
Living Wage Calculator - jwilliams
http://www.livingwage.geog.psu.edu/
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bumbledraven
According to this site, the cost of housing in Cambridge, MA for one person is
$1063/month. I live there with a roommate, and the total rent for our place is
$1200/month. This is a nice apartment with hardwood floors and lots of light,
in a nice location. You do the math, because apparently the creators of this
site didn't.

Also, their hourly "living wage" seems to be based on a 40-hour work week. I
personally work way more than that, and I know people that work less.

If you think about it, the very concept of a "living wage" -- as a function
only of your location and the number of people you support -- is wrong-headed.
What do you suppose the living wage is for Beverly Hills, CA? News flash: not
everyone can afford to live everywhere. Just like some cars are cheaper than
others, some places to live are more affordable than others. If you aren't
making enough to live where you want to live, maybe you should re-examine your
job skills or your aspirations about where to live, rather than blaming your
employer for not paying you a "living wage".

~~~
timr
_"What do you suppose the living wage is for Beverly Hills, CA? News flash:
not everyone can afford to live everywhere."_

Yet everywhere you go, there's a demand for people who clean up your trash,
fix your meals, sweep your streets and teach your children. These people have
to live somewhere, too.

~~~
yummyfajitas
They can live someplace nearby and commute.

According to google maps, it takes 34 minutes to get from Compton (a cheap
area, if rap songs are accurate) to Beverly Hills. There are probably other
cheap areas not legendary for breeding hard soldiers, I just don't know the
west coast at all.

[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&s...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=compton,+ca&daddr=beverly+hills,+ca&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=36.315864,79.101563&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=11)

On the east coast, Jersey/Brooklyn/LI to Manhattan is equally reasonable.

~~~
DLWormwood
> They can live someplace nearby and commute.

The problem with that is that commuting distances is it's own expense. It also
rules out people like me who don't have a driver's license to drive a car in
the first place. I can only work in heavily urban areas (Most of Chicago, or
even parts of Toledo) because of it.

Also, note that the argument above had nothing to do with ecological or
foreign dependence concerns, which is what most people think of when they pan
commuter culture.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The problem timr was describing is that Beverly Hills needs some low skill
workers. I'm sure sufficiently many low skill workers have cars/bus passes to
meet the needs of Beverly Hills.

I'm not a fan of car culture either. I'm just pointing out that a "living
wage" in beverly hills can't be more than a "living wage" in Compton + cost of
commuting.

Incidentally, the market adjusts wages in exactly that way: the 50'th st Qdoba
in Manhattan pays a couple bucks more/hour than the Hoboken Qdoba. Most likely
there is a similar wage premium to work in Beverly Hills.

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jackowayed
This site has a pretty major flaw. It assumes one worker regardless of the
number of adults, and it also charges for childcare. So really, both adults
could work for half of the wage in the 2-adult models.

I'm not begrudging people that live near the poverty line higher wages. I'm
just saying that the site is very misleading.

~~~
yummyfajitas
It has other flaws as well.

The most obvious flaw: a "living wage" should be the same in areas within
short commuting distance of one another. Just live in whichever place is
cheaper. An example:

Living wage in New York City is $7.72, while that in Jersey City or Hoboken is
$11.28; the main difference is rent ($484 in New York, $884 in Jersey). So a
person making only $8/hour in Jersey City can simply live in New York City and
commute (the exact opposite of what people do in real life).

Another flaw is that their costs for rent are a load of crap. Out of the 5
cities I feel qualified to comment on (NYC, Jersey City, Hoboken, New
Brunswick and Union City), and only one (Jersey City) was remotely accurate.

[Edit: another serious flaw I just noticed is child care for 2 adults, 1-2
children. If we talk about the "living wage" for one adult, the other adult
can provide child care for free. Or each adult need only make "living
wage"/2.]

~~~
hugh
Here's another weird bit: in my area the "medical" cost for one adult is $79 a
month. But for two adults it's $226 a month. How the hell does that work?

~~~
owkaye
With two adults it's usually a male and a female who engage in activities that
create a new life, and there's a cost for that new life even before it is
born.

Or are they thinking that two people will dislike each other enough to shoot
or stab or beat on each other thus increasing the medical costs?

The site may be imperfect but at least it tries to offer some comparative
info. I've never seen another site that does the same ... not in such an easy
to understand format anyways.

~~~
khafra
[http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.htm...](http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.html)
has been around for a while.

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spydez
Wow... Mountain View, CA is 9k more expensive per year than where I'm living.
Heck, it's 8k more than New York.

Remind me why shoestring-budget startups are supposed to flock there?

