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Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages. There are a lot of jobs where your net pay is below zero, long term, when you factor in the external costs associated with working, such as needing transportation. These jobs have been propped up by debt.

It looks like the pandemic has put and end to this. Transportation costs have skyrocketed to such a degree that it's basically impossible for a poor person to even get a car, because they are going to be outbid by a not-poor person who is willing to pay a lot more for the same crappy car because of shortages. Repair shops are having issues getting replacement parts, so even maintaining a vehicle is getting difficult.

We built our economy on exploitation, and now the exploited have been drained dry. So now we have to either pay up or do without.

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There’s another aspect: there’s a horrible lack of common decency and respect by supervisors and managers of low-wage workers. Having worked menial data entry, warehouse, grocery store, fast food jobs, I’ve interacted with far too many stressed-out and abusive/abused bosses who cannot cope with the razor-thin timelines with minimal workforce (which seems to be the norm) and ultimately exhaust this irritating heat onto their subordinates and fail to show a minimal amount of respect to their employees to the degree of hostility and abuse.

This isn’t so much of an “all bosses suck” trope (I am happy and lucky to be at a healthier work environment at the moment). The sense I have is demands from the top continue to be more and more unrealistic as decisions are made to cut costs without truly thinking about it may start to rot the foundation beneath.

In my case, $18 sounds like a lot of money, but I wonder if this just means the work will be exponentially more stressful and unhealthy.

> there’s a horrible lack of common decency and respect by supervisors and managers of low-wage workers.

Yeah, if the entire culture creating class/media/academia is agreed that people who don’t have college degrees are worthless failures or at best need other people to make their decisions for them there’s not going to be much respect going round. The Anglo West is not Japan.

There is the additional factor that, at least in fast food, a salaried manager often makes a lower hourly rate than if they were paid at minimum wage plus overtime. It’s an industry filled with horrible bosses because the good bosses either leave or ran the math and declined the promotion in the first place.

Another thing: if the job pays just enough to disqualify you from state-run healthcare (medicaid, etc), but not enough to pay out-of-pocket for health insurance, the only logical step for many is to not work.

This is especially the case for part-time jobs which do not provide healthcare.

Means testing in social services is such a terrible idea. It creates nothing but perverse incentives like you describe. Programs like food stamps should be available to everyone who wants them. I don't care if a billionaire uses food stamps, they still need to eat. If too many rich people use the program, tweak tax rates until it balances out.

It's a waste of our time to go through and double check that only those that 'deserve' a handout get one. It makes everything less efficient, creates bad incentives, and builds a social stigma around the programs. ("Oh, that program is only for really poor people. I'm not really poor, so I shouldn't use it.")

> tweak tax rates until it balances out.

that just makes the whole system inefficient - the rich pay a bunch of taxes, then try to obtain all of those benefits for having paid those taxes to try even it back out.

So why not just tax less, and let them spend the money directly?

Countless trillions stashed in offshore tax havens in Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Brunei, BVI, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Denmark, Dominica, Dubai, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Isle of Man, Jersey, Labuan, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Monaco, Montserrat, Nevis, New Zealand, Panama, Seychelles, Singapore, St. Vincent, St. Kitts, Switzerland, Turks and Caicos and Vanuatu seem to indicate that spending into the economy isn't something that the wealthy like to do.

Because not everyone has enough money to feed themselves in the US. Start from a position that everyone should have food assistance available if they want or need it.

I’d rather an inefficient system than one with holes in it. Better someone getting aid who doesn’t need it than someone not getting aid who does need it.

Doesn’t this just become a mini-UBI for food budgets?

That could be pretty interesting.

"and now the exploited have been drained dry".

I do not think this is true in the absolute currently. I do think that the modern economies are imparting pressures that will make this more true over time.

The question every one asks is "What is the point?". The answer is increasingly, there is no point.

What about the answers previous generation might have had; send money home, improve life chances with an education, provide for a family, get a foot on the ladder, eat.

I think 20 years from now on one side looks like very low birth rates, mass homelessness and high suicide rates. For those that own assets now - a Parisian utopia surrounded by the former.

And for those that do continue to try, a room the size of a double bed containing an on-suite bathroom, kitchen diner, living-room and sleeping space - all in one! with no prospect of ownership.

> a room the size of a double bed

No one's building those, so maybe a tent in or near an abandoned mall.

Not the most prestigious news outlet - but fact checkable and perhaps a vision of the future: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14815353/househunters-slam-tin...

> propped up by debt

Payday lenders make a killing on exploiting this.

I worked on a (US) Naval shipyard for a spell.

The number of payday loan shops in the immediate surrounding area was astounding. I kept hearing word of "Don't Do Payday" financial help training for the Naval crew, who apparently were a prime target for the industry. Before working there, I had little idea such existed.

Think "worse than 'cash your cheque here'" places.

I don't know how many Naval folks I worked with took in to these places, but every time I passed one I frowned and shook my head.

