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Why is it disgusting? Do you think Harvard should tell them NOT to apply for food stamps? At the current minimum annual salary of $40k, a single student wouldn

Why is it disgusting? Do you think Harvard should tell them NOT to apply for food stamps? At the current minimum annual salary of $40k, a single student wouldn't be eligible for SNAP amyways, the income threshold for a household size of 1 is $29,160. You'd need a household size of at least 3 to be eligible, with total household income under $49k. So you, a spouse and 1 child, or you and two children, etc.

lapcat 3y ago
> Why is it disgusting? Do you think Harvard should tell them NOT to apply for food stamps? This feels deliberately obtuse. The second half of the submitted article headline is "Even Though It's the Richest School In The World With A $53 Billion Endowment". Obviously people think Harvard should pay its graduate students more so that they wouldn't need food stamps.
- ghodith 3y ago
  It's obvious to you that graduate student positions should pay enough to support a sole income provider for a family of three? Because according to the parent, that's what we're discussing here.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    Yes. Graduate students are inherently older, since they first need to obtain an undergraduate degree, and then graduate school itself can take many years to complete coursework and especially to write a dissertation. You can't expect grad students to put off the rest of their lives indefinitely, not get married, not have a family.
    - evancox100 3y ago
      Family formation is delayed across the whole population, but I do think it's worth asking what can be done to support earlier family formation. (Given that many people are saying they are not having the number of kids they would like to have.)
      - photonbeam 3y ago
        Easy: housing that can be afforded by a single income household, where the loan is serviceable at wages obtainable by someone 25 years old.
        evancox100 3y ago
        I certainly agree that Boston and Massachusetts should reduce, or ideally eliminate, their restrictions on what housing can be built and where. The benefit of doing that instead is it would help approximately 1000 times the number of people than raising Harvard grad student pay would. It's worth noting that Harvard grad students are the ones getting attention here, and not the average person getting squeezed by rent. Are you going to whack-a-mole every single employer in the Boston MSA to pay at least $60k? Even if you did this, the increased pay would just go to inflated housing costs. The underlying problem is a scarcity of housing, you can't fix that by giving people (in aggregate) more money. It will just bid up the cost of the scarce good. And none of this really affects whether or not grad students should be encouraged to apply for whatever government benefits they are eligible for. Harvard doesn't control where the federal government sets the income cutoffs for benefits. Nevertheless I'm sure highlighting this is a good way to grab attention.
        lapcat 3y ago
        > It's worth noting that Harvard grad students are the ones getting attention here, and not the average person getting squeezed by rent. This is a single article, and a single article can only usefully highlight a single issue. If news articles could only talk about the worst problems in the world, then perhaps every news article in the world would be about climate change. Which perhaps wouldn't be a bad thing! But still, this is a red herring, because other news articles do in fact talk about the average person getting squeezed by rent. > Are you going to whack-a-mole every single employer in the Boston MSA to pay at least $60k? Not every employer in the Boston area has a $50 billion endowment.
- evancox100 3y ago
  There are a lot of comparisons to Walmart having employees on food stamps, but I think it's worth pointing out that if you are paying federal minimum wage $7.25/hour, that is just $15,080 annually at 40 hours / week * 52 weeks. It is quite shockingly low. Harvard's minimum pay is almost 3x that amount. If we assume a 40 hour work week, it comes out to $19.23/hour. That is well within the range for what most advocacy groups are calling a living wage. For example, this site pegs it at $18/hour for Suffolk county in Massachusetts: https://livingwageforus.org/tier-i-certification/ https://livingwageforus.org/tier-i-certification/
  - lapcat 3y ago
    "The high cost of living in Boston only adds to Harvard students' struggle." "The average rent for a Boston one-bedroom is $3,215 a month. Ljunggren said it’s not uncommon for students to be paying $2,000 a month for a studio apartment, or living with multiple roommates to cover a $4,000-a-month two-bedroom." https://www.vice.com/en/article/93kwaa/harvard-tells-grad-students-to-get-food-stamps-to-supplement-the-unlivable-wages-it-pays-them https://www.vice.com/en/article/93kwaa/harvard-tells-grad-st...
    - amluto 3y ago
      That latter paragraph is odd. It seems that the reporter is mentioning average rent in Boston, and I wouldn’t expect the HGSU president to use that as a benchmark: Boston is an unusual place for a Harvard grad student to live. Perfectly nice Somerville 2BR units appear to be available for a bit above $2k/mo, and they quite a bit more conveniently located to Harvard than most of Boston is.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - dublinben 3y ago
    The Federal minimum wage is irrelevant here, since Massachusetts law institutes a higher $15/hour rate. As you point out, even that higher wage isn’t enough to live on. A more robust estimate suggests that the living wage is actually $22.59 in this area. https://livingwage.mit.edu/metros/14460 https://livingwage.mit.edu/metros/14460
freetanga 3y ago
If you are paying your employees wages that are not in line with sustainable living standards, aligned with then image you are expecting them to give, you are shortchanging them. You are over-leveraging your attractiveness as a Brand to make them choose a few years as indentured servants, or walk away. That attitude speaks very poorly of Harvard, but is not surprising. Just another data point that they only want the brethren of the rich, they don’t want smart but poorer talent.

