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I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. There are a lot of jobs where your net pay is below zero, long term, when you factor in the externa

I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. There are a lot of jobs where your net pay is below zero, long term, when you factor in the external costs associated with working, such as needing transportation. These jobs have been propped up by debt. It looks like the pandemic has put and end to this. Transportation costs have skyrocketed to such a degree that it's basically impossible for a poor person to even get a car, because they are going to be outbid by a not-poor person who is willing to pay a lot more for the same crappy car because of shortages. Repair shops are having issues getting replacement parts, so even maintaining a vehicle is getting difficult. We built our economy on exploitation, and now the exploited have been drained dry. So now we have to either pay up or do without.

gruez 6y ago
>I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 * 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.
- jolux 6y ago
  >It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day Well thankfully we don't have to imagine, people have researched this: https://livingwage.mit.edu/ https://livingwage.mit.edu/. According to these data, the living wage across the US in 2019 was $16.54: https://livingwage.mit.edu/articles/61-new-living-wage-data-for-now-available-on-the-tool https://livingwage.mit.edu/articles/61-new-living-wage-data-.... So it's not at all inconceivable that the federal minimum is a poverty wage, in fact it almost certainly is.
  - gruez 6y ago
    But that has nothing to do with GP's claim? GP was talking about your "net pay is below zero", meaning that the job itself pays negative. eg. you get paid $50/day but spent $55/day to earn it. Your comment seems to be about the minimum wage not being able to sustain a given living standard, eg. you get paid $50/day but you need to spend $55/day to survive.
    - jolux 6y ago
      I read their comment differently than you did, but even if I hadn't I don't quite understand your objection. By definition if you're spending $55/day to survive, you're spending $55/day to earn your pay, if nothing more. The situation you describe is not sustainable either. Please clarify.
      - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
        He is making a distinction between cost to survive (I.e. food, shelter, etc) and cost to have the job (I.e. transport). "net pay is below zero" means (In his interpretation) that the cost of having the job is greater than the amount the job pays. This is unrelated to the cost of surviving.
    - colpabar 6y ago
      First off, it's not $50 per day, because you're probably paying income tax. But let's assume it is. Second, it's not really "per day", that's an average. Most bills recur monthly. Assuming a month of four weeks, and working 5 days per week, that's 20 * $50 = $1000 per month. Doesn't that seem like an extremely low number to pay for rent, transportation, food, health care, kids, utilities, etc? I pay more for that in rent every month.
      - gruez 6y ago
        >seem like an extremely low number to pay for rent, transportation, food, health care, kids, utilities, etc? everything in that list except for transportation are sunk costs. In other words, you're paying for those regardless of whether you have the job or not.
        inetknght 6y ago
        > you're paying for those regardless of whether you have the job or not. ...unless you're not paying for those because you literally don't have any money. So yeah, food is a sunk cost, sure. But that sinking will kill you without a job.
- lastofthemojito 6y ago
  I think the classic example of this is the pizza delivery driver (or now the gig economy food delivery driver). The driver might think "I made $100 today, great!", but they generally don't have a good sense for their total expenses. Sure, they know how much gas cost them this week, but they don't know how much the next auto repair will be, or how much depreciation they're incurring on their vehicle. And when their auto insurance goes up because they've been driving so many miles, that's out-of-pocket too - no employer is picking that up.
  - joelfolksy 6y ago
    True. Of course, that only scratches the surface of why it's a terrible job. In many locales, policies that cover commercial driving are prohibitively expensive, and the majority of drivers are effectively uninsured (often without realizing it). It's not a stretch to say that insurance fraud is a core part of that industry's business model.
- inetknght 6y ago
  > Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.* Wow can you be any more out of touch? Your comment is offensively innaccurate. $58/day = $1740 for 30 days Unhealthy cheap carbs for a single person... $200/month (chicken, beans, rice, milk, cheese, bread) Shitphone with basically no internet for a single person... $40/month (who needs internet anyway) Fuel for a single person... $200/month (assume 2 tanks / week) Rent for a single person... $1400/month far (+fuel) Health insurance because you have two or three shit part-time jobs: $400/mo Vehicle insurance on an old vehicle: $300/mo It's hard to imagine someone who's so out of touch with reality that they think they can get away with claiming minimum wage is higher than $7.25 in high cost of living areas. In Houston, Texas the minimum wage is ... $7.25/hr. Cost of living here isn't approachable to minimum wage. This doesn't even start to pay for taxes, retirement investments, medical emergencies, vacations, legal disputes, education costs, or heaven forbid having family. What numbers are you using for your costs?
