[SideQuark]

In the US, this is trivial to do. Theres plenty of states where unskilled entry lever wages easily allows this life, for most of the locations, with the exception of extremely high cost city centers.

Pick IL for example. Min wage $15, so $30k a year income fulltime. Most every adult that’s worked even a little should be able to earn decently more than min, which is for completely unskilled, new workers. Median il wage is 66k.

Even at $30k, the rough 30% rule on housing is $750/mo. At 66k it’s over $1500/mo.

Dig through smaller cities, and you’ll find apartments to rent in either end of this range. This works in any state.

[bumby]

Part of the issue is those smaller cities don’t offer a large supply of job opportunities. So people are often not able to pick and choose their location.

[zozbot234]

This is an underappreciated argument for basic income/UBI: you need a lot less of it since its very existence enables recipients to move to lower cost of living locations.

(Which in turn opens up opportunities for others to move in to the higher-cost places and boost their own productivity.)

[SideQuark]

Plenty of cities outside the top 100 have massive amounts of jobs. And the person I replied to specifically stated willing to vary location as an option.

[bumby]

Fair enough, but I think we’re talking different scale. Top 100 cities is still a population of >200k. I was thinking of the small dying rust-belt type of <10k or so