Could you explain? I would assume that only a part of the increase in wages would go to rent. I live in Norway where the minimum salary is high. Rents are too but the average person has to spent less time working to pay for housing.
Do you think the hours a person needs to work to pay for housing would stay the same if the wage increase?
Roughly yes. How are we still working 40hrs/week just to put a roof over our head and feed our families when we are equipped with technologies that have exponentially increased the productive output of each individual?
The answer is that land has gotten more expensive, so everything on it has gotten more expensive. The solution is not to avoid wage increases, as this “FUD” accusation assumes, but to raise wages and tax the daylights out of landowners (like myself) so society can recoup the benefits of its productivity!
> How are we still working 40hrs/week just to put a roof over our head and feed our families
Most tech workers earn far more than is necessary for just this.
But we also want nice cars, nice vacations, going out to restaurants and buy nice toys. That's what keeps most of us working that much.
(just a nitpick, but we don't have a general minimum salary / minstelønn in Norway. Unions however, have managed to establish rules binding everyone in certain industries to some minimum)
To add to that: About half the Norwegian workforce is unionised (which is the lowest of the Nordic countries, but higher than all other non-Nordic countries in the OECD than Belgium), and something like 3/4 of all workers are covered by sectoral agreements (tariffavtaler), which is why there's not much demand for minimum wage laws.
Do you think the hours a person needs to work to pay for housing would stay the same if the wage increase?