Having a private room is not the same as living alone (having a private apartment/house).

I think it's reasonable for young people to have flatmates and share an apartment, for example.

> Renting a private room was possible on nearly any wage 50 years ago, and the only reason it seems out of reach for many now is because purchasing power has been slowly stagnating for decades

50 years ago, in high cost of living areas, you could rent an SRO, but now they're either banned or practically banned because they're strongly disincentivized against. Combine this with not building enough new housing and you get a recipe for rent increases. Even if a minimum wage works as intended, it can only subsidize demand, which would do nothing when the bottleneck is the supply.

> Renting a private room was possible on nearly any wage 50 years ago

I think others pointed this out but I don't think you can find any data to prove this because its not true.

I'm not a historian but I have seen a number of old movies and in those movies it was very common for the characters to be some poor schlub with a full time job at the factory living in some sort of group home/flophouse situation. Movies tend to reflect stories that resonate with the public at the time so I suspect that is because this was a common situation. I'd much prefer a single roommate in an apartment to a flophouse.

> It seems more reasonable to me to assume that meeting basic shelter needs includes having a private room to oneself

Why would that be reasonable? College students and young adults usually have roommates. I don't feel it's inhumane.

> The only reason to argue otherwise is to try to drive down the wage further

Another reason to argue otherwise is because you care about the truth. Even if you and I agree on the ends, if you use the means of exaggerating or stretching the truth to get there, you are never on my side. Saying that you need to not have roommates to live is an exaggeration.

> Renting a private room was possible on nearly any wage 50 years ago

You will never find any data to support that because it isn't true. 50 years ago, flophouses were common. You would share a bedroom room with others, with shared kitchen and bathroom between multiple bedrooms. In college, I lived in a housing-coop network where we slept two to a room. 50 years ago, they slept 4 or 6 to a room in my exact house.

> and the only reason it seems out of reach for many now is because purchasing power has been slowly stagnating for decades, while housing costs have soared in recent times

This is true. But there is a very natural reason why. Look at nearly any US city, and see how many more jobs there are in that city than there were 50 years ago. Then look at how many more homes there are in that city than there were 50 years ago. You will see that the number of new jobs far exceeds the number of new homes. The result is that wealthier people bid up the housing, while poor people are forced to live outside the city and commute. So why have no new houses been built? It can't be helped by the fact that building new homes is illegal. (e.g. buildings with 3 or more apartments are illegal in 70% of san francisco.)

Please direct your anger in the right direction! It's not generally the case that billionaires own thousands of homes, hoarding them while the poor live on the street. It's more often the case that the population has increased while the number of homes in places people want to live has stayed the same. The *only* solution is to increase the number of homes in places people want to live. Raising the minimum wage, taxing the rich, fighting corporations, adding rent control laws, none of that will help solve the root of the problem, the growth rate of homes in cities is far slower than the rate of people wanting to live there!

It’s obviously not required based on the evidence of many people who live and thrive without.

$9000/year is a ton more than just having a car.

> Then it claims medical costs of $2,890. For a fit individual with good employer-provided health insurance, that figure should be almost zero.

No, it won't be almost zero because they're including health insurance premiums in that figure. Few jobs in the US cover 100% of the premiums for their employees.

>> The cost of health care is composed of two subcategories: (1) premiums associated with employer-sponsored health insurance plans and (2) out-of-pocket expenses for medical services, drugs, and medical supplies.

I think “I should be able to fully express my food brand preferences” is not a reasonable standard of livable.

This depends a lot on where you live. In our area, the minimum internet-only offering from Spectrum is $125 (approximately) after taxes/fees, and the only "competitor" is AT&T, which is more expensive for (at least in our area) worse / flakier service.

I was surprised (at least for Birmingham/AL/Jefferson County) how accurately it pegged _most_ of the costs -- childcare here is closer to $12k/annum/child so that one was the only one I pegged as 'off' - they show 2 children as $16k and that's a ~$8k underestimate

I think I have great access. I pay $60/month for gig internet and that’s split with 4 people.

