Here's an easy way to cut through the complexity: pay everyone the same commute subsidy, equal to what it would cost to commute to the nearest area where housin

Here's an easy way to cut through the complexity: pay everyone the same commute subsidy, equal to what it would cost to commute to the nearest area where housing costs the same or less as the national average. So if the office is in a neighborhood that already costs the same or less as the national average housing cost, $0 commute subsidy for everyone. If the office is in say, manhattan, then I guess everyone gets a 2.5 hour commute subsidy, since the nearest area with reasonable housing prices is Allentown, PA. Workers can choose what to do, whether to bank the subsidy and apply it to expensive nearby rent and live near by or spend it on commuting to somewhere more reasonably priced, or any combination thereof. Really, the issue is that housing costs have gotten so extreme that there are places where a certain advertised or minimum wage is much less once you account for how far you'd have to live. But it would be nice of the minimum wage was adjusted for location, and advertised and negotiated wages had to automatically include location differentials, as it would make comparing and negotiating wages a lot easier. Another unrelated and actually much larger issue this would help a lot with is the phenomenon of low wage service hours being forced to work many small shifts, 2 hours here, 3 hours there. Office workers are used to commuting once per day, 5 days a week, for a full day's pay each time, but a Starbucks worker might be forced to have a much higher ratio of commute to paid work, and the company is getting a free ride there-- this would disincentivize that significantly, regardless of whether the worker chooses to live nearby or far.