You know the rest. A great illustration of what that saying means is this article where the writer tells us the “living wage” for a family of four in Florida. Let’s read their definition of a “living wage.”
“Living wage” is defined as the income required to cover 50% necessities, 30% discretionary spending and 20% for savings.
They then take the $23,637 cost of housing, $10,069 for food, and $7,350 for healthcare, which adds up to $40,056 for necessities. These necessities should be half of your income, so this extrapolates to a living wage of $80,112 per year, which they then somehow round up to more than $112,000.
Note that a “living wage” is what is being used to demand a minimum wage based upon 50% of the expenses of an average family of four. They begin with the expected cost of housing for a Florida family of four: $23,637. Let’s call that $2k a month. According to rent.com, that is the average cost of a two bedroom apartment. Not the minimum, the average, and that is the average across the entire state. If you move to a more affordable area, the rent will be less.
So the left takes the average cost of rent across the entire state, adds in a 40% fudge factor, then states that this is the minimum required to live. Liars figure.
Expect liars to push for yet another increase in Florida’s $15 an hour minimum wage.
11 Comments
wojtek · December 23, 2024 at 3:43 pm
“$80,112 per year, which they then somehow round up to more than $112,000”
I would assume that this “operation” involves addition of all taxes, SSA, medical, etc, on top of 80K.
There’s an interesting living wage calculator for the US at MIT. They do not include any of the “savings” or “30% for discretionary. As such I think they are much more reasonable. But they do make living wage dependent on the type and size of the family. Which I think is a strange thing, when defining a living wage, as for Orlando, FL, this gives values ranging from below 50K to over 120K 🙂
Divemedic · December 23, 2024 at 4:09 pm
We won’t stop until everyone earns an above average salary
wojtek · December 24, 2024 at 10:37 pm
Almost communism, where everyone earned an average salary. The party leaders earned it in gold and silver coins, the masses in paper and aluminium.
It's just Boris · December 23, 2024 at 3:59 pm
The actual minimum wage is zero, for jobs that companies find don’t provide as much gain as they cost.
But anyway. Why stop at $15/hour? Or $20? $100? Why not? Or even, $10,000 per day someone shows up at all? Seriously – once you start making rationalizations for why $x/hr is what the minimum “should” be, there’s really no reason to not keep going.
Jimbo · December 23, 2024 at 9:04 pm
Oh hell….my wife and I managed a household of five for years on about 50-70k….we never ate out…the younger wore hand me downs from the older…..there were many times when there were only pennies left till payday….taxes, house and vehicle payment, utilities, insurance….
Never got a dime of “guvment” assistance…..made our own way…..now three kids with good jobs and all self sufficient….finally we can breathe at the end of the month…would not change a thing…..
Anonymous · December 23, 2024 at 10:22 pm
This mentality killed plenty of jobs in rural California. 20/hour in LA or SF is chump change, agreed, but still won’t improve the spending power of those fat Meskin babuskas of the SEIU. That wage can and did put their cousins out of work in the lower cost areas. But the Politicians and race baiters don’t give a damn about anything but their precious urban shitholes.
Stefan v. · December 24, 2024 at 12:55 am
That 50% of necessities means both parents are designated to be out on the treadmill and the children are in day-gaol five days out of seven being indoctrinated. The parents are tired after work and many modern folk stare into screens the rest of the time. Good luck to anyone trying to raise children with those handicaps. The reason I chose to be childless here in Teutonia is the state considers children their property (adults too) and no way would I relinquish my responsibility and allow my offspring to be corrupted by that pack of stupid and evil scoundrels. I had hoped to escape and build a decent boat and live off grid in southeast Asia and the south Pacific, never rooted in one spot so as to be somewhat independent of the globohomo clownshow, but left it too late. Besides, the rot has spread worldwide; the coming cataclysm will reach into every corner of the world. Babylon will fall.
Hariman · December 24, 2024 at 1:15 am
A high minimum wage is a CAUSE of a high cost of living, not a solution.
ALL layers of the production chain of necessities (food, energy, gasoline, etc) have several layers of minimum wage jobs which immediately increase the cost of doing business when the minimum wage increases.
So increasing the minimum wage actually makes life HARDER on people who are already working entry level jobs, and they also make GETTING a minimum wage job harder too.
It’s like saying you can fix obesity by eating more. It’s the opposite of a help.
oldvet50 · December 24, 2024 at 7:06 am
You have to wonder how all this will work out. What cannot continue WILL not continue. How can a society survive without it’s ‘menial’ (but entirely essential) workers – the lowest paying jobs. Grocery store, garbage/trash collectors, waitstaff, dishwashers, household repairmen, etc. The list goes on, ad infinitum. Every time wages increase, so do the prices. Like a dog chasing it’s tail.
Jonathan · December 24, 2024 at 8:07 am
Nearly every complaint I hear about pay or housing is from poorly educated people who can’t see beyond living in a trendy expensive area.
I see few complaints from tradespeople, engineers, etc – those smart enough to understand cost and benefit and that there are options for living and working besides expensive areas that don’t pay much.
Several years ago I applied for a job near DC. It would have been a big increase in pay, but every additional dollar, and more, would have been taken by higher housing costs, and that didn’t even include worse traffic and commuting time, higher insurance, general hassle from a more populated area, etc, etc. Needless to say, I didn’t take the job.
As I’ve said before, there are places with lower than average housing costs and higher than average salaries where almost anyone can do well – but you have to be willing to go there; most people aren’t.
If you want to live better than most people, you have to live differently than them… Lots of people aren’t willing to do that.
*I say poorly educated instead of uneducated because most of them have degrees, but their degrees were overpriced and underperforming and all too often they don’t even realize it.
Don Curton · December 25, 2024 at 9:21 am
The first lie is that “minimum wage” should be a “living wage”. No one should be able to support a family of 4 on minimum wage. That’s not in the cards here. Minimum wage should be what you’re earning while learning the skills to hold a better job.
And yeah, minimum wage is a union concession that has no real practical use beyond increasing union salaries that are indexed to minimum wage.
Finally, people at the “living wage” level do NOT have 30% discretionary spending – it’s more like 10%, and they definitely do not have 20% savings. Almost all of them are 1 or 2 missed paychecks from being homeless. Having lived like that for most of my life, it’s not just stupidity or poor planning, it’s the calculated risk I took to make sure my family was in a good neighborhood with good school districts. You can use your imagination as to what I consider “good”. Yeah, we could have lived cheaper. But Mah Diversity really puts a limit on where I want to raise my family.
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