Spoiler: it’s not pretty.

The other half is that if they are too high they don't create jobs that pay minimum wage. You can't legislate private jobs into existence.

The more coherent argument against the minimum wage is that it destroys jobs which cannot be profitable for the employer at the higher wage. The problem with this argument is that the preponderance of research indicates a small magnitude for the elasticity of minimum-wage employment with respect to the minimum wage, generally around -0.05. If a 50% increase in minimum wage results in a 2.5% increase in unemployment in the cohort of people earning near the minimum, and if your aim is to increase the average wage for that cohort, then minimum wage increases do work. The idea that they don't is based on non-quantitative reasoning about the rightness of interfering with markets, or the virtue of work, or a value judgment about a small amount of unemployment outweighing an overall increase in compensation, etc.

I've elided a bunch of detail here, in particular the distinction between minimum-wage elasticity and own-wage elasticity, but this is a good starter:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/impacts-of-minimu...

You can still find apartments built in the 1950s that are functional (places where the maintenance was done so they are essentially just as good as 70 years ago) and the rent is cheap. Most people want better.

The key information missing here though is a more generalized cost of living space per person, beyond housing. This data can still be biased, in general, because it may be the case that fewer people own homes, say more successful wealthy people, while the majority are renting these properties. I have a bucket of anecdotal examples of friends who still don't own homes in their 30s and are still renting.

This data would exclude all of those people painting a picture that people are doing well while some unknown population is renting, paying more per square foot than owning, and rates could be increasing per person per square foot over time. That population could be smaller or larger than those who own homes. I'd be interested to see those distributions of renting/owning and a similar cost comparison for renter square foot costs per capita.

Part of the problem here is a different problem -- the concentration of jobs in super high cost metro areas, and often also, the NIMBYism that prevents such high cost metro areas from building more housing to address demand.

There are so many affordable studios to rent. And so many jobs, and sadly they aren't co-located...

GDP does not correlate to "average wealth" and is itself a dubious measure for economic progress depending on what figures you pick to calculate it.

Also, no matter what metric you use, the "average wealth" of the younger generations, particularly millennials, is not in fact higher than their predecessors. The level of their productivity is a historical high point, but this is infamously contrasted by stagnating wages, assets, and by some metrics even overall quality of life.

That's only if you look at developed nations. The average wealth in Asia has exploded. The market for labor is far more globalized now, so you have to compete with people used to lower standards of living.

>The level of their productivity is a historical high point

Who's deserves credit for the productivity? Warehouse workers didn't suddenly get twice as good as good as moving inventory by themselves, they did so because Amazon investors invested in automation

Depending on their use they can save a lot of money relative to the the products/services they replace

And childcare expenses, of course. Especially childcare.

Also, when your cellphone is how you access the Internet because you can't afford a decent laptop, at some point it makes sense to go for a more powerful phone.

Sure but they’re not the majority. This article from forbes (a bit old now) was enlightening. But note that those running their phones into the ground aren’t too far behind those upgrading as soon as they can.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/07/09/how-of...

I suspect that the answer to these types of questions is that most people don't want to admit how mind-fucked we all are in to believing the bullshit that we are inundated with from the most powerful classes and how little freedom and financial mobility exists in the USA.

Because when someone pushed back on you, saying that smartphone ownership now is like car ownership became at some point in the past -- a necessity -- and then you changed it from "smart phones" to "the latest hot gadget".

So it's no longer clear whether you think smart phones and unlimited data are indulgences like ubereats is, or where one might draw the line according to you.

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...

What percentage of the western population eats out 3-4 times a week? I'd bet it isn't more than 10-20%, depending on the country.

> Uber Eats delivery

Not sure the people who do the delivering can afford having food delivered in turn (at least not 3-4 times a week).

Fully 10 percent said they eat out 4 to 6 times a week, and 6 percent said they eat out everyday.

https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2019/05/16/survey-shows-how-o...

https://www.fourth.com/resource/truth-about-dining-out-infog...

is now dead. All this is is a news site quoting it, second-hand, and I have seen enough news sites get original reporting wrong not to place a great deal of stock in them getting it right.

Stands to reason. Dedicating five or more years away from the workforce at least partially, if not in full, is an enormous setback financially. As money compounds, your earnings when you are young are dramatically more important to your financial stability than those when you are older. It would be surprising to learn that such a person is on equal footing with a janitor of the same age who started working at the age of 14.

It's a mistake to think all masters degrees are equally 'bankable'