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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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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 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.

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...)

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.

$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.

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.

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.

> 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 not many wants.

> $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.

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.

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.

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.

Just because the wider society encourages it, your family doesn't have to lean into individualism, and many don't. We got by when I was a kid with a lot of help from friends and family, when I am absolutely sure we didn't have a living wage under this definition.

> Urban workers in China do 3,744 hours per year

For reference, that's 10:15 per day, 365 days a year. Or 996 without vacations, if you intend to have one day off.

996 has never been a standard work duration for urban workers in China, aside from some tech companies that promoted performative work ethics. And even there, people do take vacations.

3744 hours. Dayum!

Just going off basic numbers:

- 3744/52/5 = 14.4 hour day if they work 5 days a week

- 3744/52/6 = 12 hrs if they work 6 days a week

- 3744/52/7 = 10.3 hrs if they work 7 days a week.

Every single nation on Earth has mandatory paid vacation, except for the United States and three tiny islands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b....

Edit: And looking into it a little, I'm pretty sure two of those islands actually do have mandatory paid leave after a minimum period of employment.

France is not an oil nation. We have 35h weeks and 5 weeks of paid vacation as well.

Edit: Also, the US is a damn oil nation. It has nothing to do with oil, and everything to do with politics.

I’m not sure that’s the key factor. Resource wealth helps, but it doesn’t automatically translate into shorter workweeks or generous leave. Countries with far fewer natural resources—such as Germany, the Netherlands, or Denmark—still manage shorter working hours, strong labor protections, and substantial paid vacation.

Those outcomes depend much more on labor policy, bargaining power, and what governments choose to protect. In many places, business pressure and media framing make long hours seem unavoidable, even though they’re ultimately the result of policy choices.

In Germany its somewhere between 1600-1700 hours, and we don't have much oil

The other Nordic countries don't have oil riches and manages just fine.

>They lived in a house or apt with a third the sqft/person that was far more likely to catch fire and didn't have AC.

But at least they could afford a house, right? I think a lot of people would accept living in a house without AC and more likely to catch fire. Is a house like that cheap today? No, right? It's crazy expensive as well.

>If they had a car they most likely shared it. It was far less safe, didn't have AC, guzzled gas and polluted.

Car technology in the past was worse, we know that. Cars were more affordable though.

>Never ate out and spent a third of earnings on cheap grocery store staples.

Like today then.

>We're benefiting greatly from the increase in productivity. We just view our great-grandfather luxuries as our necessities.

Young people are rotting at home unable to go ahead with their lives because wages nowadays are not enough to pay for a house and a family. Why do people try to deny this obvious reality? Productivity didn't benefit everyone equally and people in the past had more opportunities to build a life inside a standard that was socially acceptable.

All you've done here is take the tired dishonest "kids these days and their darn avocado toast and smartphones" trope and used different goods/services to spin it in a way to appeal to the median commentor on HN.

You're ignoring the gorilla in the room. Why can't one live in a comparable manner today and bank the difference? Because those things aren't available? Why aren't those things available?

They're not voting against their own self interest; they just have different interests than you. Their primary interest and goal is making sure their out-group is hurting, and that is what they are voting for, regardless of that happens to them.

No, it's rentiers. The government takes about a quarter but the rentiers easily take 2 times as much in interest, monthly fees, and other costs that I have to pay in perpetuity. You just don't consider that because you think those people are necessary for living a good life. In reality their purpose is to extract as much money from you for as little work as possible.

Reminder that the Republicans' policy has been to starve the beast. That is push up government costs while passing huge tax cuts (like the big beautiful bill Republicans just passed that is greatly increasing the debt) in order to sabotage government's ability to function, then blast from every rooftop that we need to cut government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

"The very reason why we object to state ownership, that it puts a stop to individual initiative and to the healthy development of personal responsibility, is the reason why we object to an unsupervised, unchecked monopolistic control in private hands. We urge control and supervision by the nation as an antidote to the movement for state socialism. Those who advocate total lack of regulation, those who advocate lawlessness in the business world, themselves give the strongest impulse to what I believe would be the deadening movement toward unadulterated state socialism."

--Theodore Roosevelt

The larger point I’m making is the “living wage” may be built on an idea that the assumed consumerist norm is ideal.

Roommate listings are for $1000/mo. I still think it’s grossly under what a typical person would need.

Which can’t be had for less than $1500/mo here. Studio/1bed are the same.

Studio/1bed are the same thing here. It’s the same price, same sqft.

right. kind of obvious in hindsight.

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.

Norway has many wonderful things American voters are terrified of giving people less they use them.

USA site. USA metrics. USA Comment. I vote to get the same things you all have, but your assumption is that Norway matters in this context is foolish

Yeah Dallas county Texas, where I live, for family of 4 and 2 working adults is around $105k/year. That seems close, there’s nothing secure about that long term (no room for savings or retirement) but it’s livable.