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Comment by throwawayboise | Hacker News Reader

Minumum wage is not and never was meant to allow the worker to afford a two-bedroom rental on his own.

What was “meant” to be the case for an economic policy is quite besides the point. If wages don’t keep pace with the rise in housing prices, upward mobility for low wage workers decreases. They rely more on public services. The have poorer health outcomes. This has real consequences for the economy overall.

Dismissing this concern with “it wasn’t meant to do that” is a little like seeing a man with a bandaid over a gaping axe wound and saying, “well, sucks for him — but that bandaid wasn’t meant to stop that much blood.”

> If wages don’t keep pace with the rise in housing prices, upward mobility for low wage workers decreases.

The article we are addressing is not about minimum wage failing to keep pace with housing inflation, or general inflation, both of which are reasonable things to complain about. So, while the above observation is correct, it is not germane to the article under discussion, which makes no historical comparisons of the adequacy of the minimum wage to the standard it complains it does not currently reach anywhere in the US.

After minimum wage was increased in 2009 there has been a decrease in the amount of people that make minimum wage every year. I'm assuming this is due to COL increases. A lot of the people making it at this point are probably being supported by their family.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2017/home.htm#....

Where are the kids going to sleep? I suppose we can have coffin homes like Hong Kong. Maybe four beds on one wall with the communal toilet and tub down the hall.

The part OP didn't say was they don't believe "poor" people should have homes, children, and especially not more than one bedroom. Utterly disgusted at the thread as a whole, and I'm taking a dimmer and dimmer view of HN generally. Seems so full of nastiness these days.

While I agree with you in spirit, I also think this is an uncharitable view of OP’s statement. While it is true that some subset of the population relies on the minimum wage to survive, it’s perfectly reasonable to question whether that’s the best tool for the job without meaning that the poor don’t deserve homes/children.

For example: federal housing subsidies could be expanded, as well as SNAP, to augment the minimum wage. In fact, that is already what happens. So a fuller portrait of this situation might include the total hourly wage when factoring in government subsidies. I will contend that even with those add-ins the minimum wage still isn’t high enough, especially in relation to the massive productivity gains realized through automation and efficiency over the past half-century.

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