Except nobody earns the minimum wage today, it's less than 1/2 of 1% of US labor.
The median full-time wage is now $62,000. You can start at $13 at almost any national retailer, and $15 or above at CVS / Walgreens / Costco. The cashier positions require zero work background, zero skill, zero education. You can make $11-$13 at what are considered bad jobs, like flipping pizzas at Little Caesars.
This will probably be an unpopular reply, but "real median household income" — aka, inflation-adjusted median income — has steadily risen since the 90s and is currently at an all-time high in the United States. [1] Inflation includes the cost of housing (by measuring the cost of rent).
However, we are living through a housing supply crisis, and while overall cost of living hasn't gone up, housing's share of that has massively multiplied. We would all be living much richer lives if we could bring down the cost of housing — or at least have it flatline, and let inflation take care of the rest.
Education is interesting, since most people don't actually pay the list price. The list price has gone up a lot, but the percentage of people paying list price has similarly gone down a lot: from over 50% in the 90s for state schools to 26% today, thanks to a large increase in subsidy programs (student aid). While real education costs have still gone up somewhat, they've gone up much less than the prices you're quoting lead you to believe: those are essentially a tax on the rich who don't qualify for student aid. [2]
I think everyone has quibbles about the CPI. Ultimately though, it would take a lot of cherry-picking to make it seem like overall cost of living has gone up 3x while wages have gone up less. As a counterexample, an NES game in 1990 cost $50 new (in 1990 dollars! Not adjusted for inflation). Battlefield 6 cost $70 new this year (in 2025 dollars), and there were widespread complaints about games getting "too expensive." In real terms games have become massively less expensive — especially considering that the budget for Battlefield 6 was $400MM, and the budget for Super Mario World in 1990 was less than $2MM.
There are a zillion examples like this. Housing has gone way up adjusted for inflation, but many other things have gone way, way down adjusted for inflation. I think it's hard to make a case that overall cost of living has gone up faster than median wages, and the federal reports indicate the opposite: median real income has been going up steadily for decades.
Housing cost is visible and (of course, since it's gone up so much) painful. But real median income is not underwater relative to the 90s. And there's always outrage when something costs more than it used to, even if that's actually cheaper adjusted for inflation: for example, the constant outrage about videogame prices, which have in fact massively declined despite requiring massively more labor to make and sell.
Housing, vehicles, groceries, and health insurance are all up massively. Who gives a shit how much a game costs if you can't afford groceries and rent?
Fortunately, you are wrong. The cost of milk in 1995 was $2.50/gallon; today, it's about $4.13/gallon — which is less than inflation since 1995. Ditto for many other grocery products: although you can always cherry pick some that have gone up relative to inflation (e.g. eggs), there are many that gave gone down. Groceries are tracked by the CPI.
Vehicles are also cheaper relative to inflation. In 1995, a new Toyota Camry cost $16k base. Today, a new Toyota Camry costs $28k base, which is less than inflation on $16k since 1995 — while being much safer, faster, larger, more comfortable, with a better sound system, and more fuel-efficient. Vehicle prices are tracked by the CPI, as well.
We can keep going. How about a pair of canvas Converse sneakers in 1995? $30 new. Today, 30 years later with 112% inflation: $60 new, aka, slightly cheaper relative to inflation than in the 90s.
I'm guessing you use a laptop for work. Let's see: in 1991, an Apple Powerbook cost a little over $2k. Today, you can buy a Macbook Air that makes the 1991 laptop seem like an abnormally heavy and ugly calculator for $1k. Is it unfair that I'm using laptops rather than desktops? Okay, let's look at desktops: in 1998 when the iMac launched, it cost $1299. Today, a massively faster iMac with a much larger screen costs... $1299.
Etc etc.
As per my original comment: you are right that housing has gone way up. But not everything has, and wages have gone up as well, and it would be very hard to claim overall cost of living is up 3x while wages are up less.