Some years back, I was on a jobsite where radios were allowed, and we rotated through the crew, everyone playing deejay for a day, so everyone's taste got represented. Some guys would bring in a stack of CDs, some would just play the radio. It meant I listened to a few stations I don't normally listen to.

And the density of payday loan ads, on some stations but not others, blew my mind. I don't think I ever heard one on the classic-rock station (their stock in trade was testosterone ads, apparently), but they were at saturation density on the R&B station.

Payday loan places have always been scum, but that really opened my eyes to the deliberate exploitation aspect. This is targeted.

It's good to hear that there's financial training for the Navy. I wonder if there's anything similar out in civilian life that we could support?

> that we could support?

One of the most effective anti-poverty programs the government could do is teach basic accounting and finance as core curriculum in the public schools.

That sounds like victim-blaming. People are poor because they can't balance their checkbooks?

Or raise the minimum wage, raising the wage floor for all workers, and putting more money in the hands of poor people (who are generally much, much better at managing it than anyone else, due to the need to.)

Frontline (I think it was) many years ago ran an episode on 401k plans. There was a medium sized company that offered an identical 401k plan to all its employees, from the bottom to the top salary levels.

They found that the higher the income level, the better percentage returns the employee had on the plan. The lower, the worse performance.

The 401k plan offered several investment options.

Clearly, the higher income people were making better investment decisions. The conclusion was the company was going to offer seminars on basic investing, though who knows how that turned out.

There's a lot more to personal finance than balancing a checkbook, though many can't do that, either.

What does this have to do with people who are making poverty wages?

It has to do with your claim that poor people "generally much, much better at managing it than anyone else".

I don't see how a news entertainment program you saw many years ago actually addresses how well poor people are at making the most of their very limited dollars.

I always wondered whether instantaneous payment would help solve this.

For example, our digital infrastructure could pay people per second and it could instantaneously show up in a bank account; if people were never waiting for these Delta function payments, maybe they would be less prone to being exploited by systems that seek to smooth out these Delta functions.

>I've long felt that many jobs paid unsustainably low wages.

Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 * 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.

>It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day

Well thankfully we don't have to imagine, people have researched this: https://livingwage.mit.edu/. According to these data, the living wage across the US in 2019 was $16.54: https://livingwage.mit.edu/articles/61-new-living-wage-data-.... So it's not at all inconceivable that the federal minimum is a poverty wage, in fact it almost certainly is.

But that has nothing to do with GP's claim? GP was talking about your "net pay is below zero", meaning that the job itself pays negative. eg. you get paid $50/day but spent $55/day to earn it. Your comment seems to be about the minimum wage not being able to sustain a given living standard, eg. you get paid $50/day but you need to spend $55/day to survive.

I read their comment differently than you did, but even if I hadn't I don't quite understand your objection. By definition if you're spending $55/day to survive, you're spending $55/day to earn your pay, if nothing more. The situation you describe is not sustainable either. Please clarify.

He is making a distinction between cost to survive (I.e. food, shelter, etc) and cost to have the job (I.e. transport).

"net pay is below zero" means (In his interpretation) that the cost of having the job is greater than the amount the job pays. This is unrelated to the cost of surviving.

First off, it's not $50 per day, because you're probably paying income tax. But let's assume it is.

Second, it's not really "per day", that's an average. Most bills recur monthly. Assuming a month of four weeks, and working 5 days per week, that's 20 * $50 = $1000 per month. Doesn't that seem like an extremely low number to pay for rent, transportation, food, health care, kids, utilities, etc? I pay more for that in rent every month.

>seem like an extremely low number to pay for rent, transportation, food, health care, kids, utilities, etc?

everything in that list except for transportation are sunk costs. In other words, you're paying for those regardless of whether you have the job or not.

> you're paying for those regardless of whether you have the job or not.

...unless you're not paying for those because you literally don't have any money.

So yeah, food is a sunk cost, sure. But that sinking will kill you without a job.

>...unless you're not paying for those because you literally don't have any money.

That's not how accounting works. If you got a FAANG job that paid $300k/year, then proceeded to blow $60k on a tesla, your net pay for the job isn't $240k.

Right, but at that minimum wage job you're not going to blow that $60k on a Tesla. You're not even going to blow $10 to go look at a Tesla. You're going to blow $2k on a root canal because your food is crap and your medical coverage is worse.

Also, that $60k on a Tesla for the FAANG worker amounts to a small percent of the worker's disposable income. But that $2k amounts to over 100% of the minimum wage worker's disposable income.

> Right, but at that minimum wage job you're not going to blow that $60k on a Tesla. You're not even going to blow $10 to go look at a Tesla. You're going to blow $2k on a root canal because your food is crap and your medical coverage is worse.

Way to miss the point. Whether the item is a tesla or a can of beans is irrelevant. The point is that if previously you couldn't afford X, after getting a new job you could afford X, then you can't say that X is a cost/expense of getting the job.

> The point is that if previously you couldn't afford X, after getting a new job you could afford X, then you can't say that X is a cost/expense of getting the job.

