Societal Standard of Living FAQ

Under the Societal Standard of Living (SSOL), anyone working a total of 40 hours per week — whether through a full-time position, multiple part-time jobs, and/or gig work — should be able to afford all basic necessities without government assistance.

SSOL is not limited to a traditional 9-to-5 job with a single employer. By recognizing diverse employment structures, SSOL adapts to modern labor trends while ensuring fairness across different job types.

Publicly available pricing refers to prices that are openly accessible to anyone in the general marketplace without special conditions or restrictions. For a price to be used in the SSOL formula, it must be available to all consumers without requiring additional actions, memberships, payment methods, or personal information

Prices cannot be used if they require:

• Membership in a club, co-op, or subscription service.
• Signing up for a rewards program or providing personal information (e.g., email or phone number).
• Using a specific payment method such as autopay or store credit cards.
• Applying coupons, rebates, or other conditional discounts.
• Limited-time introductory offers or promotional pricing; only the standard, non-promotional price after the introductory period qualifies.

Additionally, publicly available pricing includes all applicable taxes and fees, ensuring the SSOL calculation reflects the total cost a consumer would pay at checkout.

The Societal Standard of Living (SSOL) is a modern approach to wage determination, ensuring that a worker can afford all essential living expenses. In contrast, the minimum wage is a fixed amount set by legislation, often failing to keep up with real-world costs and regional variations.

Unlike the static nature of the minimum wage, SSOL is directly tied to actual living costs in a given area. This means wages adjust over time and account for differences in local economies. As a result, SSOL reduces reliance on government programs and provides a more transparent, market-driven solution for workers and employers alike.

Key Differences

Because SSOL is dynamic and rooted in local economic realities, it ensures that wages remain fair and sufficient for basic living expenses. This reduces dependency on government assistance, promotes financial independence, and fosters transparency between employers and employees. In essence, SSOL is designed to keep pace with changing costs of living, unlike traditional minimum wages, which are slow to adjust and often out of sync with real-world conditions.

Wages can be expressed in relation to SSOL, ensuring that they adjust automatically when the cost of living changes. For example, wages may be represented as SSOL + $0.10 or as a percentage, such as 105% of SSOL. This approach ensures that when SSOL adjusts, employee wages automatically update as well.

Salary Requirements

To prevent employers from misclassifying employees as salaried workers, an employee cannot be deemed salaried unless their income is at least 3x SSOL. This ensures that only higher-income earners are exempt from hourly wage rules.

Foreign Worker Wages

Instead of relying on existing worker visa programs like H-1B, all foreign employees should be subject to a significantly higher wage threshold to ensure they are filling only highly specialized roles. For example:

• Foreign workers on employment-based visas must earn at least 12× SSOL or another high multiplier. This ensures that only highly skilled professionals are brought in, preventing undercutting of domestic wages.
• For industries that traditionally rely on low-wage migrant labor, such as agriculture, a separate wage structure could be implemented. These workers would receive at least 110% of SSOL, where 2.5% is allocated to administrative costs to manage the program.

By requiring a wage premium for foreign labor, employers are incentivized to hire locally first. A government-administered program would match foreign workers with employers when local labor is unavailable, granting them temporary work rights under a structured system.

The examples presented so far offer a high-level view of SSOL. In practice, each line item—whether it's housing, food, clothing, or transportation—must be defined with great detail. Take footwear as an example: shoes are clearly necessary, but which type and quality should be included in the calculation? While the latest designer sneakers are unrealistic for a baseline, the cheapest possible option might be too low in quality to meet basic durability and comfort needs.

This is where the entire SSOL process can thrive or fail. SSOL is, at its core, a formula that ensures wages cover essential costs. However, the real-world application of that formula depends on how each line item is selected. If policy makers choose substandard living conditions—like a cramped, windowless room, three meals of instant noodles per day, and the lowest-tier health insurance—SSOL fails to provide a dignified standard of living. Conversely, setting the bar too high—such as requiring a three-bedroom house, premium meals every day, and luxury transportation—would be financially unsustainable. The key is striking a balance between affordability and adequacy.

In an ideal scenario, those responsible for defining SSOL line items (e.g., government agencies, policy experts, and public representatives) would be bound by the same standards they create. By ensuring that decision-makers must live under the rules they create, there's a built-in incentive to maintain fairness and practicality. Ultimately, the process of determining SSOL line items must be transparent, data-driven, and subject to regular review to remain both realistic and humane.

Under the Societal Standard of Living (SSOL), many government initiatives aimed at controlling or subsidizing prices — such as rent control or food assistance — could be scaled back or eliminated. Because SSOL ensures that wages rise in proportion to essential living costs, workers no longer rely on artificially low prices to afford basic necessities.

Instead of imposing price ceilings or offering subsidies, SSOL allows the market to set prices freely. If rents or food costs increase, the SSOL formula adjusts wages accordingly. This market-driven approach removes the need for government to artificially cap costs or provide extensive subsidies, as workers’ earnings are designed to keep pace with real expenses.

Of course, removing certain price controls can initially create challenges in areas with particularly high living expenses. However, SSOL incentivizes businesses and property owners to find ways to reduce costs, expand supply, or locate in regions with more favorable conditions. Over time, this competition encourages innovation and cost-effective solutions—without requiring continuous government intervention.