Nobody should expect be buying a home while making minimum wage. Thats why its called "minimum" and why for most people, the purchase of a first home is a major investment requiring a great deal of saving. Anyone who thinks we can make the quality of life in this country better by raising wages until the kid working at the McDonalds can go buy a new house is nuts.

There is an economic theory which goes something like: prices rise in proportion to available money. Meaning with all the two person breadwinners in the country boosting family income into five figures housing prices will NOT come down.

The guy is right. But ask him when did a person making the minimum wage EVER buy a house? A car? A dinner at a fine restaurant?

Get fucking real

John Stevens should read a basic Econ text. Most of the "working poor" earns more than the minimum wage...the min wage is earned primarily by first-job teenagers...raising the min wage would not help the group intended...rather it would give high school students more money to buy Eminem cd's, while pressuring employers to higher fewer people.

It's really a simple economic principle...attempting to create a "price floor" (minimum wage) ensures a shortage of jobs. Employers will hire less, pure and simple.

We're working on it. Students tend to generalize from their own experience, and in their own experience many of them earn the minimum wage, or something close to it. Look here for an informal survey showing that perception at work.

The minimum wage worker would have an easier time without taxes. You know FICA, State Income Tax, Social Security, Federal Income Tax.
Most college students can easily get a job above minimum wage. (All jobs that Roanoke College gives start at 5.50 when the minimum wage is 5.15

No, Stephen, they don't teach economics in college - at least not much. Which is why Steve Verdon and I have so much fun.

I was attempting to use the minimum-wage statistics as an *example* of why I believe the home ownership numbers may be reaching saturation (as the original post wondered) by taking a vast number of people out of the housing market... those being family breadwinners (or two of them together) who aren't being paid a living wage that would allow them to purchase even first-rung homes for their families in an overheated housing market that appears in recent years to be geared toward suburban McMansions instead of affordable homes.

That said, I think the 'problem' lies less with wage levels than with the real estate/housing bubble market that's pushed more families out of the possible ranks of first-home owners. My perception has been that the supply of basic entry-level family housing has dwindled lately in relation to the demand for it (driving up the cost), with developers and builders favoring larger and more expensive homes targeted toward the more affluent that they can make a larger profit margin on.

As evident in the second sentence I posted, my concern was with high home prices (that in my opinion are unrealistic) for working families; I certainly wasn't advocating that teenagers should be going out and purchasing real estate with their weekend McDonalds minimum wages, despite how my earlier comment was mischaracterized... I've had university macroeconomics, microeconomics, and international economics courses, and I do remember the inflation of the 1970's (definitely not a picnic).

The 'hot housing market' may be what's keeping the economy above water, but it can't last forever... too many people seem to believe that they're entitled to large appreciations in the value of their homes (much as they believed they were entitled to continually-growing stock portfolios only a couple years ago), and they're about to get a rude awakening. It'll be wrenching, but having $350K-$400K one-story ranch houses or $100K mini-homes barely larger than an apartment seems like sheer lunacy to me - the prices should never have been (unsustainably) pushed that high in the first place!