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Comment by culturalzero | Hacker News Reader

You clearly don't know what it's like to live on minimum wage right now. It's extremely difficult to live anywhere even close to the Bay area on minimum wage, which let's be real, a call center employee would be on. Public transportation options get figured in there too. I'm very fortunate to have a good job now, but it wasn't all that long ago I was scraping by on near minimum wage.

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No, I understand exactly and I think we are in violent agreement.

One cannot afford to live in the Bay Area on anything near minimum wage. So fuck "The Real Bay Area" and live just about anywhere else in the continental US.

Median wage is 2-3x the minimum wage.

So housing affordability on minimum wage in most of the US is closer to California at median wage than it is to most of the US at median wage.

TFA shows that in well over 50% of the land mass of the continental US, houses can be bought for 1 year of median wages.

Living on minimum wage is hard anywhere. The question is -- is it OK if there is 5-10% of the continental US where it's impossible to live on minimum wage? I think that yes that's probably OK...

Is it OK that for some [relatively small number of] cities, that median wage feels like minimum wage? Why is that a problem when people have the choice to live there or not?

The point of the parent post is the vast amounts of land that contain cheap housing.

Of course, it doesn't address how easy it is to find a job in the first place in those locations, but it's a great point nonetheless.

This is one of the reasons companies have a strategic advantage when they let their CS folks work remotely.

I think it's probably extremely hard to live nearly anywhere in the U.S. on minimum wage.

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