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I think this comment implicitly assumes that just because people survive on less than 18, it’s livable

That’s not necessarily true, since many people around or below the poverty line rely on government assistance to survive.

Also, the federal minimum is so low and our social safety net is so weak (virtually non existent), many people would be instantly screwed by any sort of drastic/expensive event. (Like unexpected illness or the loss of a job or a car accident.) Is a wage livable if you can’t live through times of trouble?

> People consistently overestimate the cost of living in large parts of the US

I'm sure there are parts of the US you can get by with less than $3 wage. I think out of the 600000 homeless people a fair share manages to do that without dying either. Doesn't mean you should.

> who was able to buy a condo in a decent school district in a major midwestern metro on ~$15/hr with prudent planning.

ok, sure but a lot of context is missing.

> It took her a long time

Is it paid off? How long will it take her to pay it off? If it is how did that happen? How much was the Condo. If not, what happens if she misses one payment?

My wife sold a nice condo for 50k a couple years ago. It was to a single woman who'd never made more than $10 an hour.

Which is about right according to the 3x your salary equation.

Not sure what market that's in but my partner paid $150k in 2004 for a condo just ITP of Atlanta behind a run down shopping center in a gentrified neighborhood, the neighborhood still ain't great but the condo today it's worth around $250k which would require you to make around $40 an hour.

It was in Houston. It was in a suburb that wasn't great but wasn't crime ridden either.

> Per the US government, which tracks what people in different deciles actually spend on various things in surprising detail, the median US household has ~$1,000 in cash left over every month after all ordinary expenditures.

I'm really not trying to be the "citation needed" dick, but I would genuinely love to look at the source for this. What I found from googling was a hodgepodge of unreliable information, or studies that are decades old.

EDIT - just went straight to the source, since articles linking the source couldn't find it.

https://www.bls.gov/cex/tables/calendar-year/mean-item-share...

It roughly lines up, although it seems to be trending down recently.

https://www.fool.com/amp/investing/general/2015/10/18/the-av...

These aren't those exact numbers but they're close enough to make the $1,000 number seem realistic.

It is a standard extract from the US Bureau of Labor & Statistics. Among other things, they collect statistics on how much each income decile actually spends on different things in surprisingly granular detail.

How are you calculating the left over income? Going to the BLS tables that Judgmentality linked to, specifically this one (https://www.bls.gov/cex/tables/calendar-year/mean-item-share...) showing income and spending by decile from 2019, it isn't until 6th decile that after-tax income for the mean household is greater than expenditures. Everyone in the lower half of American income spends more than they earn. It isn't until 8th decile that after-tax income exceeds expenditures by more than $1,000 a month. Those numbers are $93,571 and $75,945 annually, for $1,468 excess. In 7th decile, they're $74,234 and $66,435, for $649 monthly leftover.

That BLS table contains all expenditure categories they track, including expenses which are not "ordinary" in BLS parlance, which is incorrect for these purposes. An expenditure is "ordinary" if the vast majority of Americans spend part of their income on it, regardless of how or how much people spend -- a lot of objectively luxury spending is classified as ordinary. In practice, ordinary expenditures captures every kind of reasonable living expense most people think of as typical for living in America, with no frugality implied.

The BLS calculates discretionary income by subtracting all ordinary expenditures from income in a given decile. Which is ~$1,000/month for the median household. Some of that leftover money may be spent on non-ordinary expenditures, like the odd expensive hobby or lifestyle flex, which is also captured in this table but is not included in the cost of living an ordinary life. I find this to be an eminently reasonable approach to inductively measuring the cost of an ordinary life without making a judgement if some spending is excessive or luxury. Spending money on a car is an ordinary expense, the BLS doesn't care if it is a Honda or a Ferrari, both are included.

This explains another apparent anomaly as well: ~35% of households have no meaningful discretionary income, yet only about ~15% (per Federal Reserve studies) have difficulty paying their bills. Because there is a substantial amount of luxury spending padding the ordinary costs of living, households in the 15-35% range have significant elasticity in how much they spend in some of these categories.

I assume the gp is referring to https://livingwage.mit.edu/. The fact that it is A) hosted on a .edu domain and B) is associated with MIT, is enough for most folks to blindly accept its outputs as some kind scientific truth. Folks love a good appeal to authority.

The calculator is pretty strange, though. A quick glance under the hood reveals that the calculator goes well out of its way to inflate the cost of living which is used to calculate the 'living wage' in a given area. They consider a mobile phone as a basic need, which makes sense. But when they calculated the cost of a mobile phone, they included the price of a new $200 phone every 2 years, and a plan that includes 10GB of mobile data per month! As a result, the expected monthly cost of a phone was ~3x what I pay. When pricing broadband internet, they said $60/mo was the lowest they could find in my area, which again was ~3x my own monthly expense. The transportation allowance was so high as to be roughly equivalent to the payment+insurance on a 1-2 year old Toyota Corolla. For the food allowance, they arbitrarily chose the 'second cheapest' FDA approved balanced meal plan price scheme, which added $60/mo in expenses for no reason whatsoever. That's where I quit investigating, but I would be surprised if those are the only living expenses which were so inflated.

The housing estimate seems quite high for my area as well, particularly for the single adult category. It was using a figure that I'd expect for a nice 1br in a trendy area. Someone under financial pressure would probably be renting with a roommate in a less nice area instead, likely paying a third to half the figure the calculator cites. I also agree on the transportation cost being way out of whack. For the adult plus one child cost they cite for my area, I could finance a new $40k car plus pay for insurance and gas.

I'm sorry but I looked a bit too and I findi your criticisms a bit unconvincing. The mobile plan may be a bit much but $60/mo is literally the cheapest broadband plan available where I live. In fact it's almost literally the only plan available unless you want to spend more.

I looked up both my low cost birth county in Montana and my current high cost home county in Washington. Both had a budget of about $5,000 a year for transportation. Which, ignoring all maintenance, fuel and registration costs would leave you with about $300 per month after meeting most state minimum insurance requirements and full coverage. That's the payment on about a $15,000 car financed over 60 months, if you have good credit. Not a beater by any means but honestly that's pretty much the value sweet spot in terms of getting a reliable used car. You could get more car by ditching full coverage but as Dave Ramsey says, "you insure the things you cannot afford to replace." Your sole mode of getting to work seems like a thing you probably can't afford to replace on minimum wage. Again, you can play with the numbers but I already threw your argument the bone of ignoring, fuel, maintenance and licensing costs. A nontrivial sum.

Regardless, I'm not sure why your argument takes as it's premise that a living wage should represent the minimum a person needs to get by in our modern world. Why is that the default standard?

Edit: When I think about it more, isn't that kind of the whole point of a proposing a living wage over a minimum wage? People proposing it believe that we shouldn't peg wages to the minimum a person needs but rather to some fulfilling standard of living?

> living wage should represent the minimum a person needs to get by in our modern world.

I think it depends on what we intend on doing with living wage as a measure. Typically I see it called out as a safety net minimum for what people should make. Frequently mentioned as a floor for minimum wage talks.

So if it’s a baseline then it should be the minimum. If It’s some median target then that’s different.

I don’t think it’s useful to have a median target because it’s so arbitrary depending on individual circumstances and desires.