What are Hacker News's thoughts on a livable wage? | Hacker News Reader

What are Hacker News's thoughts on a livable wage?

2 pointsLayke11237 comments

If you work 40 hours a week, does Hacker News think you should be able to afford a home, vacation once a year, and a vehicle, or is that too much?

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HUD defines the "poverty line" for a family of four qualifying for low income housing in the Bay Area as $118k. That's not taking into account the car payments, vacations, and personal debts. If your definition of a living wage is a six-figure annual salary or close to it, then I have a bridge to sell you.

Type of vacation might require qualifiers. But I think it should be reasonable level. Home(protection, water and heat), food and basic healthcare with some time off should entirely be afforded to everyone in any country that calls itself western or first world(economic sense).

I'm a fan of an alternative framing of it, advocated for by people like Blake Masters. I think in a well-run society, you should be able to raise a family on one single income.

Interestingly, Elizabeth Warren (who, unlike Masters, is a left-wing politician) has also used this framing in her 2004 book titled "The Two-Income Trap" [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two-Income_Trap

The interesting thing is that Masters advocates for it, not Warren. A living wage has been a common refrain from the US left since the early 1900s. It was a core goal for FDR, as well.

Not all work has equivalent value, the cost of living varies wildly…

But shouldn't work have a minimum value? I mean without one, what's to the wage gap from getting smaller and smaller?

There is no minimum value for work, since some work can have negative value.

The notion of a "wage gap" is meaningless unless comparing equivalent work and productivity, so first define "work" and "productivity" in an objective way that can be applied across all occupations and scales. What's a quanta of work? IDK

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