Minimum wage: how much is too much?

[Josh]

One thing you could do is tilt the property tax structure in favor of permanent residents rather than 2nd home and AirB&B types.

Henry George liked this idea and these ideas were very present in Catholic Social thought.

Double the property tax rate in the area and then grant a 50% "homestead exemption" for all those who actually live in their homes x-number of months per year. And then use the proceeds for affordable housing or some such.

We have a homestead exemption here in Ohio, but lots of people commit outright fraud and just claim they have multiple primary residences, complete with multiple primary mortgages. Then they rent the 2nd homes out.

Locals who live in their own homes would be unaffected. Out-of-towners who are buying weekend homes or AirB&B type rentals would face a serious tax incentive to look elsewhere. Of course some ordinary people and landlords would be affected as well. It is very difficult to surgically tailor these sorts of measures to have the exact effect that you want without any spillover effects.

One of the biggest distortions in the housing market isn't mom and pop landlords, but big finance buying up single family homes; according to some estimates, 100% of new home construction has been swallowed by large, institutional investors. In short, we are becoming a nation of renters and serfs.

Big money controls big government, so I really don't see much hope this will be changing anytime soon. The end result is a debt bondage system for virtually all people, much like the debt bondage system in India. Nobody has the political will to do anything about it.

[Ken]

Well, what can we really do about this?

That's a good question, and one believers should be thinking about. It does us no good if we have our own homes and property if our brother and our neighbour have to live in grinding poverty because housing sucks up 1/2 their income, and leaves them in debt they can never hope to repay.

I'm most familiar with the Mennonites in this area, and what they do about it is move away.

This option is rapidly disappearing. There isn't somewhere to "move away" to. Your own area seems to be cheap - for now - I would not count on that lasting in the long term. I live currently in one of those "we could move there if we had to go try to move away to someplace cheap" areas.

All this is not to say that you can't find any affordable housing in these areas. You really can, often, even if it's just harder than it used to be. You just have to be content with what you find, and work to improve it, save money, and move up when you can.

I think this is a bit specious. If we want to welcome newcomers into our communities who aren't wealthy, we will have to face the reality that they will be very, very poor, particularly in terms of housing and land. I really don't see a Christian church can sustain itself when it thinks it's OK for 1 person to be sitting on what is now a $500,000 or million dollar house and land, whilst another brother has nothing.

It's time to rethink our relationship to wealth, and that relationship cannot be "well, the poor should just work harder and pull themselves up by their bootstraps". Ken documented in another thread that wages have remained flat for decades. There isn't some option for the poor and working class to just magically make more money, and everything they need to buy is becoming more expensive.

There is plenty of cheap land in this country but a shortage of cheap *productive* land. Here in the Pacific Northwest you can find plenty of cheap rural land in the Klamath Basin where wells are running dry, the region is in the grip of drought, wildfires are burning the place up, and the only ones making a go are legacy farmers who have 100-year old water rights that are also failing due to drought. All across rural west Texas there is cheap land and small towns that are essentially drying up and blowing away. Because the land is not productive and there are no cities or meaningful employment within any sort of reasonable commuting distance.

About the only people who can move to those sorts of places are bushwacker survivalist types or loner retirees who aren't actually trying to make a productive living off the land or build a community.

[Wade]

What price range of houses jumped by $100,000 in value? Are you saying that $75,000 houses are now worth $175,000? Or was it more like $500,000 houses that became worth $600,000?

The house I'm sitting in right now jumped from $150k to about $250k.

The house across the road sold for $220k and then sold again a few weeks later for $230k, and it's smaller and on less land than the one I'm in, but is a more attractive brick structure. A few years ago it was worth maybe $120k.

When my brother in law bought this place, he picked a place he could afford, and that was about an hour drive from his job. I sure hope you don't think being an hour away from one's job is "luxurious living".

My suspicion is that markets where real estate values jump by those kinds of percentages are markets where they can drop quickly as well. For example there are real estate developers that lost everything in California during the crisis of 2008. Or people who got mortgages during the peak ahead of that collapse and then afterward were completely underwater.

In my rural area, we never saw the extremes peaks and valleys of that crisis. We were never extremely overvalued, and so never had a crash. Wanting to live in areas where you can make the big bucks often comes with that kind of risk.

Not true for here. Imagine I maxed out to buy our house for $378,000 four years ago in an undesirable rural location with bad water. It was by far the cheapest place we could find that would still somewhat fit our family. It was used like a garbage dump and the house has never been upgraded in over 40 years - I went for months averaging 3 hours of sleep just trying to make things work (constantly fix bad plumbing and etc.) when we first moved in... Last year before I replaced some windows and some flooring my realtor said she could sell our place for $600,000 easily and prices have gone up way more now as there just is nothing on the market here. I make $47/hr and unless I had a bunch of equity I couldn't dream of buying a house like ours now - a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom, fixer upper in a quiet rural setting on 4.5acres.

