Full-time minimum wage workers cannot afford a one-bedroom rental in 95% of US
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
In saying that, I’ve always understood and expected minimum wage jobs to be one of a couple things:
1. A first job for young people who live with their parents, or at least aren’t depended on to pay the bills, who want to cut their teeth with what it looks like to have a job and/or have some extra spending money
2. A non bread winning family member looking to contribute a little towards day to day bills
Is there documentation or something from the government that outlines expectations for exactly what the minimum wage is supposed to accomplish for a person? Is it intended to be a “living wage” or arbitrarily set to something that folks in charge deem appropriate for some reason unbeknownst to me?
If it’s supposed to be a living wage it should be data driven based on cost of living and evaluated on a relatively high frequency (at least once per year). I know this is a hot political topic, but it just seems like another issue that we could use actual data to solve based on intent of what minimum wage should be instead of poking the right or left bears and polarizing the world more than it already is.
While factual disagreements are generated over the issue, in part deliberately to obscure the real issues, the disagreement here is more about objectives than whether the policy meets agreed-on objectives.
You can't settle a conflict of values with facts and data.