Actually, the (foolish) idea that I have in my head is that when the median house price is NOT one million dollars (I'm looking at you, San Francisco), people who make $10 / hour won't have to devote nearly as much of their income to housing, dramatically increasing their spending power.
Apartment prices in the Midwest (I'm north of Chicago, but same goes for further south) are 600 - 1000 per month. 10 bucks an hour is 1750 a month before taxes -- fed, fica, and state taxes get you down to less than 1400. There is no public transportation to speak of (outside of big cities such as Chicago and Atlanta, etc), so kill another $175 for gas, plus $150 for a car payment (cheap used car, high interest). Not much left for food, heat, and lights.
Now it gets a bit better when two people are living together. But then that usually means a family (kids) eventually, so it then starts to get much worse.
True. This is why people living on $10/hour tend to work more than 40 hours / week. Unfortunately, this increasingly means one or more part time jobs, because service industry jobs don't generally offer overtime.
Speaking of couples living together with kids, I personally wish Americans, rich and poor, were vastly more open to adult living arrangements other than the "traditional nuclear family". Not that there's anything wrong with it, I just think the world would be a better place if there were a larger variety of equally "acceptable" living arrangements with no obvious default, to make people more comfortable seeking out the particular set of circumstances that work well for them. Some people might be happier living as an extended family, say, or communally, or alone or with platonic room-mates, even when in a committed relationship, if it weren't for strong societal pressures to conform. I'm not at all "dogmatically anti-dogmatic" about this, it's just a train of thought I've had on many occasions.