  - gruez 6y ago
    >Unhealthy cheap carbs for a single person... $200/month (chicken, beans, rice, milk, cheese, bread) >Shitphone with basically no internet for a single person... $40/month (who needs internet anyway) >Health insurance because you have two or three shit part-time jobs: $400/mo >Rent for a single person... $1400/month far (+fuel) These are all sunk costs. You need them regardless of whether you have a job or not. You seem to be talking about your general finances (ie. your expenses > your income), whereas I interpreted mywittyname's comment as saying that the job itself is a net loss (ie. your cost of getting the job > your income from job). >Wow can you be any more out of touch? Your comment is offensively innaccurate. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - inetknght 6y ago
      > These are all sunk costs. You need them regardless of whether you have a job or not They're not sunk costs if you literally don't have money to pay for them. > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Your argument wasn't in good faith. You're saying that minimum wage is a livable wage which is a demonstrably false statement. Then you're also claiming that the cost of living is a sunk cost.
- jfengel 6y ago
  Is it really that hard to imagine? For starters, you don't want to have to work every single day. If you work 5 days out of every 7, you only have $41.43 to spend per day. The average cost of a studio apartment is over $900 a month. That's $30 per day. Even if you get roommates, that's going to cost you at least $15 per day. That leaves you $26 a day to spend on food, clothing, hygiene, Internet access, electricity, transportation, health care (since most minimum wage jobs don't include it), and all of the other expenses of life. And then pray you don't get sick -- even with health insurance you're now losing income. It adds up fast. There is basically nowhere in the US that this is a living wage. At best you can barely scrape by with no margin for error -- and certainly no money to spend on training for a better job.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >The average cost of a studio apartment is over $900 a month [...] That leaves you $26 a day to spend on food, clothing, hygiene, Internet access, electricity, transportation, health care Seems like we're talking about different things. I was talking about the net gain/loss from getting a job, whereas you're talking about your overall living situation. See my reply to jolux's comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26996114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26996114
  - rufus_foreman 6y ago
    Why would someone near the bottom quintile of income rent in an average cost area? What is the bottom quintile rent for an apartment?
    - adgjlsfhk1 6y ago
      I've looked for about 20 minutes and haven't been able to find a reliable figure nationally, so from a quick search on apartments.com for Minneapolis (random city not known for high cost of living), the 20th percentile studio apartment is $1000. If you want to split an appartment, I'm going to check 1 bedroom, since 2 unrelated people in a studio isn't really practical. Then the 20th percentile is about $1150. (on average for these apartments, parking is an extra $100 or so which you need if you have to shop by price, not location).
- slv77 6y ago
  Unlike capital equipment a business doesn’t pay for the cost of replacing labor as it ages. The cost in the US of raising a child is about $250,000 or about $3 per hour over 40 years. Businesses expect a pool of qualified and educated labor but don’t pay for childcare expenses. Employees are expected to have reliable transportation to get to the employers place of business but they do not cover transportation expenses. The cost of $400 a month for reliable transportation works out to $2.50 per hour. Employees are typically required to have work appropriate clothing. In the US this cost has often been pushed to employees. In some cases even tool costs have been pushed to employees. Employees have wear and tear on joints due to repetitive movements which will eventually have to be treated. Machines need maintenance and businesses are expected to pay the costs but with labor that is pushed back to the employee. The economics of minimum wage only work short term for people who are young, healthy and with no children where experience gained will lead to a higher paying job in the near future.