system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: A living wage must enable one to afford their own private residence

A living wage means an income capable of supporting a "basic but decent" standard of living. "Basic but decent" is a highly subjective descriptor, open to a great deal of interpretation, but one particular point that I have found to be particularly contentious is the issue of housing.

Many seem to be of the opinion that "basic but decent" housing, for a single individual, may include one bedroom in an apartment shared with one or more roommates. To me, this is wrong. I say that at a minimum, every individual deserves a bed, a toilet, a shower, a sink, a fridge, a freezer, and a stove, to themselves, in a space where they can be assured of complete privacy and solitude.

Life in a shared apartment or house is full of pitfalls, only the least of which -- the inability to make free, full, and unmolested use of the shared facilities -- should be disqualifying by itself. To put it bluntly, a home where you aren't guaranteed peace while you're taking a shit is no kind of home.

Worse, personal differences can render a shared housing situation completely untenable as animosities and grudges fester over months and years. Dealing with other people may be an essential part of life, but a person's ability to exist in their own home should not be a continual test of their interpersonal skills.

Many shared housing situations are also legally problematic; anecdotally, none that I have encountered have been consistent with the terms or intent of the original lease, and occupants not named in the lease have suffered from stress and uncertainty as to their rights and protections.

Shared housing may be fine for some, but it is not a feasible situation for everyone, and a living wage must provide for a more secure, private existence.
gpt
The basic standard you're demanding was literally impossible for *anyone* until the last century.  Henry VIII didn't have a toilet, couldn't freeze anything, never had a shower, and was never guaranteed complete privacy.  You're asking for a level of comfort kings would've killed for not that long ago and framing it as something to which one ought to be entitled because of employment.  We don't recognize that because we're insanely comfortable by historical standards, but it's true.

So there's a lot of self-evident absurdity in including this in a living wage.  We've lived for quite a long time without it, so we clearly don't need it that much.

You don't have an inherent right to that kind of privacy or material comfort. Such a right has no historical precedent and no obvious reason to exist; the world isn't built for comfort and the default human response to discomfort is A) endure and B) work to avoid.  B usually entails obtaining resources (money, in this case) that help you avoid the discomfort, and that collective human pursuit has made us as comfortable as we are today.  You're trying to pervert B by forcing someone else to give you what you need to avoid suffering that you could absolutely endure or work out of.

That's the real problem: if having a roommate or three - especially in the early stages of your adult life - is a serious challenge, then you need to learn to deal with it because that's what necessity demands and necessity always wins.  If you can't, you need to put in the work so you don't have to deal with it.  This isn't someone else's problem, it's a basic dilemma of not living with your parents.

>To put it bluntly, a home where you aren't guaranteed peace while you're taking a shit is no kind of home.

Then the vast majority of people in human history were homeless.  It seems like you've taken a certain level of material comfort for granted and don't yet realize that it wasn't necessarily normal and that it might not continue if you don't work hard enough to maintain it.

Irrespective of your view, this is the economic reality: if you decide that a living wage includes a private residence, a living wage means nothing.  The web of choices that determine where we work, where we live, what we do with our free time and how we get between them all can't be pinned down that way.  You might as well say that a living wage should guarantee use of a car or a 44" inch TV with broadband and Netflix or dinner at a high-end steakhouse once a month.

We make these choices in a market that provides for what we can afford and caters to our choices.  Roommates exist not because people don't have enough money, but because shared spaces are more economical.  You will *always* save money pooling resources like that, so that's going to be how it is until someone finds a more efficient way of providing housing - giving you more money won't change that.

So maybe you'll be somewhere with affordable studio apartments and you'll have no problems.  But if you're somewhere where all of those apartments are taken or aren't on the market, that's your problem to solve.  There's no reason for anyone else to do it for you.