[mike]

Well, what can we really do about this?

That's a good question, and one believers should be thinking about. It does us no good if we have our own homes and property if our brother and our neighbour have to live in grinding poverty because housing sucks up 1/2 their income, and leaves them in debt they can never hope to repay.

I'm most familiar with the Mennonites in this area, and what they do about it is move away.

This option is rapidly disappearing. There isn't somewhere to "move away" to. Your own area seems to be cheap - for now - I would not count on that lasting in the long term. I live currently in one of those "we could move there if we had to go try to move away to someplace cheap" areas.

All this is not to say that you can't find any affordable housing in these areas. You really can, often, even if it's just harder than it used to be. You just have to be content with what you find, and work to improve it, save money, and move up when you can.

I think this is a bit specious. If we want to welcome newcomers into our communities who aren't wealthy, we will have to face the reality that they will be very, very poor, particularly in terms of housing and land. I really don't see a Christian church can sustain itself when it thinks it's OK for 1 person to be sitting on what is now a $500,000 or million dollar house and land, whilst another brother has nothing.

It's time to rethink our relationship to wealth, and that relationship cannot be "well, the poor should just work harder and pull themselves up by their bootstraps". Ken documented in another thread that wages have remained flat for decades. There isn't some option for the poor and working class to just magically make more money, and everything they need to buy is becoming more expensive.

You say a lot of good things that I agree with. I am less interested in the large-scale political solutions which I can't really impact in any way, and more in what we can do for our friends and neighbors and the people we are trying to bring to Christ.

I do think that financial advice is one place to start, although that doesn't replace giving real financial aid, and also restraining our own tendencies to live luxuriously when it's within our ability.

That said, yes of course, there's nowhere in the country where you can move and just have a house fall into your lap. At least not a place where you can make a living. By the way I didn't say my area was cheap. Nice rural properties are high and there are not many on the market. But it may be that we're seeing a situation like Lancaster county, where folks who want to start out owning a home can pick up a cheap property in the city and commute out to the country for work and community fellowship.

[appleman2006]

What we are really talking about here is the problem of run away inflation. This is something that responsible governments do everything in their power to stop as the ultimate end result of it is extremely hurtful. However presently neither the US or the Canadian government seems to be able to do anything about it. In fact in their insane efforts to continually print money they are actually causing the problem. (before this becomes a partisan issue, Trump was also guilty of this but Biden has ramped it up to a new level of craziness.)
Ironically all out socialism is often seen as the only answer to this kind of rampant inflation. But history has proven that does not work over the long term either. I happen to believe that only a very small government approach can ever fix this but I am not blind to the hurt that would cause for a generation or two as well. Both of our countries have gone way to far down the socialist route so that the piper will soon have to be paid one way or another.
I expect that sometime over the next 10 to 20 years we will see a great reset the likes of what we have never seen. The results will be extremely hurtful to a lot of people especially the poor. If any of you think that governments can fix this, good luck with that.

It is a great time for each of us to look deep within ourselves and check where our affections are set.

[Josh]

There is plenty of cheap land in this country but a shortage of cheap *productive* land. Here in the Pacific Northwest you can find plenty of cheap rural land in the Klamath Basin where wells are running dry, the region is in the grip of drought, wildfires are burning the place up, and the only ones making a go are legacy farmers who have 100-year old water rights that are also failing due to drought. All across rural west Texas there is cheap land and small towns that are essentially drying up and blowing away. Because the land is not productive and there are no cities or meaningful employment within any sort of reasonable commuting distance.

About the only people who can move to those sorts of places are bushwacker survivalist types or loner retirees who aren't actually trying to make a productive living off the land or build a community.

Yeah, for the average working class person, they need to be able to find a job within 1-2 hours' drive, and they need to have basic utilities like electricity and some kind of access to water.

I suppose Amish people could make a go of more desolate areas, but they still need water, and the amount of water to go around is not increasing. Our current national farming policy seems to be "pump as much water from unsustainable aquifers as possible to grow cheap cotton, alfalfa, and hay".

[Josh]

You say a lot of good things that I agree with. I am less interested in the large-scale political solutions which I can't really impact in any way, and more in what we can do for our friends and neighbors and the people we are trying to bring to Christ.

I do think that financial advice is one place to start, although that doesn't replace giving real financial aid, and also restraining our own tendencies to live luxuriously when it's within our ability.