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  First off, you need transportation to work. In most of America, this means, you need a car, gas, insurance, and maintenance. Secondly, you need uniforms. These are often paid for out of your check and come from companies that have pretty comfortable markup. Then you have the "expensive to be poor items" Such as getting your paycheck on what amounts to a Visa gift card, because cheap employers are transitioning to payment services that offload the cost of associated with payroll onto the employees. These cards have relatively high maintenance fees, and charge for things like actually getting your money. That's not even getting into shit like, "split shifts" where you have to work a few hours, take a multi-hour break, then work a few more hours. This means that you have to stay at work for 8 hours, but only get paid for maybe 4-6 of them. While you could leave, it would cost you money to do so. I've gone through this with younger siblings over the years. One in particular was a delivery driver, and factoring in cost of their car, the only reason they thought they were making money was because they were hiding the depreciation on their car through very long car loans and were not paying for the insurance coverage they should have been. Most low wage positions are only possible because they are subsidized by someone else, maybe it is a parent who lets them live rent free, or they subsist on credit card debt and payday loans to handle emergencies.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    >>> That's not even getting into shit like, "split shifts" where you have to work a few hours, take a multi-hour break, then work a few more hours. This means that you have to stay at work for 8 hours, but only get paid for maybe 4-6 of them. While you could leave, it would cost you money to do so. Split shifts is a horror story. I've seen my younger sister working at a restaurant, the main hours are 12am-2pm then 7pm-11pm. What are you supposed to do during the massive break in the middle? It's royally screwing up your day. To make things worse, a trip in the tube and back will cost you £3 to £5, a sizable chunk of your first hour (£8/hour pretax). As if the night hours and pay were not terrible enough, the hours are set daily on a short notice. You constantly must adjust your schedule and if there's less hours to do you simply don't get paid.
- deleted 6y ago
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- kristjansson 6y ago
  Your replies down thread indicate an extremely narrow interpretation of 'expenses' here, namely only those financial costs directly related to employment. Taking that interpretation, you're probably correct that nearly all jobs offer net-positive pay counting only the those inputs from the employee. You're right that someone with better off in immediate financial terms with basically any job than no job. However, that's something other than the 'sustainable' wage in the GP comment, since that doesn't count costs of the labor input! Each of us has only so much labor to sell in a given month, and need to get enough in return to support, you know, continuing to live and sell our labor. Sure, being employed at wage that does not provide a basic level of dignity is less worse than being completely destitute, but it's a bit disingenuous to argue that being less-worse-off is 'sustainable'.
  - woopwoop 6y ago
    I think his (gruez's) interpretation is the obviously reasonable one, and I'm not sure why he's getting bashed so severely here. Note that op made the claim that "net pay" was literally negative, which seems to comport totally with the interpretation given, and not at all with an interpretation of "sustainability" referring to a living wage.
    - kristjansson 6y ago
      I think quoting the unsustainable part of OP instead of the net pay part led to lots of misinterpretation. Sustainability in a pay context is IMO strongly linked to a living wage, or at least a survivable wage.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  There are places where the commutes from the suburbs to the city where the jobs are costs $20-50 a day, if not more.
cratermoon 6y ago
> propped up by debt Payday lenders make a killing on exploiting this.
- drdeadringer 6y ago
  I worked on a (US) Naval shipyard for a spell. The number of payday loan shops in the immediate surrounding area was astounding. I kept hearing word of "Don't Do Payday" financial help training for the Naval crew, who apparently were a prime target for the industry. Before working there, I had little idea such existed. Think "worse than 'cash your cheque here'" places. I don't know how many Naval folks I worked with took in to these places, but every time I passed one I frowned and shook my head.
  - myself248 6y ago
    Some years back, I was on a jobsite where radios were allowed, and we rotated through the crew, everyone playing deejay for a day, so everyone's taste got represented. Some guys would bring in a stack of CDs, some would just play the radio. It meant I listened to a few stations I don't normally listen to. And the density of payday loan ads, on some stations but not others, blew my mind. I don't think I ever heard one on the classic-rock station (their stock in trade was testosterone ads, apparently), but they were at saturation density on the R&B station. Payday loan places have always been scum, but that really opened my eyes to the deliberate exploitation aspect. This is targeted. It's good to hear that there's financial training for the Navy. I wonder if there's anything similar out in civilian life that we could support?
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      > that we could support? One of the most effective anti-poverty programs the government could do is teach basic accounting and finance as core curriculum in the public schools.
      - cratermoon 6y ago
        That sounds like victim-blaming. People are poor because they can't balance their checkbooks?
anthony_romeo 6y ago