I spend $20/month for mobile and buy a new $500 phone every 3 years.

I make way more than a livable wage, but spend much less than their projected costs.

yeah, I spend $30/month on internet (the 100 Mbps Google Fiber, since I realized I didn't really need 1 Gbps at home now that I go into the office every day...)

I am but a single datapoint, but the $100/month for home internet hits quite close to home. I currently pay $130 for Spectrum's gigabit cable internet plan. Their website offers it for $70, but that's only for the first year; they have raised that price by, apparently, $20 per year I've been a customer. We do not have fiber and my only other ISP option is a DSL provider that maxes out at 40mbps for $30. So sure, I can save about 75% on my internet bill by opting for internet that is 4% of the speed that I currently pay for. And this is in a rapidly growing suburb. I think $100/month is easily the case for places like my home, where local broadband monopolies still exist mostly unchallenged.

The web site also makes that distinction: living wage, poverty wage, and minimum wage.

That is the point isn't it.

The minimum wage is far below what it takes to actually 'live', like have a place to live and a car.

> Households that have to share housing with others have always been characterized as unusually poor, no matter the continent and the millennium.

Historically speaking this is incredibly wrong.

Nearly every culture evolved from some sort of shared communal longhouse to individual clan homes, to extended family homes. The idea of individual private rooms actually comes about explicitly from Manors in the late medieval ages. We really didn't see widespread individual homes until the industrial revolution. In places like the East, individual rooms were an import from the West.

Even in rare places where there were individual family homes (Ancient Egypt, for one). Privacy and individuality were just not concepts. Through the 1800s, you might have literally been sharing a bed with a stranger in a hotel.

There has also never, ever been a point in human history where living without some sort of roommate was common. Even in situations where you had lots of single workers, they almost always lived in bunkhouses or SROs.

Not dignified. As you can live a dignified life for much less.

Thus my point. I don’t know what “livable wage” means with these numbers so it’s not very useful for discussion or planning or measurement.

$700/month on car+gas+insurance is certainly pretty cushy. This is a luxury for many people I know.

Their cost estimates are much higher than what’s required to live comfortably and save for a rainy day.

This is such a US centric take.

Why should we accept that rather than our own standards? If we take your tack on this then we shouldn't try to make anything better for anyone, just live with what we've got and accept whatever lot we find ourselves in.

Having a roommate and an annual transportation budget under $9000 probably isn’t the right demarcation line for poverty.

> $130k per year needed ($28.50 per hour * 40 * 52).

What math are you doing to get $130k with those numbers? That wage works out to around $60k/year.

Your 130k number is >2x what it should be. Recalculate.

28/hr is closer to 60k/yr.

130k/yr is more like 65/hr.

> Is a living wage there bare minimum to live or enough to live a life?

More the former. A lot of the commenters here are missing that detail. A living wage doesn't mean you can afford all the nice things, it means you aren't starving and can cover the needs for you and your family, but maybe some, but not many, wants.

I feel like I’ve eat pretty well, and my household food costs are almost half what the calculator shows. Similar for vehicle costs etc.

After looking at the method, I think the calculator probably has some bias towards “what society has convinced us we need”. To a certain extent that is a relative and subjective perception problem, and one exacerbated when you live in a society with a lot of consumer debt.

That’s what I think when I hear the term, too. But these numbers are not just living, but living at a pretty high standard.

I would expect living wage to mean the amount one needs to be able to live out your life fairly decently and with dignity. I think many do so without having pay this high.

Is a family of 4 in a 2BR considered living wage? Because they have rent at $3600 for a family in silicon valley... which seems impossible. I paid more than that when I graduated from college with a roommate 20 years ago.

No, roommates aren’t hard to come by. As evidenced by the millions who have roommates.

In my 20s everyone I knew had roommates. And it was a good life.

Saying a studio or 1 bedroom is required makes this metric pretty ambiguous.

Thus my point, that this isn’t what’s required to just live. But to live comfortably.