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If a person is working 40 hours a week to contribute to society, then they should be able to afford housing from that society. If a person on minimum wage needs to have a roommate to get by, then that means that their 40 hours a week is not enough to afford their own shelter. Without that roommate, the person goes without a home despite having done their time for society. This is not reasonable.

If it is reasonable for a young person to have flatmates, then that should be because they are a student or an artist and are working only part-time while devoting the rest of their time to their studies or their art.

But a person working full-time? Who may be a single mother or father with a child to support? They should be able to afford a place to live, without roommates.

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I would only add that young people or anyone should be able to afford to live alone as you say OR opt to live with roommates to share expenses and save and build wealth. It shouldn't be necessary for anyone working 40 hours a week to pool their resources with other people in similar situations simply to survive.
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A minimum wage should not necessarily afford you a median home, that's why it's called a minimum. But for a functional developed nation I argue it should afford you a private room or a very small apartment. Ideally the cost between the two wouldn't be that different, but due to decades of building restrictions the latter does not really exist. This isn't true in Japan for example, where you can find arbitrarily small apartments at correspondingly low prices.

A living wage is for living indefinitely, not just surviving. That should afford more comforts like a reasonable amount of space, a car if needed, and saving for retirement or emergencies.

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Is it reasonable for two people who are dating to have to keep their shared apartment when they break up? What should happen if a roommate becomes flaky or moves out?

These are all real situations that make me think that pinning "living wage" to a level where you have to have roommates is not a good goal. You're basically asking people to survive by accepting unstable living conditions and potentially taking strangers into their homes, which isn't exactly "having your needs met."

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Its reasonable, but as we've advanced humanity in so many other fields (medical, technical, agricultural) why shouldn't the base standard of living also be increasing.
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The base standard of living has increased throughout pretty much all of humanity over the past 50 years, and through huge parts of humanity over even 20 years.

Theres also lots more people, and as more people consume more resources it does not follow that better technology in some field will translate to increased every aspect of life.

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I agree with the sentiment, but the premise of capitalism is that those advances also become cheaper due to market efficiencies. In other words, people should be able to have a higher quality of life for relatively lower cost. If/where that actually occurs is a whole different discussion.
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A living wage shouldn't be based upon what wages a student could be comfortably living on for a couple years before they get their $500k/yr new grad quant job. It should be based upon what people could live on comfortably indefinitely.

It's not "student wage". It's not "struggling young person" wage. It's "living" wage. It's for living - at any age.

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Does this then imply some jobs are not intended to supply a living wage?

Eg does that quants internship get a lower pay because they are expected to graduate beyond it? If so, how do we define what jobs are stepping stones and which are long-term careers?

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I think all full time jobs should at a minimum pay a true living wage where one can live comfortably, save for emergencies, etc. If the job cannot pay that then it shouldn't exist.

There are many ways to accomplish this beyond simply raising wages. Better government programs, lower the cost of housing/medical/transportation/food/etc. (these are surprisingly simple but many vested interests don't want this to happen), better retirement programs, etc. etc. etc. You see more of this in more socially democratic countries.

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I’m not against that idea but there are some knock-on effects we should be careful of. For example, it will make it hard for younger people to get a job. If I have to pay a teenager the same as someone with a decade or more of work experience, that teenager probably won’t get a job.

With a lot of these discussions, we need to be careful about the seductively simple solutions.

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If the minimum was the actual minimum, then why would the person with a decade of experience ever work for it?
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The issue of "which jobs should exist" should be left to the market only. If typical low-end jobs throughout the country pay wages that do not guarantee a minimum living income, the government should simply make up the difference for everyone in a fair way (subject to clawback rates as earned income increases, in order to keep the overall arrangement viable).

(Lowering the cost of essential goods and services is also something that can be done by leveraging the open market. It doesn't take yet another wasteful government program, which is the typical approach in socialist and social-democrat countries.)

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Any adult with a full-time job should be able to afford a studio or small apartment. Probably making concessions on the location depending on where they want to live. It's not a matter of being young or not
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In the US, this is trivial to do. Theres plenty of states where unskilled entry lever wages easily allows this life, for most of the locations, with the exception of extremely high cost city centers.

Pick IL for example. Min wage $15, so $30k a year income fulltime. Most every adult that’s worked even a little should be able to earn decently more than min, which is for completely unskilled, new workers. Median il wage is 66k.

Even at $30k, the rough 30% rule on housing is $750/mo. At 66k it’s over $1500/mo.

Dig through smaller cities, and you’ll find apartments to rent in either end of this range. This works in any state.

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Part of the issue is those smaller cities don’t offer a large supply of job opportunities. So people are often not able to pick and choose their location.
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Plenty of cities outside the top 100 have massive amounts of jobs. And the person I replied to specifically stated willing to vary location as an option.
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This is an underappreciated argument for basic income/UBI: you need a lot less of it since its very existence enables recipients to move to lower cost of living locations.

(Which in turn opens up opportunities for others to move in to the higher-cost places and boost their own productivity.)

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Historically it's reasonable for anybody to have roommates. It's a modern scenario where having your own place is supposed to be the standard.

Historically housing was much smaller. And people lived with their families for a lot longer commonly. A lot less was also spent on domestic appliances (not just washer & dryers) and at-home entertainment (a lot less was spent on entertainment in general).

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