There’s another aspect: there’s a horrible lack of common decency and respect by supervisors and managers of low-wage workers. Having worked menial data entry, warehouse, grocery store, fast food jobs, I’ve interacted with far too many stressed-out and abusive/abused bosses who cannot cope with the razor-thin timelines with minimal workforce (which seems to be the norm) and ultimately exhaust this irritating heat onto their subordinates and fail to show a minimal amount of respect to their employees to the degree of hostility and abuse. This isn’t so much of an “all bosses suck” trope (I am happy and lucky to be at a healthier work environment at the moment). The sense I have is demands from the top continue to be more and more unrealistic as decisions are made to cut costs without truly thinking about it may start to rot the foundation beneath. In my case, $18 sounds like a lot of money, but I wonder if this just means the work will be exponentially more stressful and unhealthy.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  > there’s a horrible lack of common decency and respect by supervisors and managers of low-wage workers. Yeah, if the entire culture creating class/media/academia is agreed that people who don’t have college degrees are worthless failures or at best need other people to make their decisions for them there’s not going to be much respect going round. The Anglo West is not Japan.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - pizzazzaro 6y ago
    Speak for yourself. Too many of our fast food workers have advanced degrees, but nowhere will take us. I cant tell if that one barista with a Mechanical Engineering degree unknowingly got hers from a diploma mill, or if the 2008-crunch just left her permanently out of the industry. Ive met trained, degree-holding coders, engineers, graphic designers, paralegals, mathematicians, even teachers that could simply not break into their chosen field, but had to simply subsist on fast food wages. Hell, there was one man who ran film crews at major Hollywood studios! But when his mother got sick, he took time off. And he simply couldnt get back in. So here we are, being asked to subsidize our ability to show up to work... where the customers are demeaning enough to become a meme named "Karen."
TuringNYC 6y ago
Another thing: if the job pays just enough to disqualify you from state-run healthcare (medicaid, etc), but not enough to pay out-of-pocket for health insurance, the only logical step for many is to not work. This is especially the case for part-time jobs which do not provide healthcare.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Means testing in social services is such a terrible idea. It creates nothing but perverse incentives like you describe. Programs like food stamps should be available to everyone who wants them. I don't care if a billionaire uses food stamps, they still need to eat. If too many rich people use the program, tweak tax rates until it balances out. It's a waste of our time to go through and double check that only those that 'deserve' a handout get one. It makes everything less efficient, creates bad incentives, and builds a social stigma around the programs. ("Oh, that program is only for really poor people. I'm not really poor, so I shouldn't use it.")
  - chii 6y ago
    > tweak tax rates until it balances out. that just makes the whole system inefficient - the rich pay a bunch of taxes, then try to obtain all of those benefits for having paid those taxes to try even it back out. So why not just tax less, and let them spend the money directly?
    - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
      Countless trillions stashed in offshore tax havens in Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Brunei, BVI, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Denmark, Dominica, Dubai, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Isle of Man, Jersey, Labuan, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Monaco, Montserrat, Nevis, New Zealand, Panama, Seychelles, Singapore, St. Vincent, St. Kitts, Switzerland, Turks and Caicos and Vanuatu seem to indicate that spending into the economy isn't something that the wealthy like to do.
    - 6y ago
richardjennings 6y ago
"and now the exploited have been drained dry". I do not think this is true in the absolute currently. I do think that the modern economies are imparting pressures that will make this more true over time. The question every one asks is "What is the point?". The answer is increasingly, there is no point. What about the answers previous generation might have had; send money home, improve life chances with an education, provide for a family, get a foot on the ladder, eat. I think 20 years from now on one side looks like very low birth rates, mass homelessness and high suicide rates. For those that own assets now - a Parisian utopia surrounded by the former. And for those that do continue to try, a room the size of a double bed containing an on-suite bathroom, kitchen diner, living-room and sleeping space - all in one! with no prospect of ownership.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  > a room the size of a double bed No one's building those, so maybe a tent in or near an abandoned mall.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - richardjennings 6y ago
    Not the most prestigious news outlet - but fact checkable and perhaps a vision of the future: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14815353/househunters-slam-tiny-house-oldham/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14815353/househunters-slam-tin...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

