I'm going to base it off of the peninsula (San Mateo County) in the Bay Area for a single person. https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/06081

By my estimations, it's not a great calculator. $2.5k/month for all housing costs. I'm not saying it's not possible to find a studio + utilities but that's not a fun place to live. No AC, no insulation, built for a different climate which was 70 years ago, laundromat or (hopefully) coin-op laundry in building, likely near busy roads (101, el camino) or train tracks with no sound insulation, still extremely car dependent (which is included in this calculator - gas/electricity, taxes, and cars in CA are very expensive), etc. Again, doable but competitive market and not a fun one. You'd be guaranteed to NEVER own any property at that income. Until we have some public housing utopia, I'd say ownership should be accounted for in a living wage. Otherwise, you're gonna get evicted when retirement hits.

Its calculation on taxes seems off to me as well. https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-paycheck-calculator#... Says $72308 in San Mateo, CA gives you $55793 - not $59791. You'd have to make close to $80k/yr to get the amount they suggest to live.

This calculator does not include retirement savings, emergency saving, etc. It just assumes you'll comfortably live paycheck to paycheck until you die and never save a dime. In our country, you will not be getting $60k/yr post tax from social security. So, this is a stupid calculator unless you plan to never retire or never experience job loss (max payout is $450/week for unemployment in CA), etc.

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Jtsummers 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> This calculator does not include retirement savings, emergency saving, etc. It just assumes you'll comfortably live paycheck to paycheck until you die and never save a dime. In our country, you will not be getting $60k/yr post tax from social security. So, this is a stupid calculator unless you plan to never retire or never experience job loss (max payout is $450/week for unemployment in CA), etc.

It doesn't include those things because those aren't the things that are covered by a "living wage". Living wage sounds like something good, but it's literally just enough to cover what's needed. Can you afford housing, childcare, medical care, transportation for work, etc. It's a low bar, not a good target, for a society to try to hit. It means people at that wage shouldn't be going hungry or without shelter, but they won't necessarily be thriving.

	▲	bradlys 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Right, and I think we shouldn't even be talking about a fake ass "living" wage when it's so disconnected from what you actually need to reliably "live" in these environments. I don't know who comes up with these terms but it's terrible. It may as well be called, "absolute minimum amount of money to get by without anything ever bad happening or planning for the future at all" wage.