In 2010 I paid 3k for a 10 year old truck with 100k miles. That same truck today costs easily 15k. Same story for rent. Same story for groceries. Same story for health insurance.
Who gives a shit how much trinkets costs if you can't afford groceries and rent?
You're identifying the right problem (school and housing costs are completely out of hand) but then resorting to an ineffective solution (minimum wage) when what you actually need is to get those costs back down.
The easy way to realize this is to notice that the median wage has increased by proportionally less than the federal minimum wage has. The people in the middle can't afford school or housing either. And what happens if you increase the minimum wage faster than overall wages? Costs go up even more, and so does unemployment when small businesses who are also paying those high real estate costs now also have to pay a higher minimum wage. You're basically requesting the annihilation of the middle class.
Whereas you make housing cost less and that helps the people at the bottom and the people in the middle.
>resorting to an ineffective solution (minimum wage) when what you actually need is to get those costs back down.
I'm not really resorting to any solution.
My comment is pointing out that when you only do one side of the equation (income) without considering the other side (expenses), it's worthless. Especially when you are trying to make a comparison across years.
How we go about fixing the problem, if we ever do, is another conversation. But my original comment doesn't attempt to suggest any solution, especially not one that "requests the annihilation of the middle class". It's solely to point out that adventured's comment is a bunch of meaningless numbers.
> It's solely to point out that adventured's comment is a bunch of meaningless numbers.
The point of that comment was to point out that minimum wage is irrelevant because basically nobody makes that anyway; even the entry-level jobs pay more than the federal minimum wage.
In that context, arguing that the higher-than-minimum wages people are actually getting still aren't sufficient implies an argument that the minimum wage should be higher than that. And people could read it that way even if it's not what you intended.
So what I'm pointing out is that that's the wrong solution and doing that rather than addressing the real issue (high costs) is the thing that destroys the middle class.
> (school and housing costs are completely out of hand)
On the housing side, the root problem is obvious:
Real estate cannot be both affordable and considered an investment. If it's affordable, that means the price is staying flat relative to inflation, which makes it a poor investment. If it's a good investment, that means the value is rising faster than inflation, which means unaffordability is inevitable.
The solution to the housing crisis is simple: Build more. But NIMBYs and complex owners who see their house/complex as an investment will fight tooth-and-nail against any additional supply since it could reduce their value.
> Real estate cannot be both affordable and considered an investment. If it's affordable, that means the price is staying flat relative to inflation, which makes it a poor investment. If it's a good investment, that means the value is rising faster than inflation, which means unaffordability is inevitable.
This is a misunderstanding of what makes something a good investment. Something is a good investment if it's better for you than your other alternatives.
Suppose you buy a house and then have a mortgage payment equivalent to the amount you'd have been paying in rent until the mortgage is paid off. At that point you have an asset worth e.g. $200,000 and you no longer have a mortgage payment. By contrast, if you'd been paying rent instead then you'd have to continue paying rent. That makes the house a good investment even if its value hasn't increased by a single cent since you bought it -- it could even have been a good investment if its value has gone down, because its true value is in not having to pay rent. Paying $300,000 over time for a house which is now worth $200,000 leaves you $200,000 ahead of the person who paid $300,000 in rent in order to end up with the asset you can find on the inside of an empty box.
Likewise, suppose you're in the landlord business. In one city it costs a million dollars to buy a two bedroom unit and then you can rent it out for $10,000/month. In another city the same two bedroom unit costs $10,000 to buy but then you could only rent it out for $100/month. If your business is to buy the property and rent it out, is one of these a better investment than the other? No, the ROI is exactly the same for both of them and either one could plausibly be a good investment even without any appreciation.
In both cases the value of the property doesn't have to increase to make it a good investment and in both cases the value of the property may not even come into play, because if you're planning to keep the asset in order to live in it or rent it out then you can't simultaneously sell it. And for homeowners, even if you were planning to sell it eventually, you'd then still need somewhere to live, so having all housing cost more isn't doing the average homeowner any good. If they sold they'd only have to pay the higher price to live somewhere else.