Sure I can if X is a basic necessity of life.

What point are you trying to make? The federal minimum wage is not enough to cover people's expenses, whether those expenses come from holding the job or not is irrelevant as to whether such a situation is "sustainable." This feels like pedantry.

They're not "sunk costs", they're "basic necessities". They have to be paid for every month (or whatever period), so if a job doesn't provide enough money to pay for them, it is not paying a living wage.

You can't just say "they need those to live" as if that absolves you of explaining how to pay for the things they need to live.

I think the classic example of this is the pizza delivery driver (or now the gig economy food delivery driver).

The driver might think "I made $100 today, great!", but they generally don't have a good sense for their total expenses. Sure, they know how much gas cost them this week, but they don't know how much the next auto repair will be, or how much depreciation they're incurring on their vehicle. And when their auto insurance goes up because they've been driving so many miles, that's out-of-pocket too - no employer is picking that up.

True. Of course, that only scratches the surface of why it's a terrible job. In many locales, policies that cover commercial driving are prohibitively expensive, and the majority of drivers are effectively uninsured (often without realizing it). It's not a stretch to say that insurance fraud is a core part of that industry's business model.

> Can you elaborate on this? $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day, especially if you factor in that in high cost of living areas the minimum wage is also higher than $7.25.*

Wow can you be any more out of touch? Your comment is offensively innaccurate.

$58/day = $1740 for 30 days

Unhealthy cheap carbs for a single person... $200/month (chicken, beans, rice, milk, cheese, bread)

Shitphone with basically no internet for a single person... $40/month (who needs internet anyway)

Fuel for a single person... $200/month (assume 2 tanks / week)

Rent for a single person... $1400/month far (+fuel)

Health insurance because you have two or three shit part-time jobs: $400/mo

Vehicle insurance on an old vehicle: $300/mo

It's hard to imagine someone who's so out of touch with reality that they think they can get away with claiming minimum wage is higher than $7.25 in high cost of living areas. In Houston, Texas the minimum wage is ... $7.25/hr. Cost of living here isn't approachable to minimum wage.

This doesn't even start to pay for taxes, retirement investments, medical emergencies, vacations, legal disputes, education costs, or heaven forbid having family.

What numbers are you using for your costs?

>Unhealthy cheap carbs for a single person... $200/month (chicken, beans, rice, milk, cheese, bread)

>Shitphone with basically no internet for a single person... $40/month (who needs internet anyway)

>Health insurance because you have two or three shit part-time jobs: $400/mo

>Rent for a single person... $1400/month far (+fuel)

These are all sunk costs. You need them regardless of whether you have a job or not. You seem to be talking about your general finances (ie. your expenses > your income), whereas I interpreted mywittyname's comment as saying that the job itself is a net loss (ie. your cost of getting the job > your income from job).

>Wow can you be any more out of touch? Your comment is offensively innaccurate.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> These are all sunk costs. You need them regardless of whether you have a job or not

They're not sunk costs if you literally don't have money to pay for them.

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Your argument wasn't in good faith. You're saying that minimum wage is a livable wage which is a demonstrably false statement. Then you're also claiming that the cost of living is a sunk cost.

>They're not sunk costs if you literally don't have money to pay for them.

Food isn't optional. Getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food doesn't magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job.

>You're saying that minimum wage is a livable wage which is a demonstrably false statement

I made no such statement. Please point out where you think I made that statement.

> Food isn't optional. Getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food doesn't magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job.

Most people aren't able to get food without money obtained from a job. So unless your food is provided elsewhere then getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food does magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job.

> I made no such statement. Please point out where you think I made that statement.

> $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day*

>Most people aren't able to get food without money obtained from a job. So unless your food is provided elsewhere then getting a job that pays you money which you spend on food does magically make the cost of food a cost of getting the job.

That makes zero sense from an accounting point of view.

>> I made no such statement. Please point out where you think I made that statement.

>> $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day*

1. I'm not sure how you're getting "minimum wage is a livable wage" from that comment.

2. you seem to be fixated on "expenses" meaning living expenses (eg. rent, food, clothing, etc.), whereas I was only talking about expenses related to getting the job (eg. transport). This was pointed out several comments ago.

> $7.25 8 hours = $58. It's hard to imagine expenses adding up anywhere close to $58/day*

> I'm not sure how you're getting "minimum wage is a livable wage" from that comment.

The comment you replied to stated:

> There are a lot of jobs where your net pay is below zero, long term, when you factor in the external costs associated with working, such as needing transportation.

Transportation is just a single one of those costs. Nobody in their right mind is going to get a job that they recognize won't pay for their expenses and many people consider more expenses than just transportation.

> I was only talking about expenses related to getting the job (eg. transport).

That wasn't clear and is no doubt where our discussion went astray

>many people consider more expenses than just transportation.

