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> 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 c

> 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.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >They're not sunk costs if you literally don't have money to pay for them. Food isn't optional. Getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food doesn't magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job. >You're saying that minimum wage is a livable wage which is a demonstrably false statement I made no such statement. Please point out where you think I made that statement.
    - inetknght 6y ago
      > Food isn't optional. Getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food doesn't magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job. Most people aren't able to get food without money obtained from a job. So unless your food is provided elsewhere then getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food does magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job. > I made no such statement. Please point out where you think I made that statement. > $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day*
      - gruez 6y ago
        >Most people aren't able to get food without money obtained from a job. So unless your food is provided elsewhere then getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food does magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job. That makes zero sense from an accounting point of view. >> I made no such statement. Please point out where you think I made that statement. >> $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day* 1. I'm not sure how you're getting "minimum wage is a livable wage" from that comment. 2. you seem to be fixated on "expenses" meaning living expenses (eg. rent, food, clothing, etc.), whereas I was only talking about expenses related to getting the job (eg. transport). This was pointed out several comments ago.
maxerickson 6y ago
I'm glad I don't have to fit my expenses into a minimum wage budget, but some of your numbers are pretty high. I buy gas once every 2 or 3 weeks and spend $45 on a phone plan with 4 GB of LTE (US; I guess that can fit the definition of basically no internet). My car insurance (with collision and unlimited medical) is less than $500 for 6 months. I would probably balk at paying much more than $800 in rent. The rental market here is pretty thin (I think part of it is I don't know where to look), but I see a listing for $1100 for a 4 bedroom house. Electricity+water+gas would be in the range of $250 for 1 person (and less for several as heating is a major utility cost here).
- inetknght 6y ago
  > but some of your numbers are pretty high. Cost of living across the US varies wildly. The numbers are pulled from my most recent billing cycle for Houston and partly extrapolated to minimum wage (which I am most definitely not, but have friends who are). My rent is $1500/mo for 920sqft inside the 610 loop. The leasing office wanted $2000/mo for new contracts in October last year. It's really hard to find places for $800 within a 30 minute drive of any office in Houston. All of my friends have the same problem. I'm looking to buy a home for a similar reason. Living far enough out to have rent reduced to $800 is offset by increased amount of time driving and therefore increased costs in fuel. So I bought gas twice a month before the pandemic with a 5 minute drive to the office. When I lived 30 minutes out, I bought gas twice a week. Car insurance depends a lot on vehicle, driver age, etc. $300/mo was quoted to some younger family last summer -- they were outraged because it was half-again their car payment. I pay $600/6-mo.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Are people doing office work for $7.25 in Houston? I agree that prices vary widely, I'm not sure it makes sense to take expensive places as typical.
    - jvp 6y ago
      It may not be office work, but I bet it's location dependent (restaurant, janitor, grocery store).
betwixthewires 6y ago
I don't know where you live, but you're the one that is out of touch. 2 tanks a week? 200 bucks a month for shit tier food? Ever heard of cooking? 1400 a month rent? I've spent time in Houston, on minimum wage, and in the past decade. It was alright. I even had the money to go out drinking every weekend, by Rice university at that. Usually when you hear arguments like this and you get down to brass tacks, you start to hear the arguments that allude to the real culprit, things like "I should be able to have extra money for fun" which usually translates to "I blow my money on things I can't afford and then blame the world for being broke."
- robocat 6y ago
  > arguments that allude to the real culprit, things like "I should be able to have extra money for fun" which usually translates to "I blow my money on things I can't afford and then blame the world for being broke." Should we live in a world where we are wage slaves where 100% of our earnings are spent on the bare necessities such as food and shelter? One of my friends has $20 to spend on herself after her frugal bills and doing a body crushing job (no "fat" like retirement savings, or medical insurance). I look at it like she earns 50 cents an hour. Surely we work to be able to spend some money on the pleasures of life? Or is that a dream only for the middle class? Work usually costs us immense amounts of time, let alone the other personal costs of work for many.
  - betwixthewires 6y ago
    > Should we live in a world where we are wage slaves where 100% of our earnings are spent on the bare necessities such as food and shelter? No. > Surely we work to be able to spend some money on the pleasures of life? Money doesn't buy happiness. The best things in life are free. And sure, if you have money to spend on fun things, have at it. If you don't and you want to, try finding a way to do it. It really is up to you. But the idea that if you do not have disposable income to engage in consumerism you're going to be unhappy, well I'll just say that's a terrible starting point for your argument, and a mindset that breeds unhappiness quicker than tight finances.
j1elo 6y ago
> Vehicle insurance on an old vehicle: $300/mo Wow. In Spain you would pay between €150 to 200 per year of insurance for the typical old cheap car. 400/year for a nice, semi luxury one. I knew some things were expensive in the States, but this particular one surprised me a lot.
