[nsheth17]

A lot of people here are saying maybe poor people should just move away to where it's cheaper. Supposedly, the economic arguments are in their favor. If you can't afford to live here, why don't you just move to where you can?

Counter arguments say the expected "that's not fair to them." But I think that's missing the point. The real, honest truth is we (speaking as someone better off) need these people to stay here. If they move away, who will drive our buses? Who will teach our children? Who will build our homes? Who will do all the jobs that don't pay well enough for the richer ones among us to do? (Please don't say machines. We're not there yet.)

Two solutions:

(1) Pay them more, so they can afford to live here. But that begs the question. Where is the money going to come from? Frankly, it's unlikely we'll just suddenly start paying construction workers and plumbers and teachers more.

(2) Subsidize their cost of living. There's probably a case to be made that if we need people to work these jobs, they should be entitled to some cost of living subsidies. Maybe create a group of "endangered" jobs that we need but whose average wages are lower than the cost of living. Anyone who works those jobs has access to affordable housing, gas credits, etc. It's a run around the wage market, but maybe it could work.

[emodendroket]

> (1) Pay them more, so they can afford to live here. But that begs the question. Where is the money going to come from? Frankly, it's unlikely we'll just suddenly start paying construction workers and plumbers and teachers more.

Why not raise the minimum wage? As you've alluded to, it's not that easy to just fire all low-wage workers because wages have gone up.