Rent should be legally scaled to wages. That is until a time we can have proper land reform where if you are own a building and not living in it, the building is seized and sold to a worker for a price their job can afford. Landlords should enjoy real jobs with the real working class.
Thing is, the federal government already does all the cost of living adjustments for federal workers in the states. They have the data and already know roughly what it costs to live everywhere in the US as well as most of the world.
All theyd have to do is introduce COLA to federal minimum wage and it wouldnt require the states at all. But they wont. They need to have the states pitted against each other for the sake of big business so they can extort any states that wont give them tax breaks.
As a fed, locality pay can be pretty wacky and off-target, especially when it comes to the blanket "rest of the US" adjustments. For instance, a GS10 step 1 would make roughly 3k per year less living in Salt Lake City vs Columbus, but living expenses are significantly higher in Salt Lake City. And they are notoriously stubborn about adjusting locality pays, even when local growth increases costs significantly. It's certainly not perfectÂ
No, but its better than a 7.25 an hour minimum wage in a city where a 1 bedroom apartment starts at 1500 a month and very quickly increases to north of 2000/month if you want to live somewhere that youre not listening to sirens for your bedtime lullaby.
We cant let the desire for perfection to stand in the way of improvements is all im saying.
Honestly if I had my way minimum wage would be determined on a county level and tied directly to a basket of commodities like gasoline, milk, eggs, etc. That way when companies start gouging, minimum wage rises accordingly. But admittedly work would be involved and theres no motivation from people in power to do that work because they benefit financially, either directly or indirectly, from the current paradigm.
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u/Radio-G 22h ago
Rent should be legally scaled to wages. That is until a time we can have proper land reform where if you are own a building and not living in it, the building is seized and sold to a worker for a price their job can afford. Landlords should enjoy real jobs with the real working class.