7 ms·
"Living wage" means the ability to live, not scrape by with the bare minimum possible.
by etchalon 8mo ago
"Living wage" means the ability to live, not scrape by with the bare minimum possible.
- bumby 8mo agoI feel like I’ve eat pretty well, and my household food costs are almost half what the calculator shows. Similar for vehicle costs etc. After looking at the method, I think the calculator probably has some bias towards “what society has convinced us we need”. To a certain extent that is a relative and subjective perception problem, and one exacerbated when you live in a society with a lot of consumer debt.
- Larrikin 8mo agoWhat does eating pretty well mean to you? Maybe you don't even if you think you do? We don't know without your budget or a receipt from your typical grocery run
- NewJazz 8mo agoAlso some folks are just smaller than others.
- bumby 8mo agoThey do try to account for this in their method. Men, women, and children of different ages all have different amounts of assumed food intake
- bumby 8mo agoMostly what the typical nutritional guidance has advocated consistently over the last few decades, with maybe slightly higher protein intake. 6-8 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, fairly liberal amounts of dairy and lean protein, lesser amounts of red meat. Grains like breads/rice for additional carbohydrates. Admittedly, avoiding eating out regularly is the #1 way I keep food costs down, though.
- etchalon 8mo agoMy household food costs are about 20% more than what the calculator shows (and that's a very minimal budget) Behold, "averages" are not perfect.
- bumby 8mo agoAre you following the USDA thrifty food plan like the methodology assumes?
- etchalon 8mo agoI don't perfectly weigh our groceries every week to hit the exact counts they recommend, no. But we stick to the essentials, utilize different stores for the lowest prices we can get, and don't purchase nonsense.
- bumby 8mo agoWould you agree that large uncertainties can bring into question the validity of a model? Ie “averages” with large variances are not often very informative
- etchalon 8mo agoI agree that the very term "averages" implies "an average".
- bumby 8mo agoIt’s the second time you’ve had a snarky reply so I can’t tell if you’re having a good faith conversation. The average wealth between me and Elon is several hundred billion dollars. That gives you very little information about me. Which is why people can hang too much inference on a simple average. Like Nate Silver said in The Signal and The Noise, the real discussion for the data literate is about uncertainty in models, not just drawing conclusions from “averages”
- lp4v4n 8mo agoThe yearly cost of food for one person without children in the county of Los Angeles(I selected an expensive area on purpose) is showing 4,428 USD. That's about 12 dollars a day. I don't even live in the United States but that value looks pretty low if anything.
- bumby 8mo agoThat’s pretty surprising, honestly, because there are other areas considered much lower COL that are within spitting distance of that value.
- prepend 8mo agoI can easily cook all my meals for $12/day. I don’t consider daily or even weekly restaurants part of a necessity for life.
- lp4v4n 8mo agoPeople have commutes and work shifts that don't always allow them to buy food in bulk and cook their own food. Not everybody is like you. Restaurants have never been a necessity for life, but I guess that for a lot of people you should be upper class to eat out once a week.
- bumby 8mo agoIt has changed a lot over time though, especially when you also count fast food and delivery. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad, but the norm has changed and many people’s expectations.
- prepend 8mo agoWhat about commutes stops you from bringing lunch? You don’t need to buy food in bulk. Just buy regular food, cook it, and take it to work. Either take stuff that doesn’t need refridge (pb&j, hummus, etc), or insulated lunchbox, or thermos. This is not a complicated problem to solve. Ride the bus sometime and look at the lunches people bring long distances. Eating out isn’t a necessity. But at $12/day food budget you definitely have money left over to eat out every once in a while. And that if you cook only for yourself. If you’re part of a household who can share food, it’s even easier.
- blobbers 8mo agoIs a family of 4 in a 2BR considered living wage? Because they have rent at $3600 for a family in silicon valley... which seems impossible. I paid more than that when I graduated from college with a roommate 20 years ago.
- prepend 8mo agoThat’s what I think when I hear the term, too. But these numbers are not just living, but living at a pretty high standard. I would expect living wage to mean the amount one needs to be able to live out your life fairly decently and with dignity. I think many do so without having pay this high.