You (and other people) seem to think that food, housing, and healthcare is an expense in getting a job, but that makes zero sense from an accounting point of view. This is trivially proven with a thought experiment: let's say you were unemployed and had $2000/month in "required" expenses, and a job offered you $1000/month. Are you going to turn down that job because it "won't pay for my expenses"? Of course not, even though you're still losing money from an overall cashflow perspective, taking the job still provides you a +$1000 improvement to your financial situation[2].

[1] although I suppose you would need less calories if you didn't work, but I think that's safe to ignore

[2] for simplicity we can ignore government subsidies that gets cut off when you exceed a certain amount of income, or unemployment.

> that makes zero sense from an accounting point of view

Well the world doesn't work like your armchair accounting.

> a job offered you $1000/month. Are you going to turn down that job because it "won't pay for my expenses"?

$1000/month is _less_ than that minimum wage. So I'll assume it's indeed a part time job.

Taking that job means 4 hours less time each day looking for a better job because you're busy with this part time one. Not only 4 hours less for work, but another 1 or 2 hours each day because now you're driving to and from that job. So 6 hours less each day. That's an expense.

Now that you're working it also means being less eligible for any government assistance. $1000/month to work 4 hours/day while taking $800 less government assistance comes out to... a net of $200/month. For 4 hours/day of work and an additional 2 hours/day for transportation.

If you look at the raw money, you're making more money. Homelessness is on the horizon and inching ever closer even if it's approaching slower.

Are those 6 hours to you really worth your time when you could have spent those 6 hours trying to find an even better job?

And when you do reach homelessness, is that $1000/month job going to continue employing you?

I think that's the dilemma that the commenter at the start of this thread posits. Jobs are "available" but they're not sustainable. And people are turning down $18/hr stressful part-time jobs because they can't afford them.

>Well the world doesn't work like your armchair accounting.

ah yes, just slap "armchair" in front of something to invalidate someone's position.

>Taking that job means 4 hours less time each day looking for a better job because you're busy with this part time one

>Are those 6 hours to you really worth your time when you could have spent those 6 hours trying to find an even better job?

The money you "earn" searching for a job is highly variable, and I don't see any attempts at quantifying it. If you were recently employed for $4000/month, your time might very well be spent looking for a job rather than taking the next min. wage job, but if you were unemployed for 6+ months and your previous job only barely paid better than minimum wage, the ROI is probably not there.

>Not only 4 hours less for work, but another 1 or 2 hours each day because now you're driving to and from that job. So 6 hours less each day.

Aren't part time jobs closer to "8 hours a shift but you come a few times a week" rather than "4 hours a shift but you come in 5 days a week"?.

>Now that you're working it also means being less eligible for any government assistance. $1000/month to work 4 hours/day while taking $800 less government assistance comes out to... a net of $200/month. For 4 hours/day of work and an additional 2 hours/day for transportation.

Thank you, that's the type of numbers I was looking for in the original comment.

>And when you do reach homelessness, is that $1000/month job going to continue employing you?

Would you rather be on the streets in 10 months or 5 months? The choice seems clear.

> Aren't part time jobs closer to "8 hours a shift but you come a few times a week" rather than "4 hours a shift but you come in 5 days a week"?.

Maybe. "A few times a week" can mean "I need you to come in tomorrow and I don't care if that conflicts with your second job." It becomes a risk.

> Would you rather be on the streets in 10 months or 5 months? The choice seems clear.

The problem's been going on for months. Homelessness is significantly increased over the past year. The choice made seems clear.

To me it looks like you two are talking past each other. In fact, I think you're both right. gruez point can be summarized as "if you're having a minimum wage job, your loss at the end of the month is smaller compared to having no income at all" [0], which is a possible interpretation of the comment that sparked this thread [1]. This is also the reason he does not account for food, while you do. Your (inetknght's) point is that "with a minimum wage job, you'll make a loss at the end of the month". As far as I read it, gruez actually doesn't try to make the point that a minimum wage job is sustainable, so there's no contradiction.

[0] Compared to, for example, driving for Uber, where at the end of the month the cost for car+fuel+maintenance might cost you more than you earned, increasing your net loss.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26995335

This line in particular:

> There are a lot of jobs where your net pay is below zero, long term, when you factor in the external costs associated with working, such as needing transportation.

> That makes zero sense from an accounting point of view.

If your point of view prevents you from understanding that people need shelter, food, and clothing in order to not die, and must be alive in order to work, then your point of view might not be sufficient.

I think a better phrasing of his argument would be "if you take that job, the additional costs will not outweigh the income you get from that job". Put in another way, your net surplus after a month will be more with the job than without, irrespective of whether it is actually positive.

I'm glad I don't have to fit my expenses into a minimum wage budget, but some of your numbers are pretty high.

I buy gas once every 2 or 3 weeks and spend $45 on a phone plan with 4 GB of LTE (US; I guess that can fit the definition of basically no internet). My car insurance (with collision and unlimited medical) is less than $500 for 6 months.

