The minimum living wage should be driven by local housing costs. Many sources of financial advice recommend spending no more than one-third of your income on housing costs. By that rule, the minimum living wage should be three times the cost of a mid-tier one-bedroom apartment.
For those who would claim that's too much to pay for a "minimum wage job," I have another question: Should a job that does not pay enough for someone to live be allowed to exist? We have those kinds of jobs today, and the companies with these jobs have whole departments teaching their employees how to gain social support such as rent assistance and Medicaid.
> the minimum living wage should be three times the cost of a mid-tier one-bedroom apartment.
I would argue very-low-tier even if I were taking your position, or even low tier with roommates
> Should a job that does not pay enough for someone to live be allowed to exist?
I don't know, probably. For local service jobs like janitors, demand is inflexible, and they'd probably end up just getting higher pay. I worry about what happens to any job that could be done for cheap, remotely, in a foreign country. Manufacturing already happened this way, and with a high enough minimum it would happen to landscape architects, middle managers, accountants, etc. In the absurd case it could be cheaper to ship overseas your HVAC or even your car for repairs, instead of paying a mechanic. It could be cheaper to telephone a foreign doctor, food costs could be dwarfed by labor costs to the point that fast food is luxury, it could be cheaper to ship your dog across the border to go to a vet. It seems like we'd be putting a whole lot of people out of jobs and business, with their customers going remotely to a sweat shop.
Now if we pair the minimum wage increase with suitable tariffs so that people aren't shipping their cars for repairs, sure, but that is never brought up.
Gives me an idea. If I was rich and wanted to fix the healthcare system, I might look into charters plane flights/accomodations and find the most lucrative medical procedures and offer people a better way overseas. We count on people being the adversarial counterweight in the US but they don't really have the means to truly be that anymore. I bet it wouldn't take a whole lot of enabling people power to destabilize the current medical system.
What industries could people take power back in this way?
Look up medical tourism. It's a thing already. The value-add would be vetting the medical practitioners. You go to your doctor because you trust them to do the right job. You go to a doctor in a foreign country, and it feels much more dodgy. Medical tourism groups may already do this; I haven't investigated it.
I toyed with the idea when I needed a couple of crowns. A friend of mine in Estonia and I worked out that two crowns is the break-even point for traveling to Estonia and seeing his dentist.
For those who would claim that's too much to pay for a "minimum wage job," I have another question: Should a job that does not pay enough for someone to live be allowed to exist? We have those kinds of jobs today, and the companies with these jobs have whole departments teaching their employees how to gain social support such as rent assistance and Medicaid.