3 ms·
What came first, the wage or the cost of housing?
by hnav 4mo ago
What came first, the wage or the cost of housing?
- rr808 4mo agoEven states like Mississippi and Iowa have low housing costs and wages much higher than Spain.
- Shitty-kitty 4mo agoIf you want to do a real comparison then you have to include the cost of healthcare.
- rr808 4mo agoYes that is another reason, high healthcare costs for employing workers means higher construction costs in the USA.
- rayiner 4mo agoYes, but that cuts in the other direction. In the U.S., skilled work like subway construction will provide employer-paid healthcare. U.S. employers pay $1.3 trillion a year in healthcare benefits. You have to account for that on top of the reported wages. So that makes U.S. workers even more expensive relative to workers in Europe, where healthcare will be paid from taxes on the wages paid to employees. Total compensation in the U.S. construction industry is about $46/hour on average: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf. That's almost $92,000 for a 2,000-hour year.
- eldaisfish 4mo agopeople making this argument always forget the most critical aspect - people generally need healthcare when they are not working, almost always when retired. Your argument is then essentially that people should be working indefinitely.
- rayiner 4mo agoWe’re talking about how labor costs impact subway construction costs. Retirees aren’t relevant to that. (And the U.S. has universal healthcare for them anyway.)
- contubernio 4mo agoIn Madrid where the average monthly pretax salary is below 1500 a shared room with four strangers costs 400-709 a month and small aprtments in bad neighborhoods cost 3000-4000 a square meter to buy.
- throwaway_2626 4mo agoAverage monthly pretax salary in Madrid: 2 575.46 EUR (source in es_ES: https://www.abc.es/espana/madrid/evolucionado-salario-medio-comunidad-madrid-ultimos-anos-20250213090813-nt.html https://www.abc.es/espana/madrid/evolucionado-salario-medio-...) Also, a shared apartment costs as much as you say. Not a room (source: idealista.es). Purchase prices are high, but I'm curious as to what you consider a bad neighborhood, given the overall safety statistics in Spain, and Madrid in particular. Housing affordability is a real problem, but misrepresenting data is counterproductive, as it can be easily disproven.
- contubernio 4mo agoNo one lives in rooms. Everyone in Madrid lives in apartment. The average salary refers to those who have a job. Most family units have some that don't.