I would probably balk at paying much more than $800 in rent. The rental market here is pretty thin (I think part of it is I don't know where to look), but I see a listing for $1100 for a 4 bedroom house. Electricity+water+gas would be in the range of $250 for 1 person (and less for several as heating is a major utility cost here).

> but some of your numbers are pretty high.

Cost of living across the US varies wildly. The numbers are pulled from my most recent billing cycle for Houston and partly extrapolated to minimum wage (which I am most definitely not, but have friends who are).

My rent is $1500/mo for 920sqft inside the 610 loop. The leasing office wanted $2000/mo for new contracts in October last year.

It's really hard to find places for $800 within a 30 minute drive of any office in Houston. All of my friends have the same problem. I'm looking to buy a home for a similar reason.

Living far enough out to have rent reduced to $800 is offset by increased amount of time driving and therefore increased costs in fuel. So I bought gas twice a month before the pandemic with a 5 minute drive to the office. When I lived 30 minutes out, I bought gas twice a week.

Car insurance depends a lot on vehicle, driver age, etc. $300/mo was quoted to some younger family last summer -- they were outraged because it was half-again their car payment. I pay $600/6-mo.

Are people doing office work for $7.25 in Houston?

I agree that prices vary widely, I'm not sure it makes sense to take expensive places as typical.

It may not be office work, but I bet it's location dependent (restaurant, janitor, grocery store).

Office jobs are less interchangeable than service jobs though. I'd expect someone with a job in a grocery store or restaurant to always be looking for a position closer to where they wanted to live compared to an office worker looking for suitable, better positions in locations that that would have a shorter commute.

(the service workers would be looking for better positions too, but the pay differences between similar positions are smaller there)

Those office workers rely on a huge infrastructure of other services -- food preparation, cleaning, maintenance workers, parking lot attendants, etc. etc.

The people who work those jobs should have the same access to their worksites as anyone else. Our willingness to tell people who make less money they should just "live farther away" and have longer commutes is awful. No, we should fix our cities so that we support a range of incomes and workers in one place.

Does that matter when there are plenty of other businesses and services doing not office work to support the office workers?

> Are people doing office work for $7.25 in Houston?

In that it's in an office building, yes. But it's not office work like sitting at a desk.

> Vehicle insurance on an old vehicle: $300/mo

Wow. In Spain you would pay between €150 to 200 per year of insurance for the typical old cheap car. 400/year for a nice, semi luxury one. I knew some things were expensive in the States, but this particular one surprised me a lot.

Depending on the car and where you live insurance can be lower or higher. Outside of collector/classic car insurance policies (eg: this is not a daily driver car and you agree not to exceed a low number of miles yearly) or parked insurance (a few hundred miles a year), there is not $200 to $300 a year car insurance in the USA.

Tribal reservations don't require license plates or insurance usually, and you cab choose to self insure if you have sufficient cash set aside.

> and you ca[n] choose to self insure if you have sufficient cash set aside.

I think you are ignoring the third party risks - damaging an expensive car or hurting someone. In that situation, you use insurance if you want to protect your money. If you have no money, insurance make little sense, and you just suck up the risks of pranging your beater.

Self insurance is not legal if you do not meet your state's requirements for cash set aside for self insurance purposes and vehicle count. This is usually a sizable sum of money that you need to set aside to self insure.

> Outside of collector/classic car insurance policies or parked insurance, there is not $200 to $300 a year car insurance in the USA.

Absolutely beg to differ. I was on a high-deductible, low-benefit plan for a two-year old used economy car in Louisiana with no marks on my driving record for $250/month. The insurance cost was more than the monthly cost of the car. That being said, it was more than the state mandated liability insurance, but it still wasn't anywhere near the levels of insurance I now have in Washington State on a brand new Tesla Model 3. As you mentioned, it's highly dependent on where you live, but it's absolutely feasible to be paying $200-$300/month for insurance.

Edit: Apologies to parent comment. This was a reading comprehension failure.

The user you replied to said per year, not per month.

Well that'll teach me to read the comments after a full day of work. Thank you for the correction!

Louisiana is high because of the plaintiff friendly courts where even minor accidents are litigated, the trial lawyers making money off of it, and the traffic courts which bargain down speeding tickets to brake tag violations all the time (which is priced in by the insurance companies)

Source: I live in New Orleans.

It's not typical in the States. I own a new vehicle, have comprehensive insurance, and pay Geico ~$60/mo. I suspect that someone paying $300 for an old vehicle has either (a) an expensive low-deductible plan, (b) a driving record with past insurance claims, or (c) an expensive old car.

Minimum coverage, modest car, clean record, over 30 is ~$220/mo for most carriers here, $150 if you're eligible for USAA.

For each factor you change you can add another 15%-40%.

I'm paying $400/mo for 2 cars, no collision, above min medical.

That seems very high. I pay $28/mo with USAA. Clean record aside from a minor at-fault collision a few years back.

edit: Upon further review, it's actually double that ($56/mo), as apparently it's billed in two-week intervals.

> That seems very high.

Yep. We all pay very high rates.

