartments - not crap ones, but not high end ones either. I remember the one time someone asked more than one month's rent, I simply found a comparable apartment a few blocks away. It didn't require much of a search because probably over 80% of the apartment complexes in that neighborhood did not charge that much. As for finding a "cheap" place, all it takes is the Internet. > Telling poor people to abandon their social support system to move somewhere cheaper is really underselling how hard that is. Both having done this, and seeing others do this from the now expensive place I live in: I can assure you the success stories outnumber the fail stories 10 to 1. Easily. Your support system in the expensive city is not much use if you cannot afford to pay rent. Your argument has validity if you're moving between comparable cities, but we're talking about people who are, in a sense, already below 0. The baseline sucks, despite whatever social support they have. Of course, if you're starting with $0 in hand, you're screwed no matter where you are. Barring medical expenses or similar sudden expenses, most people who end up there do so via the boiling frog syndrome. The trick is to get out when you see that your finances are dropping.