gruez 6y ago

>I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 * 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.

jolux 6y ago
>It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day Well thankfully we don't have to imagine, people have researched this: https://livingwage.mit.edu/ https://livingwage.mit.edu/. According to these data, the living wage across the US in 2019 was $16.54: https://livingwage.mit.edu/articles/61-new-living-wage-data-for-now-available-on-the-tool https://livingwage.mit.edu/articles/61-new-living-wage-data-.... So it's not at all inconceivable that the federal minimum is a poverty wage, in fact it almost certainly is.
- gruez 6y ago
  But that has nothing to do with GP's claim? GP was talking about your "net pay is below zero", meaning that the job itself pays negative. eg. you get paid $50/day but spent $55/day to earn it. Your comment seems to be about the minimum wage not being able to sustain a given living standard, eg. you get paid $50/day but you need to spend $55/day to survive.
  - jolux 6y ago
    I read their comment differently than you did, but even if I hadn't I don't quite understand your objection. By definition if you're spending $55/day to survive, you're spending $55/day to earn your pay, if nothing more. The situation you describe is not sustainable either. Please clarify.
    - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
      He is making a distinction between cost to survive (I.e. food, shelter, etc) and cost to have the job (I.e. transport). "net pay is below zero" means (In his interpretation) that the cost of having the job is greater than the amount the job pays. This is unrelated to the cost of surviving.
  - colpabar 6y ago
    First off, it's not $50 per day, because you're probably paying income tax. But let's assume it is. Second, it's not really "per day", that's an average. Most bills recur monthly. Assuming a month of four weeks, and working 5 days per week, that's 20 * $50 = $1000 per month. Doesn't that seem like an extremely low number to pay for rent, transportation, food, health care, kids, utilities, etc? I pay more for that in rent every month.
    - gruez 6y ago
      >seem like an extremely low number to pay for rent, transportation, food, health care, kids, utilities, etc? everything in that list except for transportation are sunk costs. In other words, you're paying for those regardless of whether you have the job or not.
      - inetknght 6y ago
        > you're paying for those regardless of whether you have the job or not. ...unless you're not paying for those because you literally don't have any money. So yeah, food is a sunk cost, sure. But that sinking will kill you without a job.
lastofthemojito 6y ago
I think the classic example of this is the pizza delivery driver (or now the gig economy food delivery driver). The driver might think "I made $100 today, great!", but they generally don't have a good sense for their total expenses. Sure, they know how much gas cost them this week, but they don't know how much the next auto repair will be, or how much depreciation they're incurring on their vehicle. And when their auto insurance goes up because they've been driving so many miles, that's out-of-pocket too - no employer is picking that up.
- joelfolksy 6y ago
  True. Of course, that only scratches the surface of why it's a terrible job. In many locales, policies that cover commercial driving are prohibitively expensive, and the majority of drivers are effectively uninsured (often without realizing it). It's not a stretch to say that insurance fraud is a core part of that industry's business model.
inetknght 6y ago
> Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.* Wow can you be any more out of touch? Your comment is offensively innaccurate. $58/day = $1740 for 30 days Unhealthy cheap carbs for a single person... $200/month (chicken, beans, rice, milk, cheese, bread) Shitphone with basically no internet for a single person... $40/month (who needs internet anyway) Fuel for a single person... $200/month (assume 2 tanks / week) Rent for a single person... $1400/month far (+fuel) Health insurance because you have two or three shit part-time jobs: $400/mo Vehicle insurance on an old vehicle: $300/mo It's hard to imagine someone who's so out of touch with reality that they think they can get away with claiming minimum wage is higher than $7.25 in high cost of living areas. In Houston, Texas the minimum wage is ... $7.25/hr. Cost of living here isn't approachable to minimum wage. This doesn't even start to pay for taxes, retirement investments, medical emergencies, vacations, legal disputes, education costs, or heaven forbid having family. What numbers are you using for your costs?
- gruez 6y ago
  >Unhealthy cheap carbs for a single person... $200/month (chicken, beans, rice, milk, cheese, bread) >Shitphone with basically no internet for a single person... $40/month (who needs internet anyway) >Health insurance because you have two or three shit part-time jobs: $400/mo >Rent for a single person... $1400/month far (+fuel) These are all sunk costs. You need them regardless of whether you have a job or not. You seem to be talking about your general finances (ie. your expenses > your income), whereas I interpreted mywittyname's comment as saying that the job itself is a net loss (ie. your cost of getting the job > your income from job). >Wow can you be any more out of touch? Your comment is offensively innaccurate. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - inetknght 6y ago
    > These are all sunk costs. You need them regardless of whether you have a job or not They're not sunk costs if you literally don't have money to pay for them. > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Your argument wasn't in good faith. You're saying that minimum wage is a livable wage which is a demonstrably false statement. Then you're also claiming that the cost of living is a sunk cost.
jfengel 6y ago
Is it really that hard to imagine? For starters, you don't want to have to work every single day. If you work 5 days out of every 7, you only have $41.43 to spend per day. The average cost of a studio apartment is over $900 a month. That's $30 per day. Even if you get roommates, that's going to cost you at least $15 per day. That leaves you $26 a day to spend on food, clothing, hygiene, Internet access, electricity, transportation, health care (since most minimum wage jobs don't include it), and all of the other expenses of life. And then pray you don't get sick -- even with health insurance you're now losing income. It adds up fast. There is basically nowhere in the US that this is a living wage. At best you can barely scrape by with no margin for error -- and certainly no money to spend on training for a better job.
