Critical_Thinker

What I doubt is being able to find any building on American Soil that you can afford the rent on while working minimum wage.

Minimum wage in massachusetts is $16/hr or 33,280.

Here's a furnished room for rent, 995/mo aka 12k/year - well within minimum wage budget above, just a hair over 33% of gross. https://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/apa/d/roslindale-995-furnished-room/7813596105.html

here's another, 1100/mo https://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/apa/d/somerville-roommate-situation-br-avail/7813966888.html

689/mo room for rent (lowell but still possible to find minimum wage jobs near lowell.) https://boston.craigslist.org/nwb/apa/d/lowell-brazilzian-room-mates-furnished/7807989802.html

975/mo https://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/apa/d/everett-private-bedroom-975-month/7811735244.html

There's no shortage of rooms for rent that are affordable for a single minimum wage income. You're just not living on your own. Isn't the trope that 4-6+ immigrants all live together in one house? because that's what they do to minimize housing expenses. You don't need a great home to survive or thrive or to even raise kids... because the listings above that we consider actually end up being less finding a random stranger on the internet and more extended family focused where you find family or friends of family who have immigrated to the US and already live in an area. Here in MA that is a mixture of different cities depending on what cultural group you're from.

Now let's take a look at a poorer state like Georgia. 7.25/hr minimum wage, or 15k/year. This one will be harder but I suspect people will largely make way more than that since walmart pays closer to 10.

$175/mo https://atlanta.craigslist.org/atl/roo/d/atlanta-atl-marta-furn-mid-age-man-free/7810363955.html

$400/mo for a trailer (eww, but doable... 4800 a year) https://atlanta.craigslist.org/sat/apa/d/thomaston-mobile-home-for-rent-in/7810137528.html

495/mo atlanta highway loop https://atlanta.craigslist.org/sat/roo/d/red-oak-great-room-available-in-college/7813455844.html

That being said, there are some cheaper places out there. $250/mo (incl utilities) in the heart of the city for a room but women only https://atlanta.craigslist.org/atl/roo/d/atlanta-seeking-cool-roommate-for-old/7813271349.html

Some (likely) gay dude wants a gay dude to move in $350/mo https://atlanta.craigslist.org/eat/roo/d/decatur-sharing-accommodation-with-gay/7814264684.html

If there are situations where you can split a rental even there for that cheap... how can anyone even argue that it isn't at all possible to survive on minimum wage?

I get that most people do not want to live with strangers or anybody at all if they can help it but it's a much better option than being homeless or living in a country where you will be paid a couple hundred bucks a month.

In my wife's home country a salary of $11k/year is considered typical. Some make a lot less, some make a lot more. So a lot of people get by on about 6k/year.

In my state minimum wage is 16/hr or $33,280. Almost all jobs pay substantially more than this, but if all your costs are day to day are food, transport and renting a room with family/cousins/etc you can afford to send $6000 aka $500/mo. It's way less than rent anyway. $500/mo can trivially feed a family in most of latin america for a month with some leftover. If you have that much a month you can absolutely survive, but don't expect any luxuries. AC is unheard of. You probably have a tiny portable washing machine for clothes, the kind kids get for their dorms in the US. You hang your clothes out on a clothesline. Electricity isn't 100% stable, brownouts are common and so is service interruption. Generators are a luxury. You can't drink the water without boiling it, so everyone drinks bottled.

My wife was more likely to only send $100-200, because even that little makes a major impact and in the US where we are, it doesn't do very much. $1 goes a lot further in places like, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador and many, many more countries in the Americas than it goes in the US.

When my wife went clothes shopping in the US for the first time she thought Primark was incredibly expensive. They're known for being very cheap low quality clothes in the US. Still way more expensive than clothes in her home country (aside from the typical imported luxury brands that few can afford.)

At the start of the pandemic my wife's mom sold their condo in a wealthy portion of their capitol for about $ 40k US. I just bought a condo that is slightly bigger for about 600k.

So yeah, you can X to doubt all you want but I promise you really don't know what it's like in the overwhelming majority of countries in the world. It's impossible to understand if you haven't even been to a place that doesn't speak English.

