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Cost of living isn't much better where I'm from, and yeah when I owned my own apartment I had my mortgage payments down to $700 for a 2 bedroom apartment that would have cost me ~$1400 to rent. Hell, I rented out the second room for a few months at $500.

I was thinking the same thing...my house payment is right around that price also, and I'm sure I have more bedrooms and baths than a studio apartment.

Yes, my current house is almost twice as big as my old house, but my mortgage payment is only slightly more than that $1050 price for a studio in San Diego.

It's not far from a Mortgage payment for a house here. Unfortunately, because that's the rent, the poor have no opportunity to be anything but poor. Since they constantly go into debt they will never save even 3% for the down payment on a house.

They can move to another state.

Presumably, but the disparity of cost of living in relation to minimum wage is pretty similar nationwide. Beyond that, if there are no service workers in California (because they've all moved out of state) the rich will have to start flipping burgers ...

If there are no workers who will work for the price than
a) The business has to increase the wage price for work
or
b) The business will automate activities

The cost of living in relation to minimum wage is not similar nationwide, because there is a Federal mandated minimum wage. That means there are places that have very low cost of living and pay minimum wage, which is also enough for people to live on.

However, minimum wage should never be a goal for financial survival. If a person can only get minimum wage jobs, then they should really consider what they have to do in order to better themselves to get a higher paying job.

Flipping burgers is a ZERO skill job. If you have ZERO skills, then you shouldn't be paid more than what the market can stand. Beyond driving the trash truck, being a trash collector is also a ZERO skill job, but it pays more than minimum wage because people have a negative view of it.

The average annual salary for trash collector is about $43,000 [source: SimplyHired ] In California, the average hourly wage is $16.04, and in some places, the overtime can help shoot the pay to over $60,000 a year [source: CEED, Parsons].