- gruez 6y ago
  >The average cost of a studio apartment is over $900 a month [...] That leaves you $26 a day to spend on food, clothing, hygiene, Internet access, electricity, transportation, health care Seems like we're talking about different things. I was talking about the net gain/loss from getting a job, whereas you're talking about your overall living situation. See my reply to jolux's comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26996114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26996114
- rufus_foreman 6y ago
  Why would someone near the bottom quintile of income rent in an average cost area? What is the bottom quintile rent for an apartment?
  - adgjlsfhk1 6y ago
    I've looked for about 20 minutes and haven't been able to find a reliable figure nationally, so from a quick search on apartments.com for Minneapolis (random city not known for high cost of living), the 20th percentile studio apartment is $1000. If you want to split an appartment, I'm going to check 1 bedroom, since 2 unrelated people in a studio isn't really practical. Then the 20th percentile is about $1150. (on average for these apartments, parking is an extra $100 or so which you need if you have to shop by price, not location).
slv77 6y ago
Unlike capital equipment a business doesn’t pay for the cost of replacing labor as it ages. The cost in the US of raising a child is about $250,000 or about $3 per hour over 40 years. Businesses expect a pool of qualified and educated labor but don’t pay for childcare expenses. Employees are expected to have reliable transportation to get to the employers place of business but they do not cover transportation expenses. The cost of $400 a month for reliable transportation works out to $2.50 per hour. Employees are typically required to have work appropriate clothing. In the US this cost has often been pushed to employees. In some cases even tool costs have been pushed to employees. Employees have wear and tear on joints due to repetitive movements which will eventually have to be treated. Machines need maintenance and businesses are expected to pay the costs but with labor that is pushed back to the employee. The economics of minimum wage only work short term for people who are young, healthy and with no children where experience gained will lead to a higher paying job in the near future.
mywittyname 6y ago
First off, you need transportation to work. In most of America, this means, you need a car, gas, insurance, and maintenance. Secondly, you need uniforms. These are often paid for out of your check and come from companies that have pretty comfortable markup. Then you have the "expensive to be poor items" Such as getting your paycheck on what amounts to a Visa gift card, because cheap employers are transitioning to payment services that offload the cost of associated with payroll onto the employees. These cards have relatively high maintenance fees, and charge for things like actually getting your money. That's not even getting into shit like, "split shifts" where you have to work a few hours, take a multi-hour break, then work a few more hours. This means that you have to stay at work for 8 hours, but only get paid for maybe 4-6 of them. While you could leave, it would cost you money to do so. I've gone through this with younger siblings over the years. One in particular was a delivery driver, and factoring in cost of their car, the only reason they thought they were making money was because they were hiding the depreciation on their car through very long car loans and were not paying for the insurance coverage they should have been. Most low wage positions are only possible because they are subsidized by someone else, maybe it is a parent who lets them live rent free, or they subsist on credit card debt and payday loans to handle emergencies.
- user5994461 6y ago
  >>> That's not even getting into shit like, "split shifts" where you have to work a few hours, take a multi-hour break, then work a few more hours. This means that you have to stay at work for 8 hours, but only get paid for maybe 4-6 of them. While you could leave, it would cost you money to do so. Split shifts is a horror story. I've seen my younger sister working at a restaurant, the main hours are 12am-2pm then 7pm-11pm. What are you supposed to do during the massive break in the middle? It's royally screwing up your day. To make things worse, a trip in the tube and back will cost you £3 to £5, a sizable chunk of your first hour (£8/hour pretax). As if the night hours and pay were not terrible enough, the hours are set daily on a short notice. You constantly must adjust your schedule and if there's less hours to do you simply don't get paid.
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kristjansson 6y ago
Your replies down thread indicate an extremely narrow interpretation of 'expenses' here, namely only those financial costs directly related to employment. Taking that interpretation, you're probably correct that nearly all jobs offer net-positive pay counting only the those inputs from the employee. You're right that someone with better off in immediate financial terms with basically any job than no job. However, that's something other than the 'sustainable' wage in the GP comment, since that doesn't count costs of the labor input! Each of us has only so much labor to sell in a given month, and need to get enough in return to support, you know, continuing to live and sell our labor. Sure, being employed at wage that does not provide a basic level of dignity is less worse than being completely destitute, but it's a bit disingenuous to argue that being less-worse-off is 'sustainable'.
- woopwoop 6y ago
  I think his (gruez's) interpretation is the obviously reasonable one, and I'm not sure why he's getting bashed so severely here. Note that op made the claim that "net pay" was literally negative, which seems to comport totally with the interpretation given, and not at all with an interpretation of "sustainability" referring to a living wage.
  - kristjansson 6y ago
    I think quoting the unsustainable part of OP instead of the net pay part led to lots of misinterpretation. Sustainability in a pay context is IMO strongly linked to a living wage, or at least a survivable wage.
heavyset_go 6y ago
There are places where the commutes from the suburbs to the city where the jobs are costs $20-50 a day, if not more.

