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A comment on Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck. Parent comment

Re:Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living p... by AlexandrB on Thursday February 17, 2022 @03:00PM (#30377911)
The problem is that, if everyone took your advice, who would pick up the garbage and make the lattes?

The other problem is that if you want to "better your life" and stop working at Amazon for $15/hr, historically you had to go somewhere where those better jobs are (often NYC/SF/LA, depending on industry). Maybe with remote work becoming more common this will change, but telling people to live in low CoL areas unless they're already making a good income puts a serious damper on social mobility.

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Re:Despite rising wages, 61% of Americans are still living p... by e4e78a06 on Thursday February 17, 2022 @04:14PM (#30378767)
Maybe wages would go up if there were less people chasing the "dream" of living in SF/NYC/LA on a Starbucks barista career. If everyone took my advice the people left would get higher wages. That's supply and demand.

> historically you had to go somewhere where those better jobs are

There are plenty of good paying (maybe not FAANG's 500k salary but 6 figures nonetheless) jobs in Chicago, Atlanta, North Carolina RTP, Columbus, etc. The biggest contributor to social mobility is getting a good degree at a good school. If you get any engineering degree from any decent state school - doesn't matter mechanical or computer or chemical or whatever - you're making good money.

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