However, there is one major difference between homeowners and landlords. If you increase the supply of housing, rents go down. For homeowners that doesn't matter, because they're "renting" to themselves; they pay (opportunity cost) and receive (imputed rent) in equal amounts, so it doesn't matter to them if local rents change -- or it benefits them because it lowers local cost of living and then they pay lower prices for local things. Whereas landlords will fight you on that to their last breath, because that's their actual return on investment. Which is why they're the villains and they need to lose.
sweet! according to austintexas.gov, that's only $2.63 below the 2024 living wage. $5.55 below, if you use the MIT numbers for 2025.
As long as you don't run into anything unforseen like medical expenses, car breakdowns, etc., you can almost afford a bare-bones, mediocre life with no retirement savings.
I don't disagree that there has been a huge issue with stagnant wages, but not everybody who works minimum wage needs to make a living wage. Some are teenagers, people just looking for part time work, etc. Pushing up minimum wage too high can risk destroying jobs that are uneconomical at that level that could have been better than nothing for many people.
That being said, there's been an enormous push by various business groups to do everything they can to keep wages low.
It's a complicated issue and one can't propose solutions without acknowledging that there's a LOT of nuance...
>but not everybody who works minimum wage needs to make a living wage
I think this is a distraction that is usually rolled out to derail conversations about living wages. Not saying that you're doing that here, but it's often the case when the "teenager flipping burgers" argument is brought up.
Typically in conversations about living wages, people are talking about financially independent adults trying to make their way through life without starving while working 40 hours per week. I don't think anyone is seriously promoting a living wage for the benefit of financially dependent minors.
And, in any case, the solution could also be (totally, or in part) a reduction in expenses instead of increase in income.
>It's a complicated issue and one can't propose solutions without acknowledging that there's a LOT of nuance...
That's for sure! I know it's not getting solved on the hacker news comment section, at least.
> I think this is a distraction that is usually rolled out to derail conversations about living wages. Not saying that you're doing that here, but it's often the case when the "teenager flipping burgers" argument is brought up.
If you're focusing on minimum wage, they tent to be highly coupled, though some jurisdictions have lower minimum wages for minors to deal with this.
> Typically in conversations about living wages, people are talking about financially independent adults trying to make their way through life without starving while working 40 hours per week. I don't think anyone is seriously promoting a living wage for the benefit of financially dependent minors.
Few minimum wage jobs even offer the option to work full time. Many retail environments have notoriously unpredictable shifts that are almost impossible for workers to plan around. I've heard varying reasons for this (companies like having more employees working fewer hours for flexibility down to avoiding people on the full time payroll means they legally don't have to offer benefits). The result is that minimum wage earners often have to juggle multiple jobs, childcare, and the negative effects of commuting to all of them.
This also ignores many other factors around poverty, such as housing costs and other inflation.
> That's for sure! I know it's not getting solved on the hacker news comment section, at least.
For sure! 99% of people on HN haven't had to experience living long term off of it. I did for awhile in college, where outside of tuition I had to pay my own way in a large city (I fully acknowledge that this is anecdotal and NOT the same as poverty living). I only had to feed myself, not think about saving for the future, and I was sharing a house with other geeky roommates where we had some of the best times of our lives. I don't think we could have pulled that off in today's economic environment...
The part time workers has been sorted out as living wage calculations assume full time work.
Even if you are a teenager you deserve a living wage - if a teenager living at home needs to work full time, then that home likely need some of those money.
Counterpoint: affording average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment (~$1,675) requires that exact median full-time wage. $15 an hour affords you about $740 for monthly housing expenses. One can suggest getting two roommates for a one-bedroom apartment, but they would be missing the fact that this is very unusual for the last century. It's more in line with housing economics from the early-to-mid 19th century.
