One comment about the comic - if both of Paula's parents are working two jobs, and working enough hours that she rarely see them, even at minimum wage they would make enough to not live in a health-hazard place that makes their kids sick. The story would change completely if her parents were Mustachian. She would have grown up in reasonable comfort, learned a lot of self reliance skills, and gone on to a comfortable adulthood.
Not necessarily. This will GREATLY depend on where you live. HCOL? Not so much.
Well, if you're going to work at Walmart, why live in a HCOL? And in any case, I bet there are tons of Mustachians in every HCOL in America who spend less than minimum wage and live comfortably.
Where did you grow up? Where does your family live?
Do you have the ability to move? Do you even have a car, money to change locations, ability to put first/last months rent in a new location?
Do you have childcare? If you move, are you giving up free childcare (sibling, parents?) Does it make sense to move?
Rent on a 2BR apartment starts at $2400 a month.
Let's say 2 people make minimum wage and manage to get 50 hours a week between two jobs a piece (a pipe dream, really). That's still not much money.
When you make a comment like: "even at minimum wage they would make enough to not live in a health-hazard place that makes their kids sick" you are greatly simplifying the issue and applying your own personal experience filter.
By the way that $2400 a month apartment in my town would be a sh*thole in a bad neighborhood, likely poorly maintained (leaky roof, mold, etc.)
Then again, a fair number of minimum wage workers and families in my town are homeless, including kids who attend my son's school.
Even if the place is $2400, there are apparently a bunch of other people living with them, so they wouldn't be paying that full amount unless they're also suckers on top of making bad financial decisions. I know people are bad at saving, but do you really think that a family with two adults working four jobs could not reasonably save up enough to pay for ONE MOVE over 18-20 years? Even if they put it all on a credit card, they would literally break even on the moving costs within months.
I know a number of families in my town who are "married" to this place. They'll struggle financially but they won't leave this place b/c everyone they have ever known lives here.
Same here. There is a 7 year waiting list for subsidized housing. It's very hard to find places to live that are affordable. Many of the families have 1 or 2 jobs per adult - but one or no cars. So, moving 35-40 miles in either direction causes an additional problem. Sure, it's cheaper to live. However, with the odd jobs and odd hours, you would need 1 or 2 cars, plus the cost of gas, plus the child care that comes along with that commute. At least professionals can carpool.
Not that there aren't jobs in the other towns, but there aren't as many and they don't pay as well. Even in my educated circle, it's not uncommon to find one family member "sent ahead" for 6 months to 3 years, before the rest of the family joins them. Otherwise, huge risk.
If the family contains elderly people, children, or individuals with disabilities who rely on government benefits of any kind, such as Medicaid, it's not always easy or even necessarily possible to transfer that person's benefits to the new state. Anyone who gets into a situation where the supply of benefits or places is limited (such as a heavily subsidized nursing home, rehab facility, inpatient mental health facility, or subsidized apartment) generally needs to hold onto it. They can't afford to move, because they go to the end of the line in their new location and have to wait their turn. This can take years. Until such time as they are able to secure benefits for themselves, they are 100% dependent on the working or able-bodied members of the family. This means that any able-bodied working adults or teenagers get pulled away from what they're doing to take care of smaller children, disabled adults, elders, and other kinds of in-home caregiving instead of earning a living or continuing their own education.
It's the same in an economy as it is on a battlefield: killing an opponent takes one person out, but just wounding that person takes two to three people out of the action. The person who's hit is out, obviously, but it also takes one to two other people to care for him or her. When a member of a family is sick, injured, a child, very old, or otherwise in need of care, the resources to provide care for that person have to come from somewhere. They do not fall from the sky.
The battlefield analogy breaks down a bit because families (generally) aren't shooting at each other. What deals out the hits is life itself.
Sooner or later, everyone gets old, has a baby, gets sick, or picks up an injury and needs care of some kind. If you don't want that person to rot from neglect, you can either hire someone else to do the work (perhaps by checking into some kind of care facility if it's appropriate, or by putting a child in day care), or you can do the work yourself. Most families can get by if only about a third of the family members have special needs such that they require care and can't get through the day independently. But, frankly, poor families tend to have way more people with special needs like that. They're far more likely to contain adults who suffer from a physical injury, an illness exacerbated by poor nutrition or an inability to pay for preventive care, an old war wound, an untreated or untreatable mental illness, long-term incarceration, a personality disorder, an addiction, or complications related to poor education (such as functional illiteracy).
Every person who's hit requires one to two more to take care of him or her. Pretty soon there's no money left to pay for help. Then, the labor must come from the family. Eventually there are no able-bodied, trained adults left to hold down a job or earn income, or to take care of the actual children because everyone is too busy focusing on the emergency created by whoever has special needs that require attention. The kids end up fending for themselves and sometimes making bad decisions that impair their own ability to become self-supporting. Government programs can slow this process down a bit by providing some help for the elderly, sick, and disabled, but no family in their right collective mind is going to move away from such a program into a region where 100% of the burden is thrown back onto the wage earners. There just aren't enough wage earners.