- simfree 6y ago
  Depending on the car and where you live insurance can be lower or higher. Outside of collector/classic car insurance policies (eg: this is not a daily driver car and you agree not to exceed a low number of miles yearly) or parked insurance (a few hundred miles a year), there is not $200 to $300 a year car insurance in the USA. Tribal reservations don't require license plates or insurance usually, and you cab choose to self insure if you have sufficient cash set aside.
  - robocat 6y ago
    > and you ca[n] choose to self insure if you have sufficient cash set aside. I think you are ignoring the third party risks - damaging an expensive car or hurting someone. In that situation, you use insurance if you want to protect your money. If you have no money, insurance make little sense, and you just suck up the risks of pranging your beater.
    - simfree 6y ago
      Self insurance is not legal if you do not meet your state's requirements for cash set aside for self insurance purposes and vehicle count. This is usually a sizable sum of money that you need to set aside to self insure.
  - dstaley 6y ago
    > Outside of collector/classic car insurance policies or parked insurance, there is not $200 to $300 a year car insurance in the USA. Absolutely beg to differ. I was on a high-deductible, low-benefit plan for a two-year old used economy car in Louisiana with no marks on my driving record for $250/month. The insurance cost was more than the monthly cost of the car. That being said, it was more than the state mandated liability insurance, but it still wasn't anywhere near the levels of insurance I now have in Washington State on a brand new Tesla Model 3. As you mentioned, it's highly dependent on where you live, but it's absolutely feasible to be paying $200-$300/month for insurance. Edit: Apologies to parent comment. This was a reading comprehension failure.
bena 6y ago
I have a problem with your basic starting point. You say $58/day for 30 days. That's working the whole month with no days off. That's not anybody's life that I know. It's better to estimate 168 hours per month worked. That's 4 full-time work weeks of 5 days a week plus an extra day. With 12 months in the year, you're still effectively short a few days, but it's close enough. So $7.25 * 168 is $1218 Let's ignore every other expense. Let's say you walk everywhere, use the library for internet, whatever. Average rent is roughly that. You are fucked from the start to just put a roof over your head. That's also assuming that job is 40 hours a week. Giving 8 hours work, 8 hours sleep, you have 72 hours left over. Some of that time will be dedicated to commuting, hygiene, eating, etc. You might be able to swing a second full time job, but that's just your life from then on. Also 2 tanks per week, that's insane. Even when I was driving 50-ish miles each way, I was getting gas about twice every three weeks. With a daily 100 mile commute, I'd say my fuel costs were in the neighborhood of $100 per month. Your insurance is also way out of whack. Old cars have cheaper insurance. I have a 2017 model and pay $700-ish every 6 months. And it wasn't much worse when it was new.
aliceryhl 6y ago
Couldn't you do without the car? I've heard that the US has bad public transport, but is it really that bad?
- kevinmchugh 6y ago
  If you live anywhere with public transit that's complete enough and reliable enough to get you to work on time, you're paying more in rent to make that happen. It might be cheaper but not by a lot
  - aliceryhl 6y ago
    If you go by the numbers in the post I responded to, this isn't true, at least not where I live. The $1400 figure is pretty much exactly what I pay in rent, and I have no problems getting to work with public transport for $100/month. To be fair, I live in Europe, but this is why I asked the question "is it really that bad?", to which the answer appears to be yes.
- seoaeu 6y ago
  Doing that could easily add an hour (or in particularly bad cases, two hours!) each way to your commute. Some people do make that tradeoff, but it seems really unpleasant. The big issue is that transit accessibility is priced into rent, so while parts of US cities might actually be reasonable to get around with public transportation, you'd never be able to afford to live there with a low income.
  - aliceryhl 6y ago
    Fair enough. I guess it really is that bad in the US.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  There's lots of places with OK service, if you measure by overall coverage it's pretty bad. Like https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/02/06/walking-man-james-robertson--detroit-troy-buses-oakland-county-smart-ddot-ford-taurus/79505152/ https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016... is about a guy that caught the attention of the internet because he couldn't take public transit to his job.
rufus_foreman 6y ago
I've lived on minimum wage before. Those numbers are not realistic.
madengr 6y ago
Minimum wage was never intended to cover all the above, and it never has. Minimum wage is for teenagers working after school or weekends, or students with no (yet) marketable skills.
sbierwagen 6y ago
The impoverished don't spend that much on car insurance. They do spend a surprising amount on cars, though: either many repairs, or buying replacement used cars when the last one gives out. If they're really in a bad spot, they'll be buying these cars financed. You don't want to be in a position where you're paying off a car that long since was sold for scrap steel price at a junkyard. Also a smartphone is a must: they often don't have a traditional computer at all! An internet-capable phone might be the only way they can access email, unless they're truly destitute and using libraries for internet access.
refurb 6y ago
You’re clearly out of touch and over inflating numbers. $200/month for groceries is nothing but cheap carbs? $1400/month for rent? Are they living in their own 1 bedroom in the middle of the city?
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  $50/week in food is doable, but it takes some careful planning. I'd be impressed at someone who could purchase fresh vegetables and fruit, balanced whole grain carbs, and a healthy protein of their choice, spices sufficient to produce a reasonable variety of meals, plus some occasional luxury food items for that budget.