Household insurance isn't any better. We lost our last house because insurance increases over 4 years doubled our monthly mortgage payment.

A lot depends on the state, type of coverage, driving history, and which company you use. The average range in Texas is ~$45-165/month depending on coverage[1]. I personally pay a bit over $50/month for a 2010 Honda Accord in California.

I wouldn’t take the costs listed in the parent comment literally.

[1] https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/states/

Liability insurance in the US may end up paying out for medical bills.

You can get cheaper coverage, but it's barely insurance at that point. They'll sell you the bare minimum that's legally allowed to be sold as insurance even if it doesn't cover liability, medical costs, etc.

One side effect of the US not having universal healthcare (and overpaying massively for healthcare as one result) is that leaks into litigation on other insurance for just about everything from cars to homes to retail business etc...

Our non profit Parent teacher association and the schools themselves have to carry insurance for events in case someone happens to get injured.

I have a problem with your basic starting point.

You say $58/day for 30 days. That's working the whole month with no days off. That's not anybody's life that I know.

It's better to estimate 168 hours per month worked. That's 4 full-time work weeks of 5 days a week plus an extra day. With 12 months in the year, you're still effectively short a few days, but it's close enough.

So $7.25 * 168 is $1218

Let's ignore every other expense. Let's say you walk everywhere, use the library for internet, whatever.

Average rent is roughly that.

You are fucked from the start to just put a roof over your head. That's also assuming that job is 40 hours a week. Giving 8 hours work, 8 hours sleep, you have 72 hours left over. Some of that time will be dedicated to commuting, hygiene, eating, etc. You might be able to swing a second full time job, but that's just your life from then on.

Also 2 tanks per week, that's insane. Even when I was driving 50-ish miles each way, I was getting gas about twice every three weeks. With a daily 100 mile commute, I'd say my fuel costs were in the neighborhood of $100 per month.

Your insurance is also way out of whack. Old cars have cheaper insurance. I have a 2017 model and pay $700-ish every 6 months. And it wasn't much worse when it was new.

Couldn't you do without the car? I've heard that the US has bad public transport, but is it really that bad?

If you live anywhere with public transit that's complete enough and reliable enough to get you to work on time, you're paying more in rent to make that happen. It might be cheaper but not by a lot

If you go by the numbers in the post I responded to, this isn't true, at least not where I live. The $1400 figure is pretty much exactly what I pay in rent, and I have no problems getting to work with public transport for $100/month.

To be fair, I live in Europe, but this is why I asked the question "is it really that bad?", to which the answer appears to be yes.

Doing that could easily add an hour (or in particularly bad cases, two hours!) each way to your commute. Some people do make that tradeoff, but it seems really unpleasant.

The big issue is that transit accessibility is priced into rent, so while parts of US cities might actually be reasonable to get around with public transportation, you'd never be able to afford to live there with a low income.

Fair enough. I guess it really is that bad in the US.

There's lots of places with OK service, if you measure by overall coverage it's pretty bad.

Like https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2016... is about a guy that caught the attention of the internet because he couldn't take public transit to his job.

I don't know where you live, but you're the one that is out of touch. 2 tanks a week? 200 bucks a month for shit tier food? Ever heard of cooking? 1400 a month rent?

I've spent time in Houston, on minimum wage, and in the past decade. It was alright. I even had the money to go out drinking every weekend, by Rice university at that. Usually when you hear arguments like this and you get down to brass tacks, you start to hear the arguments that allude to the real culprit, things like "I should be able to have extra money for fun" which usually translates to "I blow my money on things I can't afford and then blame the world for being broke."

> arguments that allude to the real culprit, things like "I should be able to have extra money for fun" which usually translates to "I blow my money on things I can't afford and then blame the world for being broke."

Should we live in a world where we are wage slaves where 100% of our earnings are spent on the bare necessities such as food and shelter?

One of my friends has $20 to spend on herself after her frugal bills and doing a body crushing job (no "fat" like retirement savings, or medical insurance). I look at it like she earns 50 cents an hour.

Surely we work to be able to spend some money on the pleasures of life? Or is that a dream only for the middle class? Work usually costs us immense amounts of time, let alone the other personal costs of work for many.

> Should we live in a world where we are wage slaves where 100% of our earnings are spent on the bare necessities such as food and shelter?

No.

> Surely we work to be able to spend some money on the pleasures of life?

Money doesn't buy happiness. The best things in life are free. And sure, if you have money to spend on fun things, have at it. If you don't and you want to, try finding a way to do it. It really is up to you. But the idea that if you do not have disposable income to engage in consumerism you're going to be unhappy, well I'll just say that's a terrible starting point for your argument, and a mindset that breeds unhappiness quicker than tight finances.

> Money doesn't buy happiness. The best things in life are free.

No. No. Happiness is extremely difficult to find if you are financially insecure.

Money has a marginal effect on happiness after a certain limit. But to say money doesn't buy happiness is an utterly stupid lie repeated for ages by those that have more than enough money.

> 2 tanks a week?