Spotify is an evil company. They've started adding fake songs in to pay themselves instead of paying royalties to real artists.

Ouch. That's 68k of house repairs in 3 years, or 1888/month for 3 years. For that i'm guessing you could come close to renting a 2BR... but then you'd lose the ubermortgage rate of 2021. 500k @ 7.5% here means i'm on the hook for 5kish per month before food/car/gas/internet/clothes expenses. (includes hoa/taxes/utilities/pmi and other escrow expenses.)

I throw away about 3300 on interest only per month because my wife forced us to buy and money is tighter than ever, but I still have an emergency fund.

I will say i've never put anything on credit unless cash is in the bank already. 20-30%+ interest is something you just can't climb out from under easily. That being said I have no idea how i'm going to afford a ~15-20k replacement hvac system once my ~20 year old one dies, could be tomorrow, could be in 1-3 years - who is to say? Definitely on the hook for a water heater next year. Dishwasher is ready to go but i'd handwash.

There are obviously easily exploited loopholes to enable H1B visas especially for a couple of businesses that hire the most H1Bs.

As long as most countries in this world have median wages well below 33% of the US there will be rampant outsourcing / under the table labor / vastly lower comp H1B roles.

If you truly try to minimize your cost of living the cost to live in the US is surprisingly cheap. Most shit we buy is optional. Rice and beans are cheap, you can find people giving away clothes, transportation can be very cheap and a simple pay as you go phone can be very cheap and be your access to the internet and is fully functional. You can make enough with a job that just pays minimum wage to send enough money home and feed an entire family without yourself worrying about being homeless or going without food.

Immigrants tend to try harder and put up with more bullshit than natives because things are that much better here than back home. Hell, we have food pantries! That's basically unheard of in most of the world. Billions still struggle to put food on the table outside of the US and western europe. I relied on food pantries as a kid to survive in poverty. My wife is from a third world country and couldn't believe people would just give food to those in need freely.

I'm not here to bash on immigrants, i'm just pointing out that even the poor in the US generally have more privilege than they could possibly realize. The vast excess of the top 10% in the US is crazy, and the .1% here are so egregiously overcompensated it should probably be criminal.

From someone with a background in pharma, I have seen many specialist level employees making more than manager level french bosses to the point where they actively manage you out to save money.

I've never seen any of my french colleagues telling me how cheap their housing costs are and how nice their commute is on their commute into paris.

Don't get me wrong, QOL is better and i'm for effectively everything most european countries are pushing for public policy wise (excepting the recent right wing nutty stuff going on.) I have never seen americans making less total comp than europeans for the same role within the same company. I haven't just worked in pharma either.

We have pharma sales reps making 150k-250k base + commission pay with nothing more than a generic bachelor's degree. Then they also get a company car, 15k/year insurance, 30 days PTO. No job security though, but that same job security you have is like a great wall of employment where everyone fights for contract roles in the hopes they get converted to internal, right? That's how it goes in France from what my colleagues have said.

What stopped you from saving up a few hundred bucks?

Just curious. Everyone's situation is different. Most of us who came from nothing had to make a lot of hard choices to get to a point where money was enough that a few hundred dollar purchase had no material impact on our lives.

christ it should be a rule to never post links to sites that require accounts or logins when sharing information about a discussion without also providing screenshots or a non-account mirror.

Nearly all countries do this. Even the regressive ones. It's one of the biggest reasons why pharma is a massive cash cow in the US, alongside the fact that we don't negotiate drug prices aside from a handful of drugs and only medicare/medicaid and only the past <4 years or so.

*must relocate to shithole work site with self funded relocation where labor rights have been repealed and report to duty 6 days a week for minimum 14 hour shifts. 20 for crunch time. We make 996 look like child's play!

The goal is to lower US labor costs to below European ones and more akin to the typical 50k/year indentured servitude india H1B worker salary.

FTFA:

Another Musk follower said that he should "open a school" to better train Americans, and then added, "We have brains."

"If you need a school, you’ve lost already," Musk replied.

You need a school? Get back to work peasant.