In addition to the other comments, I presume the big box retailers do not hire for full-time positions when they don't have to, and gig economy work is rapidly replacing jobs that used to be minimum wage.
in that case it should be completely uncontroversial to raise the minimum wage and help that .5% of labor out. yet somehow, it's a non-starter. (btw, googling says the number is more like 1.1%. in 1979, 13.4% of the labor force made minimum wage. this only shows how obsolete the current minimum wage level is).
My uncle was running a number of fast food restaurants for a franchise owner making millions. His statement about this topic is simple, "they are not living wage jobs ... go into manufacturing if you want a living wage".
I don't like my uncle at all and find him and people like him to be terrible human beings.
If a business can't pay a living wage, it's not really a successful business. I, too, could become fabulously wealthy selling shoes if someone just have me shoes for $1 so I could resell them for $50.
> If a business can't pay a living wage, it's not really a successful business.
Let's consider the implications of this. We take an existing successful business, change absolutely nothing about it, but separately and for unrelated reasons the local population increases and the government prohibits the construction of new housing.
Now real estate is more scarce and the business has to pay higher rent, so they're making even less than before and there is nothing there for them to increase wages with. Meanwhile the wages they were paying before are now "not a living wage" because housing costs went way up.
Is it this business who is morally culpable for this result, or the zoning board?
There are certainly elements of this. And there are also elements like my city, where some of the more notable local business owners and developers are all _way too cozy_ with the City Council and Planning/Zoning Boards (like not just rubbing shoulders at community events, fundraisers, but in the "our families rent AirBnBs together and go on vacation together) which gives them greater influence.
All that being said, though, Robert Heinlein said once:
> There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
> And there are also elements like my city, where some of the more notable local business owners and developers are all _way too cozy_ with the City Council and Planning/Zoning Boards (like not just rubbing shoulders at community events, fundraisers, but in the "our families rent AirBnBs together and go on vacation together) which gives them greater influence.
But now you're just condemning the zoning board and their cronies as it should be, as opposed to someone else who can't pay higher wages just because real estate got more expensive since it got more expensive for them too.
> Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
Which is basically useless in this context because when costs increase you could apply it equally to not raising the minimum wage (the individual has to suck it up) or raising the minimum wage (the small business owner has to suck it up). Meanwhile neither of them should have to suck it up because we should instead be getting the costs back down.
But in that case they are successful; they're just not paying very much relative to the cost of living as a result of someone else's imposition of artificial scarcity
But they do have employees. Their employees are just unhappy because now they're barely scraping by, but most employers can't afford to pay them more because the employers are in the same boat paying the high real estate costs themselves.
Can we use the same argument for all of the businesses that are only surviving because of VC money?
I find it rich how many tech people are working for money losing companies, using technology from money losing companies and/or trying to start a money losing company and get funding from a VC.
Every job is not meant to support a single person living on their own raising a family.
That's what VC money is for. When it comes to paying below a living wage, we typically expect the government to provide support to make up the difference (so they're not literally homeless). Businesses that rely on government to pay their employees should not exist.
That’s kind of the point, a mom and pop restaurant or a McDonald’s franchise owner doesn’t have the luxury of burning $10 for every $1 in revenue for years and being backed by VC funding.
Oh and the average franchise owner is not getting rich. They are making $100K a year to $150K a year depending on how many franchises they own.
Also tech companies can afford to pay a tech worker more money because you don’t have to increase the number of workers when you get more customers.
YC is not going to give the aspiring fast food owner $250K to start their business like they are going to give “pets.ai - AI for dog walkers”
In that case they probably shouldn't be running a McDonald's. They aren't owed that and they shouldn't depend on their workers getting government support just so the owners can "earn" their own living wage.
Yet tech workers are “owed” making money because they are in an industry where their employers “deserve” to survive despite losing money because they can get VC funding - funded by among others government pension plans?
I find it slightly hypocritical that people can clutch their pearls at small businesses who risk their own money while yet another BS “AI” company’s founders can play founder using other people’s money.
Classically, not all jobs are considered "living wage" jobs. That whole notion is something some people made up very recently.