~~~
anamax
Because MV has resources that those other places don't have. If you can
succeed without those resources, MV isn't the place for you. However, if you
need them and acquiring them costs more than $9k/year somewhere else, MV is
cheaper.

~~~
run4yourlives
Which resources are those, exactly?

~~~
ardit33
people, duh.

I meet smart developers everyday, and have lots of hacker types friends. As
the expression goes: You can't swing a dead cat on the bay area without
hitting a good engineer/startupper in the head

Try that in any other place. You have to swing that a lot harder.

If you are trying to build a great startup you live by the talent, and die if
you don't have it. Execution is key. Being frugal and cheap is second.

~~~
run4yourlives
I won't disagree with that, but I do think it's overrated, to be honest.

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run4yourlives
Just once I would love a site like this to consider the possibility that
people actually live outside the US.

It would have been interesting to see those results... sigh.

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ojbyrne
It would be nice to know what the source of the numbers are. I found some
specific numbers that seemed low to me. For example, it budgeted $156 a month
for food for one adult in SF. I used to budget $40 a week for food for myself
in the eighties, reasonably sure its not enough now.

~~~
hugh
Top Ramen, with 390 calories per package and selling for twenty-five cents,
will fulfill your daily calorie needs for $1.25 a day.

Seriously though, I would be surprised if you couldn't put together a balanced
if rather dull diet for $156 a month (or $5.12 a day, which now I come to
think of it happens to be approximately my daily coffee budget). You wouldn't
be eating much meat, but with cereal for breakfast, a simple sandwich for
lunch, and pasta or rice + vegetables for dinner I'm sure it'd be sufficient
to keep you alive and healthy.

~~~
ojbyrne
Your daily calorie needs, yes. I think what you'd really be forsaking is not
meat (hamburger is relatively cheap) but fresh fruit and vegetables, milk, and
most of all, variety. So I'd dispute "healthy." Sure it'll work when you're
young, but 10 years of it, and say hi to cancer. And your point about your
"coffee budget" just emphasizes it.

In the interest of fair disclosure, I should admit that the reason I had such
a low food budget was so I could have more money for beer ;-)

~~~
hugh
Fresh fruit and vegetables really aren't that expensive. An apple costs, what,
fifty cents? A banana, about the same? And you can get a whole head of lettuce
or half a bunch of celery for not much more than a dollar. Or potatoes... I
forget how much they cost, but it ain't much. As for milk, buy a half-gallon
every week for $2.50 and you've got all the calcium you need.

Variety remains the big problem, of course.

~~~
silencio
To many people on HN, "fifty cents" for an apple is not that expensive,
neither is $2.50 for some milk...I know I easily spend that on a bottle or two
of Bawls or 50x that on a new toy for my laptop, or even 100x that on a single
nice anniversary dinner at craftsteak in vegas with my significant other while
we were in town for defcon (so, hotel and all was even _more_ money).
_However_ , 50 cents for an apple earning a minimum wage paycheck working
multiple jobs with your spouse to provide for your children while trying to
pay the rent and bills is not an insignificant amount of money.

I still remember the congressional food stamp challenge from a year or two ago
where everyone who attempted to live on food stamps for _a single week_ made a
real point of saying that while it was simple to buy junk food and things like
peanut butter, fresh fruits and vegetables, among other "healthy" items to
eat, were nearly impossible to buy. Plus even just buying the cheaper junk
food, they found that they didn't have the energy they had and always wanted
more food...but of course, they wouldn't be able to keep up with the
challenge. (<http://foodstampchallenge.typepad.com/>)

So no, fresh fruit and veggies _can_ be pretty expensive and unaffordable.

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byrneseyeview
All of these numbers are ridiculously high. I could afford not to die even
when I was earning half of what they say the minimum is for my area. I suspect
that this is politically motivated (e.g. they highlight all the jobs they
don't think pay enough -- but they don't highlight all the expenses they could
argue are too high).

~~~
mattchew
The phrase "living wage" is loaded to start with. I'm sure there are political
motivations here.

However, when I ran their calculations for my town, I was surprised to get a
number very close to what we had already figured out as our minimum
"comfortable" budget. No, we wouldn't die on less money, but the cuts would
have to come someplace painful, like dropping health insurance for me and my
wife, or eating a lot more potatoes and a lot less meat and vegetables.

If you wanted to rephrase the concept to "minimum stable middle class income",
they were right on, at least in our case.

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ars
These numbers just seem wrong.

A specific example is they include child care - $800 per month, and then
write: ...must earn to support their family, if they are the sole provider....

????

If you are going to include child care then divide all the numbers in half,
and things make more sense.

Edit: heh jackowayed said the same thing :)

