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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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Does the math work? Average apartment rent in the US is $1750 / month, so $21000 / year. Some quick Googling shows that in the US, the average factory worker salary is about $35000 and average construction worker salary is about $40000. In reality it's probably significantly less since I am guessing that the available figures don't include many illegal aliens' wages and under-the-table arrangements.

So unless something changes to either increase the salaries or make housing cheaper, we seem to on average have a situation where as a blue-collar worker you'd be paying half of your salary in rent. Add on other vital spending like food and health insurance, and pretty soon you have a situation where there isn't much money left over to do anything besides just survive.

Granted, deporting illegal aliens would likely drive up blue collar wages, but it could also lead to increases in prices on things like food so the benefits are not completely straightforward. Let's say that deporting illegal aliens does substantially increase blue collar wages. Even then, unless the government does something to lower housing costs, it still seems that the situation would be pretty dicey for the average blue collar worker. And Trump, as far as I know, barely talks about housing. He and his administration do not seem to give the issue of housing affordability much attention at all. Yet it is probably the single biggest economic expense for most Americans, and the supply is not matching the demand.

You know that average apartment rent is higher than something approximating half of apartment rents?

In any case, many construction workers do not live in apartments. They might rent a room in a house($600/mo in my metro) if not living with a partner(and if they are, two incomes makes rent much more affordable). They might live in a trailer park(generally cheaper than apartments). They might already own a house.