Mapping the Living Wage Gap
datainnovation.org
datainnovation.org
Under capitalism you don't really get to 'live' unless you break free from wages to an extent. That doesn't necessarily mean retirement, but it's somewhere above living paycheck to paycheck. Basically, you need to be in a situation in which your wages are refilling a tank that slowly leaks, rather than drinking directly from the hose.
London has a "living wage". It's something like 9GBP. 40 hours a week with no holiday would get you 18700GBP. How is that a living wage in any sense? What do we mean by living here? Literally existing as a human being, grasping at straws thrown down by the capitalists?
With that amount of income and no starting wealth it is totally impossible to buy a studio apartment anywhere within commuting distance of London. Not even 50sqft. (If you could find one cheap enough, the commuting costs would make it unviable).
Is constantly moving around from cheap shit apartment to cheap shit apartment, worrying about how to move your belongings, obsessing over the bills, worrying about taking the metro to see a friend, living?
Call it what it is. It's a 'starter wage'. It's existence level. 'Living' has connotations beyond simple existence.
The government in the UK recently started using the words "living wage" but what they mean by it falls short of what other people consider a living wage.
(No argument that being paid just barely enough to live is a pretty wretched existence.)
Perhaps it's just my odd take on things. I feel that security of housing* is a clear benchmark, whereas below that, you're kind of arbitrarily deciding on what level of comfort to accept.
*(A caravan on a small plot of grass that you own would be acceptable to me, if that were a situation you could legally get away with in London!)
Why housing, and not say, food? Because of the nature of how it generally works in Western countries. Housing is less fungible/liquid (lacking a good term here). If I want food, I can work for a bit, go begging, whatever, get a few quid, go and buy some food, eat it. Housing is fundamentally different; we enter into contracts to put a roof over our head and there's a reasonable expectation that it's the same roof each day/week/month.
Housing is also priced differently... there's a discrete cliff-edge beyond which you go from 'roof and 4 walls' to 'tent/car/under a bridge'. Food scales back much more continuously; you can go all the way down to eating bread and dripping and experience a small degradation each step along the way.
I'd much rather have a secure roof over my head, a place to call home, and have to hustle for food/electricity/whatever, than all the food and toys in the world but nowhere to stay. I think most people would agree (nomadic lifestyles excepted here because they're generally incompatible with the premise of working for a wage)
I saw them as teenager jobs. Jobs teenagers did to earn some money to afford things or to augment household income. Seeing adults trying to live off it was "educational" and sad.
Personally, I don't think responsible adults should be working these kinds of entry level jobs, in a well rounded economy. They should have the education and aptitude to do more value added jobs, but I think as society we've failed in coaxing more people into being more curious and wanting to learn...
Many of my classmates barely graduated high school and some dropped out. Their outlook was one where they'd get a blue collar job, maybe a union job and enjoy "seniority". Some struggle and some are doing okay running their own business, but I think their outlook would have been better with an emphasis on education. Some of the parents of these latchkey kids simply thought sending them to school would be enough. As if education and preparation for the world began and ended with school.
On the other end of the spectrum we have helicopter parents...
One thing I think could help would be to have training programs to retrain workers as the economy shifts into new directions. Grant those in need of skills acquisition tools to learn new skills.
First, I'm going to limit this to people < 18. Because once you're 18 you could legally be thrown out on your ass by your parents, and all of a sudden this "not supposed to be a living wage" has become your living wage.
According to the BLS, there are 3 million jobs at or below federal minimum wage (I don't think this stat includes jobs from states with higher minimum wages though). In 2015-16, 3.3 million high schoolers are expected to graduate. So that's (very roughly) 13.2 million people in high school (it's probably a bit higher). Let's ignore that some high schoolers are 18.
So if they all worked full time, you would need 23% of your high schoolers to be employed. This ignores hours though, and to realistically attend high school while working and also being able to fill all the required jobs would be at least 46%, and probably be closer to 75%. I don't see this happening anytime soon.
Also, there is choosing a good career and bad one. Dental hygienist, SWE vs archeologist or liberal arts, etch.
[1] http://priceonomics.com/the-san-francisco-rent-explosion-par...
From experience (Ohio vs Bay Area), the discrepancy between housing prices in these two areas is not 50%-- it's more like 200%. I'd like to understand more how this calculation works.
My argument isn't that people making $14/hour should be able to live on their own; it's that we shouldn't call $14/hour a "living wage" unless it enables someone to live on their own (or, at least with roommates).