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.
- gruez 6y ago
  >They're not sunk costs if you literally don't have money to pay for them. Food isn't optional. Getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food doesn't magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job. >You're saying that minimum wage is a livable wage which is a demonstrably false statement I made no such statement. Please point out where you think I made that statement.
  - inetknght 6y ago
    > Food isn't optional. Getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food doesn't magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job. Most people aren't able to get food without money obtained from a job. So unless your food is provided elsewhere then getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food does magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job. > I made no such statement. Please point out where you think I made that statement. > $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day*
    - gruez 6y ago
      >Most people aren't able to get food without money obtained from a job. So unless your food is provided elsewhere then getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food does magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job. That makes zero sense from an accounting point of view. >> I made no such statement. Please point out where you think I made that statement. >> $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day* 1. I'm not sure how you're getting "minimum wage is a livable wage" from that comment. 2. you seem to be fixated on "expenses" meaning living expenses (eg. rent, food, clothing, etc.), whereas I was only talking about expenses related to getting the job (eg. transport). This was pointed out several comments ago.

maxerickson 6y ago

I'm glad I don't have to fit my expenses into a minimum wage budget, but some of your numbers are pretty high. I buy gas once every 2 or 3 weeks and spend $45 on a phone plan with 4 GB of LTE (US; I guess that can fit the definition of basically no internet). My car insurance (with collision and unlimited medical) is less than $500 for 6 months. I would probably balk at paying much more than $800 in rent. The rental market here is pretty thin (I think part of it is I don't know where to look), but I see a listing for $1100 for a 4 bedroom house. Electricity+water+gas would be in the range of $250 for 1 person (and less for several as heating is a major utility cost here).