cratermoon 6y ago

> propped up by debt Payday lenders make a killing on exploiting this.

drdeadringer 6y ago
I worked on a (US) Naval shipyard for a spell. The number of payday loan shops in the immediate surrounding area was astounding. I kept hearing word of "Don't Do Payday" financial help training for the Naval crew, who apparently were a prime target for the industry. Before working there, I had little idea such existed. Think "worse than 'cash your cheque here'" places. I don't know how many Naval folks I worked with took in to these places, but every time I passed one I frowned and shook my head.
- myself248 6y ago
  Some years back, I was on a jobsite where radios were allowed, and we rotated through the crew, everyone playing deejay for a day, so everyone's taste got represented. Some guys would bring in a stack of CDs, some would just play the radio. It meant I listened to a few stations I don't normally listen to. And the density of payday loan ads, on some stations but not others, blew my mind. I don't think I ever heard one on the classic-rock station (their stock in trade was testosterone ads, apparently), but they were at saturation density on the R&B station. Payday loan places have always been scum, but that really opened my eyes to the deliberate exploitation aspect. This is targeted. It's good to hear that there's financial training for the Navy. I wonder if there's anything similar out in civilian life that we could support?
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    > that we could support? One of the most effective anti-poverty programs the government could do is teach basic accounting and finance as core curriculum in the public schools.
    - cratermoon 6y ago
      That sounds like victim-blaming. People are poor because they can't balance their checkbooks?

