| ▲ | jfindper 4 hours ago |
| >You can make $11-$13 at what are considered bad jobs, like flipping pizzas at Little Caesars. Holy moly! 11 whole dollars an hour!? Okay, so we went from $4.25 to $11.00. That's a 159% change. Awesome! Now, lets look at... School, perhaps? So I can maybe skill-up out of Little Caesars and start building a slightly more comfortable life. Median in-state tuition in 1995: $2,681. Median in-state tuation in 2025: $11,610. Wait a second! That's a 333% change. Uh oh. Should we do the same calculation with housing...? Sure, I love making myself more depressed. 1995: $114,600. 2025: $522,200. 356% change. Fuck. |
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| ▲ | reissbaker 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| This will probably be an unpopular reply, but "real median household income" — aka, inflation-adjusted median income — has steadily risen since the 90s and is currently at an all-time high in the United States. [1] Inflation includes the cost of housing (by measuring the cost of rent). However, we are living through a housing supply crisis, and while overall cost of living hasn't gone up, housing's share of that has massively multiplied. We would all be living much richer lives if we could bring down the cost of housing — or at least have it flatline, and let inflation take care of the rest. 1: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N |
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| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You're identifying the right problem (school and housing costs are completely out of hand) but then resorting to an ineffective solution (minimum wage) when what you actually need is to get those costs back down. The easy way to realize this is to notice that the median wage has increased by proportionally less than the federal minimum wage has. The people in the middle can't afford school or housing either. And what happens if you increase the minimum wage faster than overall wages? Costs go up even more, and so does unemployment when small businesses who are also paying those high real estate costs now also have to pay a higher minimum wage. You're basically requesting the annihilation of the middle class. Whereas you make housing cost less and that helps the people at the bottom and the people in the middle. |
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| ▲ | jfindper 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | >resorting to an ineffective solution (minimum wage) when what you actually need is to get those costs back down. I'm not really resorting to any solution. My comment is pointing out that when you only do one side of the equation (income) without considering the other side (expenses), it's worthless. Especially when you are trying to make a comparison across years. How we go about fixing the problem, if we ever do, is another conversation. But my original comment doesn't attempt to suggest any solution, especially not one that "requests the annihilation of the middle class". It's solely to point out that adventured's comment is a bunch of meaningless numbers. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > It's solely to point out that adventured's comment is a bunch of meaningless numbers. The point of that comment was to point out that minimum wage is irrelevant because basically nobody makes that anyway; even the entry-level jobs pay more than the federal minimum wage. In that context, arguing that the higher-than-minimum wages people are actually getting still aren't sufficient implies an argument that the minimum wage should be higher than that. And people could read it that way even if it's not what you intended. So what I'm pointing out is that that's the wrong solution and doing that rather than addressing the real issue (high costs) is the thing that destroys the middle class. | | |
| ▲ | jfindper 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | >implies an argument that the minimum wage should be higher than that. It can also imply that expenses should come down, you just picked the implication you want to argue against. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Exactly. When it's ambiguous at best it's important that people not try to follow the bad fork. | | |
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| ▲ | genewitch 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 1980 mustang vs 2025 mustang is what i usually use. in the past 12 years my price per KWh electricity costs have doubled. in the mid 90s you could open a CD (certificate of deposit at a bank or credit union) and get 9% or more APY. savings accounts had ~4% interest. in the mid 90s a gallon of gasoline in Los Angeles county was $0.899 in the summer and less than that any other time. It's closer to $4.50 now. |
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| ▲ | mrits 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| The BBQ place across the street from me pays $19/hour to be a cashier in Austin. Or the sign says it does anyways |
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| ▲ | mossTechnician 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Does the sign happen to have the words "up to" before the dollar amount? | |
| ▲ | jfindper 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | sweet! according to austintexas.gov, that's only $2.63 below the 2024 living wage. $5.55 below, if you use the MIT numbers for 2025. As long as you don't run into anything unforseen like medical expenses, car breakdowns, etc., you can almost afford a bare-bones, mediocre life with no retirement savings. | | |
| ▲ | hylaride 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I don't disagree that there has been a huge issue with stagnant wages, but not everybody who works minimum wage needs to make a living wage. Some are teenagers, people just looking for part time work, etc. Pushing up minimum wage too high can risk destroying jobs that are uneconomical at that level that could have been better than nothing for many people. That being said, there's been an enormous push by various business groups to do everything they can to keep wages low. It's a complicated issue and one can't propose solutions without acknowledging that there's a LOT of nuance... |
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