Of course, the minimum wage is an absolutely crucial achievement of civilization that has to be preserved and cherished. And obviously the minimum wage in the US has to be raised because right now it is shamelessly low and not enough for a person to make ends meet*.
However, can’t this important point be made in a way that doesn’t discredit the idea completely? Why do Liberals enjoy being so drama-queenish about everything that they end up sounding worse than any parody of Liberalism the staunchest opponent can concoct? See the following picture, for instance:
Surely, this important issue can be discussed without making minimum age workers sound like spoiled brats who can’t survive without having three rooms per one person. I’m getting a feeling that some smug upper middle-class grad student came up with this after straining his limited imagination in search of what would constitute the most horrible horror of all horrors.
The real tragedy of living on a minimum wage is not that you have to confine yourself to one or two rooms. It is that you often have to pawn your check days before you get it and pay a crushing fee to do so. It is that you can’t make even the most minimal savings and have to live in constant terror of what might happen. It is that a tooth-ache feels like the end of the world because you know you will never be able to afford a dentist. It is that there is no hope that each new day will bring anything but more of the same drudgery and fear.
This reminded me of a colleague back at Yale who was far to the left of me on the political spectrum and who once asked completely seriously, “Clarissa, why do you never travel in the summer? Don’t you like traveling?”
* As I said before, the great danger implicit in raising the minimum wage is that many employers will kick out half of the workers and pile their job duties onto the remaining half. I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes.
Clarissa's Blog 
It’s not “three rooms per one person.” It’s two bedrooms. If a couple has 2-3 children, should parents have sex in the same bedroom with kids? Of course, it isn’t the worst thing ever. In 1-bedroom unit kids can sleeep in the living room. Though it can be awkward for some, if those are teen boy and girl.
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What couple? The graphic says very clearly that this is about one person. Or are we talking about somebody who wants to keep a housewife and a bunch of kids on one minimum wage income? Yes, that would be an insane person but I highly doubt they exist.
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If you look at the number of hours in the picture and think about a couple, in which each works 40-45 hours a week (people can’t always find this much), you see they can’t afford it either.
Do you have any thoughts about Egypt today? I read this column about it:
Cry, Beloved Country
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1377259440
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The graphic – which as I said seems to have been created by a spoiled rich person – exaggerates rental prices by at least twice. This person probably thinks that life is not possible without a swimming pool and a sauna per each minimum wage worker either.
Egypt is now following the model set by Iran back in the 1970s that has dominated the politics in the region: a corrupt secular dictator or a regime of religious fanatics. The poorer a country is, the more likely is a regime of religious fanatics taking over.
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In the majority of states, a couple working 40-45h each can afford a 3-room house. Of course, the states with big and very popular cities (and Hawaii which is way more expensive than the rest of US) have their rents driven up by the big-city rents, but the propaganda wouldn’t work if the map was saying “people can’t afford a 2-bedroomer on minimum wage in NY or LA”. Also, I’d like to know what they mean by “fair market rent”. It seems a very fuzzily defined term. Does it mean average rent for such a house? But then half the houses in the area will go for cheaper, and presumably that’s what our fictional minimum-wage couple will be aiming for. Seriously, all this map manages to say is a)that people on minimum wage can’t afford a stereotypically middle class lifestyle and b) that Americans are filthy rich. You’d barely be able to get a room in an apartment on minimum-wage in my country, and we’re doing pretty well compared with the rest of the planet, so seeing some upper-middle-class American fool massaging the data to make the point that (gasp! *shudder*) minimum-wage people can only afford a family-sized home if both of them work and they live outside a major city is hilarious.
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The real tragedy of minimum wage is that while you might afford the rent, you often can’t build up enough capital to move in. Many, many years ago first and last month rent and a security deposit (and the security deposits and hookup fees) for utilities were a solid barrier to access to decent housing* and I doubt it’s gotten easier.
The other tragedy is that if you’re poor in the US you almost certainly have to live surrounded by other poor people which sucks big time. I think economic segregation by housing costs is one of the crueler practices of the US. Where I live now, there are poorer, more middle classish and wealthier people all living near each other and I think that’s overall healthier.
*my definition of that is… sloppy, basically it’s housing that doesn’t depress you in a neighborhood that doesn’t depress you. It doesn’t have to delight, but it going home or staying home shouldn’t be a hateful chore either.
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The The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (NLIHC)’s infographic makes several assumptions: 1) there is only wage earner in the household and others who do not work, like kids. 2) The graphic doesn’t say this but they’re defining affordable as no more than 30% of pay. Because yes, the idea that one person needs two bedrooms is silly.
My parents bought a duplex. Each side has two bedrooms, kitchen, living room, etc. I plugged the rent into the calculator and one person would not be able to afford it. However, each duplex has two tenants and both split the rent (they’re on the lease). Now I don’t know their actual incomes so I don’t know if it’s “affordable” by HUD standards.
As to where the numbers come from
How the NLIC came up with the numbers.
Explanation of Fair Market Rent
…which is based off ofHUD’s definition of a Fair Market Rate
Of course none of that fits onto an infographic.
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I assume that the minimum wage in the States being discussed is the national one of $7.85 and not the American national restaurant workers minimum wage of $2.13. Anyone want to argue that the last minimum wage is good enough? One pundit quoted a study which said an increase in McDonald’s workers minimum wage would increase the cost of a Big Mac by 68 cents although in Australia with a minimum wage of $16 (US) a Big Mac costs 6 cents more. For an extra six cents why not give a person a better life? Of course there is Clarissa’s market clearing argument which leads to the video below.
http://youtu.be/KeSQ5Rv7eH8
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