anthony_romeo 6y ago

There’s another aspect: there’s a horrible lack of common decency and respect by supervisors and managers of low-wage workers. Having worked menial data entry, warehouse, grocery store, fast food jobs, I’ve interacted with far too many stressed-out and abusive/abused bosses who cannot cope with the razor-thin timelines with minimal workforce (which seems to be the norm) and ultimately exhaust this irritating heat onto their subordinates and fail to show a minimal amount of respect to their employees to the degree of hostility and abuse. This isn’t so much of an “all bosses suck” trope (I am happy and lucky to be at a healthier work environment at the moment). The sense I have is demands from the top continue to be more and more unrealistic as decisions are made to cut costs without truly thinking about it may start to rot the foundation beneath. In my case, $18 sounds like a lot of money, but I wonder if this just means the work will be exponentially more stressful and unhealthy.

barry-cotter 6y ago
> there’s a horrible lack of common decency and respect by supervisors and managers of low-wage workers. Yeah, if the entire culture creating class/media/academia is agreed that people who don’t have college degrees are worthless failures or at best need other people to make their decisions for them there’s not going to be much respect going round. The Anglo West is not Japan.
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- pizzazzaro 6y ago
  Speak for yourself. Too many of our fast food workers have advanced degrees, but nowhere will take us. I cant tell if that one barista with a Mechanical Engineering degree unknowingly got hers from a diploma mill, or if the 2008-crunch just left her permanently out of the industry. Ive met trained, degree-holding coders, engineers, graphic designers, paralegals, mathematicians, even teachers that could simply not break into their chosen field, but had to simply subsist on fast food wages. Hell, there was one man who ran film crews at major Hollywood studios! But when his mother got sick, he took time off. And he simply couldnt get back in. So here we are, being asked to subsidize our ability to show up to work... where the customers are demeaning enough to become a meme named "Karen."

TuringNYC 6y ago

Another thing: if the job pays just enough to disqualify you from state-run healthcare (medicaid, etc), but not enough to pay out-of-pocket for health insurance, the only logical step for many is to not work. This is especially the case for part-time jobs which do not provide healthcare.

Pfhreak 6y ago
Means testing in social services is such a terrible idea. It creates nothing but perverse incentives like you describe. Programs like food stamps should be available to everyone who wants them. I don't care if a billionaire uses food stamps, they still need to eat. If too many rich people use the program, tweak tax rates until it balances out. It's a waste of our time to go through and double check that only those that 'deserve' a handout get one. It makes everything less efficient, creates bad incentives, and builds a social stigma around the programs. ("Oh, that program is only for really poor people. I'm not really poor, so I shouldn't use it.")
- chii 6y ago
  > tweak tax rates until it balances out. that just makes the whole system inefficient - the rich pay a bunch of taxes, then try to obtain all of those benefits for having paid those taxes to try even it back out. So why not just tax less, and let them spend the money directly?
  - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
    Countless trillions stashed in offshore tax havens in Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Brunei, BVI, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Denmark, Dominica, Dubai, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Isle of Man, Jersey, Labuan, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Monaco, Montserrat, Nevis, New Zealand, Panama, Seychelles, Singapore, St. Vincent, St. Kitts, Switzerland, Turks and Caicos and Vanuatu seem to indicate that spending into the economy isn't something that the wealthy like to do.
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richardjennings 6y ago

"and now the exploited have been drained dry". I do not think this is true in the absolute currently. I do think that the modern economies are imparting pressures that will make this more true over time. The question every one asks is "What is the point?". The answer is increasingly, there is no point. What about the answers previous generation might have had; send money home, improve life chances with an education, provide for a family, get a foot on the ladder, eat. I think 20 years from now on one side looks like very low birth rates, mass homelessness and high suicide rates. For those that own assets now - a Parisian utopia surrounded by the former. And for those that do continue to try, a room the size of a double bed containing an on-suite bathroom, kitchen diner, living-room and sleeping space - all in one! with no prospect of ownership.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
> a room the size of a double bed No one's building those, so maybe a tent in or near an abandoned mall.
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- richardjennings 6y ago
  Not the most prestigious news outlet - but fact checkable and perhaps a vision of the future: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14815353/househunters-slam-tiny-house-oldham/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14815353/househunters-slam-tin...
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