No minimum-wage worker deserves a two-bedroom apartment. of course, this is just a historical trend that is maintained to this day.
Personally the entire concept of "I own one of the basic pillars of your survival, pay me for shelter" never really sat well with me.
But if we're just making a value judgement on "deserved" I'd think the people who keep society together for the rest of us should get a pretty big seat at the table
It's not even positive to me that any specific group of non-minimum-wage earners are holding society together either.
Or the endless snarky remarks plastered on restaurants about "nobody wants to work!"
Napkin math shows that, to afford a $13.5k tuition bill, one must work 1564 hours for the university. They cap you at 20hrs/wk so as not to overburden you, so you can pay off your tuition bill in a mere 78 weeks. I go to one of the least expensive state universities.
A minimum wage raise would not be merely symbolic, at least not in Texas. If my university paid $12/hr, it would take 55 weeks to pay off tuition and at $15 it would take 44 weeks.
I don't know what the deal is with your university in particular, but your local Amazon warehouse is paying $15 an hour as that is their national minimum. Walmart just recently announced they are moving to $15 nationally as well I believe.
Tipped server jobs are actually in somewhat high demand around here since people generally tip well, especially with restaurants moving to those Toast PoS systems that prompt customers to tip.
I do wonder why that town has wages so far below what I'm seeing around. Perhaps this has something to do with it being a university town and having lots of unskilled labor? I also do wonder if it being a self fulfilling prophecy is also a possibility, if you get a bunch of people together who belive that wages are lower then they are, a savvy busineessman might make that belief a reality. Either way it's a interesting case study, thanks for sharing your experience and I will consider it further as I continue to look into this topic.
I personally have a remote sde job, so all of this is anecdata I've collected from those around me, alongside seeing job postings out and about.
Social housing is a different story. Where I live, it's notoriously hard to get into (waitlists of 8 years or more), has strict income requirements (get a raise? lose your home!) and is often poorly maintained because anti-poor city politicians wont make the investments necessary to improve and expand it.
Most other programs that we're told exist to help the poor are similar. They're limited, means-tested, complex to apply for, and often still short of what's needed.
Minimum wage is a ridiculous concept. Why make it illegal to accept wages below certain levels? The only thing it does is increase unemployment.
I'm not very strong on economics so mine is likely a foolish perspective, but I always thought minimum wage existed to prevent a race to the bottom where the bottom is asymptotic? Since there are companies getting away with paying minimum wage now, doesn't this indicate that they're fine paying as little as possible but also aren't lacking in employees? Corporations already have such one-sided power over job seekers (I know that I as a dev am guilty of forgetting this from time to time), I find it very difficult to believe that without a mandated minimum, there would be no shortage of companies eager to get away with paying even less. They're doing it now and being successful, why wouldn't they do it then and be successful?
And we can say all day and all night how "the market will correct this, no one will work for them!" but clearly since there are people working for the absolute minimum right now, there would be people working for the absolute minimum then too; the only difference is that the current minimum is set by the government and this theoretical minimum would be set by each individual corporation. I may not have a lot of faith in the government, but I sure know which of those two I'd rather rely on in this case.
But again, I have no formal econ education, so I'll confess I don't know anything about anything. Genuine question: how does minimum wage increase unemployment? Sure, if Alice was earning minimum wage, her boss could hire Bob at half minimum wage if Alice took a 50% pay cut, but how does that actually help Alice or Bob? Yeah, unemployment drops, but welfare claims and poverty levels skyrocket as Alice joins Bob in the welfare system. I just don't see it, but I'm clearly missing something.
I could somewhat agree with this argument if we had better sex ed, better access to contraceptives, and better access to abortions. All three are clearly getting worse in Texas.
I've removed it from my vocabulary hoping to do a better job asking myself "why do I expect that?" and "why would that be good?"