When I lived in Spring and commuted to the office at 610 North and I-45, it was 2 tanks a week for the 35 minute drive. That was 7 years ago.

> 200 bucks a month for shit tier food? Ever heard of cooking?

One week of food for one person:

2lb white rice, $1.5 1lb beans, $1.25 2lb ground meat, $10

1gal milk, $4 1lb sharp cheddar, $5 1 loaf bread, $3.5

total... $25. Times four weeks, you get $100. I never claimed to be good at cooking.

> 1400 a month rent?

Due on the 1st, late on the 3rd.

> "I should be able to have extra money for fun"

There's nothing wrong with wanting extra money for fun.

> "I blow my money on things I can't afford and then blame the world for being broke."

Minimum wage doesn't have money to blow things on things they can't afford though.

$1400/mo for rent seems exorbitant, especially if you're working a minimum wage job.

The Rent Is Too Damn High

Our rents that were $1400 last year are over $2000 for the same properties.

Exorbitant rent is a fact of life in major cities

Ive lived in 2 of the largest metropolitan areas in the US for 2 decades, and my rent has never been over 800 dollars. That's exorbitant to me, but that's still a far cry away from 2 grand a month. I know there are a few extremely overpriced cities in the US, but in the rest of the cities, if you're paying above 1k a month for a one bedroom you're trying to live somewhere that you chose to live precisely because it was more exclusive and you can't blame the world for making that decision.

> you're trying to live somewhere that you chose to live precisely because it was more exclusive

*didn't get lucky when searching for a unit

source: got lucky so I don't pay $1400/month, still live 1hr away from work.

You know something ive noticed? I've never actually heard a minimum wage worker talk about 1400 a month rent. Ive heard them say rent is too high, but I have never heard them say that rent is 1400 dollars. It always seems to be the people who "don't have to live on minimum wage, thank god."

I think what is happening is young professionals who make decent money and come from middle class backgrounds and have never lived outside of the uptown exclusive areas see their rent and say "I can't imagine how hard it would be for minimum wage workers" thinking they live with the same expenses.

I've lived on minimum wage before. Those numbers are not realistic.

Minimum wage was never intended to cover all the above, and it never has. Minimum wage is for teenagers working after school or weekends, or students with no (yet) marketable skills.

The impoverished don't spend that much on car insurance. They do spend a surprising amount on cars, though: either many repairs, or buying replacement used cars when the last one gives out.

If they're really in a bad spot, they'll be buying these cars financed. You don't want to be in a position where you're paying off a car that long since was sold for scrap steel price at a junkyard.

Also a smartphone is a must: they often don't have a traditional computer at all! An internet-capable phone might be the only way they can access email, unless they're truly destitute and using libraries for internet access.

You’re clearly out of touch and over inflating numbers. $200/month for groceries is nothing but cheap carbs? $1400/month for rent? Are they living in their own 1 bedroom in the middle of the city?

$50/week in food is doable, but it takes some careful planning. I'd be impressed at someone who could purchase fresh vegetables and fruit, balanced whole grain carbs, and a healthy protein of their choice, spices sufficient to produce a reasonable variety of meals, plus some occasional luxury food items for that budget.

Is it really that hard to imagine?

For starters, you don't want to have to work every single day. If you work 5 days out of every 7, you only have $41.43 to spend per day.

The average cost of a studio apartment is over $900 a month. That's $30 per day. Even if you get roommates, that's going to cost you at least $15 per day.

That leaves you $26 a day to spend on food, clothing, hygiene, Internet access, electricity, transportation, health care (since most minimum wage jobs don't include it), and all of the other expenses of life. And then pray you don't get sick -- even with health insurance you're now losing income.

It adds up fast. There is basically nowhere in the US that this is a living wage. At best you can barely scrape by with no margin for error -- and certainly no money to spend on training for a better job.

>The average cost of a studio apartment is over $900 a month [...] That leaves you $26 a day to spend on food, clothing, hygiene, Internet access, electricity, transportation, health care

Seems like we're talking about different things. I was talking about the net gain/loss from getting a job, whereas you're talking about your overall living situation.

See my reply to jolux's comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26996114

Why would someone near the bottom quintile of income rent in an average cost area? What is the bottom quintile rent for an apartment?

I've looked for about 20 minutes and haven't been able to find a reliable figure nationally, so from a quick search on apartments.com for Minneapolis (random city not known for high cost of living), the 20th percentile studio apartment is $1000. If you want to split an appartment, I'm going to check 1 bedroom, since 2 unrelated people in a studio isn't really practical. Then the 20th percentile is about $1150. (on average for these apartments, parking is an extra $100 or so which you need if you have to shop by price, not location).

20th percentile apartments don't get advertised on apartments.com, that costs money.

So do you have a link to a reliable figure as to what 20th percentile rent is? "I'm sure you would agree with me if you knew a statistic that I'm not going to share with you" is hardly a convincing argument.

I'm not doing your homework.

The original post said the average cost for a studio was $900. You claim that the 20th percentile cost is $1000.

