Re:Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state
by rayiner on Thursday July 16, 2020 @07:23PM
(#23865038)
No, the framing of the article is disingenuous. If you want to make an argument that someone working minimum wage should be able to live in a separate 1BR, go ahead and make that argument. But that’s not what the article does. It claims there is a “housing affordability crisis” because minimum wage workers can’t afford an average 1 or 2 bedroom apartment. That isn’t an argument for raising the standard. It acts like we have already decided on that higher standard.
Re:Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state
by sanderjd on Thursday July 16, 2020 @07:50PM
(#23865242)
Ah, see, the way I read the article is that it is saying that they have already decided that this is the standard for a crisis, not that we have decided. Where "they" in this case is the National Low Income Housing Coalition, and perhaps also the author and maybe by implication the editorial voice of CNBC. I don't see an attempt being made to put words in my mouth; I see an author using their own words to make an argument mostly based on a study by another institution.
You're right that articles and studies often use terms like "housing crisis" that don't have objective definitions in a way that fits their subjective definition without doing any throat-clearing to call that out. But I don't think there is any real way around that, it seems like you just have to read things with that in mind. Maybe I'm wrong though. Should every article say things like, "there is no objective definition of a housing crisis, but the NLIHC believes this should be considered one". Perhaps they should!
You ask "when did we decide that?". That implies that there is some discrete point in time in the past when societal decisions are made. But that's not how societies work, not how politics work. The way it works is that we are continuously "deciding" things like this, through conversations like the one here, and articles like the one we're talking about. It doesn't make sense to say, "this article is reaching for abstract targets that we haven't decided on", because there is no decision point in the past like that, we're discussing what we want right now, in this moment, and the article is part of that discussion.
You claim that ideas "we like" are not what is pertinent. But that's also not the way societies and politics work. If we as a society decide that this is a good thing to strive for, that "we like" the idea, we can do that. We can decide we want to do that and discuss it and brainstorm ways to achieve it. Looking at what other countries have done is definitely an interesting input in that discussion, but it certainly isn't the only thing that is pertinent.
I think you should just say "I am unconvinced that this should be a goal we have as a society". You seem to be trying to appeal to some larger power, some discrete ledger of things we have decided on, but really I think what you're saying is that you are personally skeptical of this, and perhaps that you believe many others in the society are skeptical of it. Which is cool (I may even agree with that, I'm not sure yet), but it would be more clear to just say that.