lapcat 3y ago

> Why is it disgusting? Do you think Harvard should tell them NOT to apply for food stamps? This feels deliberately obtuse. The second half of the submitted article headline is "Even Though It's the Richest School In The World With A $53 Billion Endowment". Obviously people think Harvard should pay its graduate students more so that they wouldn't need food stamps.

ghodith 3y ago
It's obvious to you that graduate student positions should pay enough to support a sole income provider for a family of three? Because according to the parent, that's what we're discussing here.
- lapcat 3y ago
  Yes. Graduate students are inherently older, since they first need to obtain an undergraduate degree, and then graduate school itself can take many years to complete coursework and especially to write a dissertation. You can't expect grad students to put off the rest of their lives indefinitely, not get married, not have a family.
  - evancox100 3y ago
    Family formation is delayed across the whole population, but I do think it's worth asking what can be done to support earlier family formation. (Given that many people are saying they are not having the number of kids they would like to have.)
    - photonbeam 3y ago
      Easy: housing that can be afforded by a single income household, where the loan is serviceable at wages obtainable by someone 25 years old.
      - evancox100 3y ago
        I certainly agree that Boston and Massachusetts should reduce, or ideally eliminate, their restrictions on what housing can be built and where. The benefit of doing that instead is it would help approximately 1000 times the number of people than raising Harvard grad student pay would. It's worth noting that Harvard grad students are the ones getting attention here, and not the average person getting squeezed by rent. Are you going to whack-a-mole every single employer in the Boston MSA to pay at least $60k? Even if you did this, the increased pay would just go to inflated housing costs. The underlying problem is a scarcity of housing, you can't fix that by giving people (in aggregate) more money. It will just bid up the cost of the scarce good. And none of this really affects whether or not grad students should be encouraged to apply for whatever government benefits they are eligible for. Harvard doesn't control where the federal government sets the income cutoffs for benefits. Nevertheless I'm sure highlighting this is a good way to grab attention.
        lapcat 3y ago
        > It's worth noting that Harvard grad students are the ones getting attention here, and not the average person getting squeezed by rent. This is a single article, and a single article can only usefully highlight a single issue. If news articles could only talk about the worst problems in the world, then perhaps every news article in the world would be about climate change. Which perhaps wouldn't be a bad thing! But still, this is a red herring, because other news articles do in fact talk about the average person getting squeezed by rent. > Are you going to whack-a-mole every single employer in the Boston MSA to pay at least $60k? Not every employer in the Boston area has a $50 billion endowment.
evancox100 3y ago
There are a lot of comparisons to Walmart having employees on food stamps, but I think it's worth pointing out that if you are paying federal minimum wage $7.25/hour, that is just $15,080 annually at 40 hours / week * 52 weeks. It is quite shockingly low. Harvard's minimum pay is almost 3x that amount. If we assume a 40 hour work week, it comes out to $19.23/hour. That is well within the range for what most advocacy groups are calling a living wage. For example, this site pegs it at $18/hour for Suffolk county in Massachusetts: https://livingwageforus.org/tier-i-certification/ https://livingwageforus.org/tier-i-certification/
- lapcat 3y ago
  "The high cost of living in Boston only adds to Harvard students' struggle." "The average rent for a Boston one-bedroom is $3,215 a month. Ljunggren said it’s not uncommon for students to be paying $2,000 a month for a studio apartment, or living with multiple roommates to cover a $4,000-a-month two-bedroom." https://www.vice.com/en/article/93kwaa/harvard-tells-grad-students-to-get-food-stamps-to-supplement-the-unlivable-wages-it-pays-them https://www.vice.com/en/article/93kwaa/harvard-tells-grad-st...
  - amluto 3y ago
    That latter paragraph is odd. It seems that the reporter is mentioning average rent in Boston, and I wouldn’t expect the HGSU president to use that as a benchmark: Boston is an unusual place for a Harvard grad student to live. Perfectly nice Somerville 2BR units appear to be available for a bit above $2k/mo, and they quite a bit more conveniently located to Harvard than most of Boston is.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- dublinben 3y ago
  The Federal minimum wage is irrelevant here, since Massachusetts law institutes a higher $15/hour rate. As you point out, even that higher wage isn’t enough to live on. A more robust estimate suggests that the living wage is actually $22.59 in this area. https://livingwage.mit.edu/metros/14460 https://livingwage.mit.edu/metros/14460

freetanga 3y ago

If you are paying your employees wages that are not in line with sustainable living standards, aligned with then image you are expecting them to give, you are shortchanging them. You are over-leveraging your attractiveness as a Brand to make them choose a few years as indentured servants, or walk away. That attitude speaks very poorly of Harvard, but is not surprising. Just another data point that they only want the brethren of the rich, they don’t want smart but poorer talent.