I don't really see what financial advice I can give to someone who is making, say, $25/hr (that rate includes mandatory overtime) at his job, with 3 kids, who overall is being a much more responsible person than he used to be in the past. There really is no "advice" that will square the circle of how he can translate that into buying a $250,000 house.

Or to use Wade's example, at $47/hr, there's not an easy way to give "advice" that will translate into buying an $800k property.

I don't necessarily think financial aid is the right answer either.

That said, yes of course, there's nowhere in the country where you can move and just have a house fall into your lap. At least not a place where you can make a living. By the way I didn't say my area was cheap. Nice rural properties are high and there are not many on the market.

I don't think commuting for both work and church makes any sense. And I support the idea of church schools, so I don't think having a 1-hour commute for school is a good idea at all.

Church fellowship doesn't happen when everyone lives a 1+ hour drive apart. I don't think having church on Sunday is enough. You don't get anything close to enough brother to brother interactions. Church divides into a "haves" and "have nots" where the "haves" are the people who live close enough to each other to actually get real fellowship and brotherhood.

To give an example, we borrowed an impact driver and a socket wrench the other day from a church member a short bit down the road. If we lived an hour apart, that wouldn't have happened.

But it may be that we're seeing a situation like Lancaster county, where folks who want to start out owning a home can pick up a cheap property in the city and commute out to the country for work and community fellowship.

That's an interesting idea, assuming properties in the city are safe and readily available. (Violent crime is going up at an astonishing rate in America, so "safe" neighbourhoods are going to get even more expensive).

[Wade]

You say a lot of good things that I agree with. I am less interested in the large-scale political solutions which I can't really impact in any way, and more in what we can do for our friends and neighbors and the people we are trying to bring to Christ.

I do think that financial advice is one place to start, although that doesn't replace giving real financial aid, and also restraining our own tendencies to live luxuriously when it's within our ability.

I don't really see what financial advice I can give to someone who is making, say, $25/hr (that rate includes mandatory overtime) at his job, with 3 kids, who overall is being a much more responsible person than he used to be in the past. There really is no "advice" that will square the circle of how he can translate that into buying a $250,000 house.

Or to use Wade's example, at $47/hr, there's not an easy way to give "advice" that will translate into buying an $800k property.

I don't necessarily think financial aid is the right answer either.

That said, yes of course, there's nowhere in the country where you can move and just have a house fall into your lap. At least not a place where you can make a living. By the way I didn't say my area was cheap. Nice rural properties are high and there are not many on the market.

I don't think commuting for both work and church makes any sense. And I support the idea of church schools, so I don't think having a 1-hour commute for school is a good idea at all.

Church fellowship doesn't happen when everyone lives a 1+ hour drive apart. I don't think having church on Sunday is enough. You don't get anything close to enough brother to brother interactions. Church divides into a "haves" and "have nots" where the "haves" are the people who live close enough to each other to actually get real fellowship and brotherhood.

To give an example, we borrowed an impact driver and a socket wrench the other day from a church member a short bit down the road. If we lived an hour apart, that wouldn't have happened.

But it may be that we're seeing a situation like Lancaster county, where folks who want to start out owning a home can pick up a cheap property in the city and commute out to the country for work and community fellowship.

That's an interesting idea, assuming properties in the city are safe and readily available. (Violent crime is going up at an astonishing rate in America, so "safe" neighbourhoods are going to get even more expensive).

Young men in our church our looking at purchasing cheap fixer upper homes in town to get started. They are looking at spending $300,000. And our housing prices are much less than most places in BC.

[mike]

I don't really see what financial advice I can give to someone who is making, say, $25/hr (that rate includes mandatory overtime) at his job, with 3 kids, who overall is being a much more responsible person than he used to be in the past. There really is no "advice" that will square the circle of how he can translate that into buying a $250,000 house.

Of course not. You're setting up a ridiculously impossible scenario. Good advice would be to find something affordable for that income level. Don't know your town exactly, but in Berlin Ohio there are homes available for half that.

[Wade]

I don't really see what financial advice I can give to someone who is making, say, $25/hr (that rate includes mandatory overtime) at his job, with 3 kids, who overall is being a much more responsible person than he used to be in the past. There really is no "advice" that will square the circle of how he can translate that into buying a $250,000 house.

Of course not. You're setting up a ridiculously impossible scenario. Good advice would be to find something affordable for that income level. Don't know your town exactly, but in Berlin Ohio there are homes available for half that.

Ridiculous and impossible? The young men here are making less than $25/hr looking at $300,000 bottom of the barrel homes.
You other people are living in spot where inflation and housing shortage having hit yet?

Renting a one or two bedroom basement suite here you'd be fortunate to get a place as low as $1400/month