inetknght 6y ago
> but some of your numbers are pretty high. Cost of living across the US varies wildly. The numbers are pulled from my most recent billing cycle for Houston and partly extrapolated to minimum wage (which I am most definitely not, but have friends who are). My rent is $1500/mo for 920sqft inside the 610 loop. The leasing office wanted $2000/mo for new contracts in October last year. It's really hard to find places for $800 within a 30 minute drive of any office in Houston. All of my friends have the same problem. I'm looking to buy a home for a similar reason. Living far enough out to have rent reduced to $800 is offset by increased amount of time driving and therefore increased costs in fuel. So I bought gas twice a month before the pandemic with a 5 minute drive to the office. When I lived 30 minutes out, I bought gas twice a week. Car insurance depends a lot on vehicle, driver age, etc. $300/mo was quoted to some younger family last summer -- they were outraged because it was half-again their car payment. I pay $600/6-mo.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Are people doing office work for $7.25 in Houston? I agree that prices vary widely, I'm not sure it makes sense to take expensive places as typical.
  - jvp 6y ago
    It may not be office work, but I bet it's location dependent (restaurant, janitor, grocery store).

betwixthewires 6y ago

I don't know where you live, but you're the one that is out of touch. 2 tanks a week? 200 bucks a month for shit tier food? Ever heard of cooking? 1400 a month rent? I've spent time in Houston, on minimum wage, and in the past decade. It was alright. I even had the money to go out drinking every weekend, by Rice university at that. Usually when you hear arguments like this and you get down to brass tacks, you start to hear the arguments that allude to the real culprit, things like "I should be able to have extra money for fun" which usually translates to "I blow my money on things I can't afford and then blame the world for being broke."

robocat 6y ago
> arguments that allude to the real culprit, things like "I should be able to have extra money for fun" which usually translates to "I blow my money on things I can't afford and then blame the world for being broke." Should we live in a world where we are wage slaves where 100% of our earnings are spent on the bare necessities such as food and shelter? One of my friends has $20 to spend on herself after her frugal bills and doing a body crushing job (no "fat" like retirement savings, or medical insurance). I look at it like she earns 50 cents an hour. Surely we work to be able to spend some money on the pleasures of life? Or is that a dream only for the middle class? Work usually costs us immense amounts of time, let alone the other personal costs of work for many.
- betwixthewires 6y ago
  > Should we live in a world where we are wage slaves where 100% of our earnings are spent on the bare necessities such as food and shelter? No. > Surely we work to be able to spend some money on the pleasures of life? Money doesn't buy happiness. The best things in life are free. And sure, if you have money to spend on fun things, have at it. If you don't and you want to, try finding a way to do it. It really is up to you. But the idea that if you do not have disposable income to engage in consumerism you're going to be unhappy, well I'll just say that's a terrible starting point for your argument, and a mindset that breeds unhappiness quicker than tight finances.

j1elo 6y ago

> Vehicle insurance on an old vehicle: $300/mo Wow. In Spain you would pay between €150 to 200 per year of insurance for the typical old cheap car. 400/year for a nice, semi luxury one. I knew some things were expensive in the States, but this particular one surprised me a lot.

simfree 6y ago
Depending on the car and where you live insurance can be lower or higher. Outside of collector/classic car insurance policies (eg: this is not a daily driver car and you agree not to exceed a low number of miles yearly) or parked insurance (a few hundred miles a year), there is not $200 to $300 a year car insurance in the USA. Tribal reservations don't require license plates or insurance usually, and you cab choose to self insure if you have sufficient cash set aside.
- robocat 6y ago
  > and you ca[n] choose to self insure if you have sufficient cash set aside. I think you are ignoring the third party risks - damaging an expensive car or hurting someone. In that situation, you use insurance if you want to protect your money. If you have no money, insurance make little sense, and you just suck up the risks of pranging your beater.
  - simfree 6y ago
    Self insurance is not legal if you do not meet your state's requirements for cash set aside for self insurance purposes and vehicle count. This is usually a sizable sum of money that you need to set aside to self insure.
- dstaley 6y ago
  > Outside of collector/classic car insurance policies or parked insurance, there is not $200 to $300 a year car insurance in the USA. Absolutely beg to differ. I was on a high-deductible, low-benefit plan for a two-year old used economy car in Louisiana with no marks on my driving record for $250/month. The insurance cost was more than the monthly cost of the car. That being said, it was more than the state mandated liability insurance, but it still wasn't anywhere near the levels of insurance I now have in Washington State on a brand new Tesla Model 3. As you mentioned, it's highly dependent on where you live, but it's absolutely feasible to be paying $200-$300/month for insurance. Edit: Apologies to parent comment. This was a reading comprehension failure.

