Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

Re:Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation by deathanatos on Friday December 17, 2021 @12:47PM (#29595578)

If I apply the same calculation today, on a minimum wage of $7.25…

  Wage: $7.25/h
  per-month affordable: $362.50
  median home price: $374,900
  3.519% fixed, 30-yr
  20% down
  required monthly payment -> $1,350

which is unaffordable by a factor of almost 4x.

In fairness, the comment chain you're responding to is talking about the thing you're responding to in your comment, but I think the increase in unaffordability at the minimum wage still speaks to the problem: while it wasn't likely to allow home ownership in the past, but it's even less possible now, and that translates up into the higher wages where people then might have afforded a home, but cannot now.

Plenty of maps have been drawn to show that minimum wage can't even afford to rent median 1-bed apartments.

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Re:Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation by sokoloff on Friday December 17, 2021 @12:50PM (#29595617)

I agree that it’s gotten worse; I just think people underestimate how much it has always sucked to be among the lowest earning households.

You can look at these retired 70-something boomers driving nice cars, owning a house, and taking a couple trips a year and assume they lived on Easy Street their whole lives when in fact they were probably struggling to pay bills 40 and 50 years ago as well.

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