this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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Federal government workers in the US generally have a "base salary," which stays the same across all regions, so you can easily compare. And then they get a regional adjustment, based on where they actually live, called "locality pay." I think this is recalculated annually based on the specific areas. It's almost certainly more complicated than that, but I think that's the gist.
I agree with you, and my point is that the US government already does this! So if it's fine for government workers, just apply that same algorithm to a federal minimum wage, peg it with some inflation index, and we've ~~solved~~ made the minimum wage issue a whole lot better, so we can focus on other issues that don't have huge supermajorities of support.
That's kinda why I suggested the average rent as an index, since unless we do some Nordic style price adjustment control that limits how much prices can go up in a year or such, that will probably be the best indicator of the actual inflation that the average consumer is experiencing in any given year.
(use median rent rather than average rent)
How about whichever is higher? I feel like circumstances could lead to either causing wages to be lower than they would be if pegged to the other instead.
If some clown wants to charge $3B for rent in a hovel in the backstreets of Idaho, mean rent might not make a lot of sense.