[hellojesus]

What I haven't understood is: why don't people move away if they're doing min wage jobs in a place where they are clearly incapable of delivering any quality of life?

Bring labor supply down and suddenly the market has to pay more. This seems to be simple oversupply in a saturated market.

[kelnos]

Moving itself is expensive. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you don't have the time or money to even travel to another location to look for better housing and a better job, let alone the time or money required to actually effect a move.

Consider that for many people in this situation, missing a few days of work to look for a new place to live might mean getting fired. Even if they don't get fired, the lost wages for missing those days of work could put them behind on their bills or make it difficult to buy food.

And even if they are able to spend time to find a new place to live without putting their finances in jeopardy, remember that they also have to find a new job in the new location, and doing that without further financial hardship could be difficult.

There are also other considerations: someone barely able to afford living in SF or NYC might not have a car, and walk or take transit to work and to do errands. Living in a lower-cost area might mean needing a car to do things like buy groceries or get to work. If you already can't save money, how are you going to afford a car before you move to the new area?

Many of us here can afford to take weeks or months off to take a break between jobs. Sometimes it's hard to understand that many people can barely take sick days without risking financial ruin.

[dbcurtis]

Not to mention that it might also involve moving away from what little support system that you do have, the cousin that provides child care while you work your second shift janitor job, for instance.

[macintux]

This is huge. No matter how desperate you are, it’s highly likely you’ve established some relationships. You know which of the homeless around you you can trust to watch your things. You know what business owners are more tolerant of a nap.

[tiahura]

So my ancestors could move from 18th Century Europe to the US, but someone in SF can’t make it to Nebraska?

[vaidhy]

Let me reply to this - your ancestors can and did come to a new life. Moving from SF to Nebraska is not a new start. You still carry your credit score, loans, run-ins with the law and all the baggage with you. 18th century lifestyle was much more focused on physical work and as long as you were able to, you can find a job. Now, it is much more complex. Without a car, you are screwed in Nebraska. If you have a kid (or more), then you have to build up a brand new support system. The world has changed.

[sparrish]

So your argument is it was easier to move across continents in the 1800s than to move from SF to Nebraska today? Sorry, I ain't buying it.

[johnnyanmac]

I think the real argument here is that it wasn't just some Joe Schmoe making the move. But the people we're talking about here are below Joe.

Moving may be easier in that it doesn't have a high risk of death, but much harder in actually surviving at your destination. You don't just grab a plot of land and start building your own house these days. America did that hundreds of years ago and charges for it now. How are you paying a security deposit in another state on minimum wage, let alone the travel and job seeking?

[hellojesus]

Typically charity. That's my one of my other comments suggested that the person moving should reach out to churches in their preferred destination. It may help them meet new people and start a network, including landing a low skill job they can utilize to make rent while they search for a better one.

[ipaddr]

How many jobs can you walk into in Nebraska and start working with no id. The nature of work has changed. Travel options are much more plentiful but those low skilled jobs aside from farming have been outsourced

[hellojesus]

What is this no id thing? They should have one from their current state.

[johnnyanmac]

Mine didn't really have a choice, unfortunately. But I guess it was technically a "free" trip across the ocean.

[hellojesus]

I get all those points, truly, but at the same time find it hard to belive that a dedicated person couldn't scrape together enough money for at least a plane ticket or bus ride out of town. They could prematurely contact a church in a destination city to see if the church had any charitable funds to spare them for temporary housing as they look to find work.

I think these days we forget that the gov was never meant to provide a social net. The mechanism for that is charity. It's much harder nowadays with disconnected communities, but reaching out for help often works.

I myself spent years with belongings only as burdensome as I could carry (at worst case) or pack into my sedan. It made moving from one place to another easy, and I could always rent a cheap hotel to live in since I wasn't burdened by possessions.

[fragmede]

> I think these days we forget that the gov was never meant to provide a social net.

It absolutely was. Government has grown into this leviathan we have today, and the world's drastically more complicated since the days of living in huts in villages but the underlying principal is we take care of our own.

[LordDragonfang]

The purpose of the (US) government was and is to provide for the general welfare of its citizens; that's one of the two justifications given in the constitution for its ability to levy taxes.

Welfare is right there in the founding document, and a safety net is part of that.

[ericfrenkiel]

Categorically, definitionally, and historically wrong.

What you are you are referring to is the following: “ Article I, Section 8, Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States…”

First, “welfare” here means “the state of well being.”

Second, it is tied to the “United States” as a whole - not any given individual, especially because the Supreme Court has ruled the government has no duty to protect its citizens from harm (Deshaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 1989; and The Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 2005).

Thus, if the Supreme Court has established that the government has no obligation to protect citizens from harm, it has no obligations to economically provide for citizens either. That’s called “charity” and it’s what churches have typically done by collecting revenue (tithing) from its congregants.

20th century governmental usurpation of charity by rebranding it as “welfare” is a distinctly modern concept, that also happens to be constitutional, insofar that the government collecting taxes to distribute benefits on a needs basis does not violate the Constitution, which is entirely different than being enumerated in the document itself, which you erroneously conflated.

[rgbgraph]

If this were another venue, I would reply to this post with a single, solitary nerd emoji.

The constitution should be ripped apart and rewritten — if it requires hordes of over-educated lawyers to faff about on what it actually means.

The supreme court was a mistake. Congress was a mistake. The executive office was a mistake.

The only thing all of these organizations do is further their own interests.

[seanmcdirmid]

If such a constitution was written as you suggest, then it would have been outdated and torn up long ago. It would have been too rigid to stand the test of time. Also HN supports at least one emoji (囧).

[DoreenMichele]

About 2.5 million people living close to the official poverty line left California for other states from 2005 through 2015, while 1.7 million people at that income level moved in from other states – for a net loss of 800,000.

https://www.ca-sba.org/california-exports-its-poor-to-texas-....

[davchana]

My personal example or experience: I would love to live in SF or in Alameda county. My employer statewide pays same salary to everybody with same title, with SF county (not Alameda) getting extra $260 per month, whereas rental differece is like $1000 for studio in non-Alameda & $2500 in SF.

Many of my colleagues can still afford to live in SF because they have their parent's homes or something in that area, and thus pay no rent, or have way lower expenses in housing.

[bombcar]

Because if you’ve ever been working poor you know that your support network is hugely important. Grandma can watch the kids, Pablo knows how to keep that old car of yours running cheap, Henry has some house repair know-how, and so forth. Leaving your entire family and friends to settle elsewhere; it’s hard. It’s scary. And if you’re poor, it’s almost certainly one-way for at least some years.

And even so many are doing it.

[ncr100]

Moving won't solve their problems.

It creates new problems, including lack of a job.