That doesn't make any sense whatsoever, so you go figure out what the real numbers are and then we can talk.

I claimed 20th percentile IN MINNEAPOLIS was $1000. That just means Minneapolis is more expensive than the national average. You're the one claiming that a 20th percentile apartment is affordable on minimum wage, so how about a source for what that figure is?

For some other random cities using the same methodology (1 bedroom) Wichita: 500 St Louis: 650 Columbus: 800 Pittsburgh: 850 Dallas/Fort Worth: 950 Nashville: 1000 Orlando: 1200 Sacramento: 1200

What methodology would you use to find this data if Appartments.com isn't reliable?

It's not that apartments.com isn't reliable, I would assume it reliably reports the data it gets.

But most apartments don't get rented through apartments.com, and the ones that don't are skewed towards the lower end of the market.

The 4-flat where the owner is renting out the other 3 places and living in one of them doesn't show up on apartments.com. I don't know where you find good comprehensive data, you tell me. But if you are looking at bad data because you can't find good data, you are the drunk looking for his keys underneath the street light not because he lost his keys there but because the light is good.

Unlike capital equipment a business doesn’t pay for the cost of replacing labor as it ages. The cost in the US of raising a child is about $250,000 or about $3 per hour over 40 years. Businesses expect a pool of qualified and educated labor but don’t pay for childcare expenses.

Employees are expected to have reliable transportation to get to the employers place of business but they do not cover transportation expenses. The cost of $400 a month for reliable transportation works out to $2.50 per hour.

Employees are typically required to have work appropriate clothing. In the US this cost has often been pushed to employees. In some cases even tool costs have been pushed to employees.

Employees have wear and tear on joints due to repetitive movements which will eventually have to be treated. Machines need maintenance and businesses are expected to pay the costs but with labor that is pushed back to the employee.

The economics of minimum wage only work short term for people who are young, healthy and with no children where experience gained will lead to a higher paying job in the near future.

First off, you need transportation to work. In most of America, this means, you need a car, gas, insurance, and maintenance.

Secondly, you need uniforms. These are often paid for out of your check and come from companies that have pretty comfortable markup.

Then you have the "expensive to be poor items" Such as getting your paycheck on what amounts to a Visa gift card, because cheap employers are transitioning to payment services that offload the cost of associated with payroll onto the employees. These cards have relatively high maintenance fees, and charge for things like actually getting your money.

That's not even getting into shit like, "split shifts" where you have to work a few hours, take a multi-hour break, then work a few more hours. This means that you have to stay at work for 8 hours, but only get paid for maybe 4-6 of them. While you could leave, it would cost you money to do so.

I've gone through this with younger siblings over the years. One in particular was a delivery driver, and factoring in cost of their car, the only reason they thought they were making money was because they were hiding the depreciation on their car through very long car loans and were not paying for the insurance coverage they should have been.

Most low wage positions are only possible because they are subsidized by someone else, maybe it is a parent who lets them live rent free, or they subsist on credit card debt and payday loans to handle emergencies.

>>> That's not even getting into shit like, "split shifts" where you have to work a few hours, take a multi-hour break, then work a few more hours. This means that you have to stay at work for 8 hours, but only get paid for maybe 4-6 of them. While you could leave, it would cost you money to do so.

Split shifts is a horror story. I've seen my younger sister working at a restaurant, the main hours are 12am-2pm then 7pm-11pm.

What are you supposed to do during the massive break in the middle? It's royally screwing up your day.

To make things worse, a trip in the tube and back will cost you £3 to £5, a sizable chunk of your first hour (£8/hour pretax).

As if the night hours and pay were not terrible enough, the hours are set daily on a short notice. You constantly must adjust your schedule and if there's less hours to do you simply don't get paid.

Your replies down thread indicate an extremely narrow interpretation of 'expenses' here, namely only those financial costs directly related to employment. Taking that interpretation, you're probably correct that nearly all jobs offer net-positive pay counting only the those inputs from the employee. You're right that someone with better off in immediate financial terms with basically any job than no job.

However, that's something other than the 'sustainable' wage in the GP comment, since that doesn't count costs of the labor input! Each of us has only so much labor to sell in a given month, and need to get enough in return to support, you know, continuing to live and sell our labor. Sure, being employed at wage that does not provide a basic level of dignity is less worse than being completely destitute, but it's a bit disingenuous to argue that being less-worse-off is 'sustainable'.

I think his (gruez's) interpretation is the obviously reasonable one, and I'm not sure why he's getting bashed so severely here. Note that op made the claim that "net pay" was literally negative, which seems to comport totally with the interpretation given, and not at all with an interpretation of "sustainability" referring to a living wage.

I think quoting the unsustainable part of OP instead of the net pay part led to lots of misinterpretation. Sustainability in a pay context is IMO strongly linked to a living wage, or at least a survivable wage.

There are places where the commutes from the suburbs to the city where the jobs are costs $20-50 a day, if not more.

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