A teenager in his/her first job at McDonald's doesn't need a "living wage." As a result of forcing the issue, now the job doesn't exist at all in many instances... and if it does, the owner has a strong incentive to automate it away.
> A teenager in his/her first job at McDonald's doesn't need a "living wage." As a result of forcing the issue, now the job doesn't exist at all in many instances
The majority of minimum wage workers are adults, not teenagers. This is also true for McDonald's employees. The idea that these jobs are staffed by children working summer jobs is simply not reality.
Anyone working for someone else, doing literally anything for 40 hours a week, should be entitled to enough compensation to support themselves at a minimum. Any employer offering less than that is either a failed business that should die off and make room for one that's better managed or a corporation that is just using public taxpayer money to subsidize their private labor expenses.
A teenager is presumably also going to school full time and works their job part time, not ~2000 hours per year.
If we build a society where someone working a full time job is not able to afford to reasonably survive, we are setting ourselves up for a society of crime, poverty, and disease.
Let's talk about steelmanning, shall we? Why should I show good faith when absolutely no one else in the conversation is?
Take it from the top. First reply: The majority of minimum wage workers are adults, not teenagers. This is also true for McDonald's employees. The idea that these jobs are staffed by children working summer jobs is simply not reality.
The steelman position would grant that in fact, it's traditional for teenagers working summer jobs to do just that, and proceed to explain why high minimum wages as a one-size-fits-all policy are still a net win for society. Instead, autoexec starts by attacking an unstated position -- that these are necessarily 40-hour/week full-time jobs -- and wraps up by plainly and literally denying reality.
Second reply: A teenager is presumably also going to school full time and works their job part time, not ~2000 hours per year. If we build a society where someone working a full time job is not able to afford to reasonably survive, we are setting ourselves up for a society of crime, poverty, and disease.
At least kube-system doesn't make the mistake of assuming that all jobs require 2000 hours of work per year, but they fail to acknowledge, much less address, my point that not all jobs are done for survival purposes. Not only is that not an example of steelmanning, it's followed up by an irrelevant bare assertion made without the faintest trace of historical grounding.
Moving on to array_key_first: Just the simple fact that mcdonalds is open during school hours is enough to demolish the "teenagers flipping burgers" type arguments.
Once again, the fact is that jobs such as burger-flipping have traditionally provided part-time and summer jobs for young people living at home who are looking to save up a bit of money and get some work experience. This reply doesn't care to acknowledge the basic facts of the matter, much less address the strongest possible interpretation of my argument.
Then there's this zinger from swiftcoder: Turns out our supply of underage workers is neither infinite, nor even sufficient to staff all fast food jobs in the nation. If you are looking for an example of a strawman argument in this thread, how about picking on an actual one before jumping on my case?
Come back with your "steelman" bullshit when you're willing to apply the same rules to all sides of the argument.
> At least kube-system doesn't make the mistake of assuming that all jobs require 2000 hours of work per year, but they fail to acknowledge, much less address, my point that not all jobs are done for survival purposes.
I think we both can agree that there's a lot of nuance when it comes to wages and employment. How much time is someone spending at that job? What type of living situation do they have? What other sources of income do they have in their living situation? What are their expenses? etc.
You're right that not all jobs are done for survival purposes. But colloquially, when people use the term "living wage", they're talking specifically about people who work a wage in order to survive. Which is the reason that most people have jobs.
> Not only is that not an example of steelmanning, it's followed up by an irrelevant bare assertion made without the faintest trace of historical grounding.
Do you mean that in the past people did not survive on a single income? Social and family structures in the past definitely look different than they do today. But that doesn't really have any relevance to the people living in the present. Socioeconomics changes over time. Many of the living situations of the past are straight up illegal today. I know relatives who grew up without electricity or running water and grew their own food for survival. They didn't need the modern concept of a "living wage", but at the same time you can't reasonably expect someone from today's world to do the same thing they did.
Also, it is frightening how close that is to current day minimum wage.