bena 6y ago

I have a problem with your basic starting point. You say $58/day for 30 days. That's working the whole month with no days off. That's not anybody's life that I know. It's better to estimate 168 hours per month worked. That's 4 full-time work weeks of 5 days a week plus an extra day. With 12 months in the year, you're still effectively short a few days, but it's close enough. So $7.25 * 168 is $1218 Let's ignore every other expense. Let's say you walk everywhere, use the library for internet, whatever. Average rent is roughly that. You are fucked from the start to just put a roof over your head. That's also assuming that job is 40 hours a week. Giving 8 hours work, 8 hours sleep, you have 72 hours left over. Some of that time will be dedicated to commuting, hygiene, eating, etc. You might be able to swing a second full time job, but that's just your life from then on. Also 2 tanks per week, that's insane. Even when I was driving 50-ish miles each way, I was getting gas about twice every three weeks. With a daily 100 mile commute, I'd say my fuel costs were in the neighborhood of $100 per month. Your insurance is also way out of whack. Old cars have cheaper insurance. I have a 2017 model and pay $700-ish every 6 months. And it wasn't much worse when it was new.

aliceryhl 6y ago

Couldn't you do without the car? I've heard that the US has bad public transport, but is it really that bad?

kevinmchugh 6y ago
If you live anywhere with public transit that's complete enough and reliable enough to get you to work on time, you're paying more in rent to make that happen. It might be cheaper but not by a lot
- aliceryhl 6y ago
  If you go by the numbers in the post I responded to, this isn't true, at least not where I live. The $1400 figure is pretty much exactly what I pay in rent, and I have no problems getting to work with public transport for $100/month. To be fair, I live in Europe, but this is why I asked the question "is it really that bad?", to which the answer appears to be yes.
seoaeu 6y ago
Doing that could easily add an hour (or in particularly bad cases, two hours!) each way to your commute. Some people do make that tradeoff, but it seems really unpleasant. The big issue is that transit accessibility is priced into rent, so while parts of US cities might actually be reasonable to get around with public transportation, you'd never be able to afford to live there with a low income.
- aliceryhl 6y ago
  Fair enough. I guess it really is that bad in the US.
maxerickson 6y ago
There's lots of places with OK service, if you measure by overall coverage it's pretty bad. Like https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016/02/06/walking-man-james-robertson--detroit-troy-buses-oakland-county-smart-ddot-ford-taurus/79505152/ https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016... is about a guy that caught the attention of the internet because he couldn't take public transit to his job.

rufus_foreman 6y ago

I've lived on minimum wage before. Those numbers are not realistic.

madengr 6y ago

Minimum wage was never intended to cover all the above, and it never has. Minimum wage is for teenagers working after school or weekends, or students with no (yet) marketable skills.

sbierwagen 6y ago

The impoverished don't spend that much on car insurance. They do spend a surprising amount on cars, though: either many repairs, or buying replacement used cars when the last one gives out. If they're really in a bad spot, they'll be buying these cars financed. You don't want to be in a position where you're paying off a car that long since was sold for scrap steel price at a junkyard. Also a smartphone is a must: they often don't have a traditional computer at all! An internet-capable phone might be the only way they can access email, unless they're truly destitute and using libraries for internet access.

refurb 6y ago

You’re clearly out of touch and over inflating numbers. $200/month for groceries is nothing but cheap carbs? $1400/month for rent? Are they living in their own 1 bedroom in the middle of the city?

Pfhreak 6y ago
$50/week in food is doable, but it takes some careful planning. I'd be impressed at someone who could purchase fresh vegetables and fruit, balanced whole grain carbs, and a healthy protein of their choice, spices sufficient to produce a reasonable variety of meals, plus some occasional luxury food items for that budget.