I'm not really up on what the standard of living was like in the 30's, but is it really possible working 10 hours per week? That would barely pay rent in most places.
The trick is getting into a government subsidized housing program, making use of food stamps, and taking as many other handouts as you can get. A former friend does this and works about 10 hours a week as a dishwasher (sometimes more if they have a busy week) spending the rest of his time playing video games or reading Objectivist literature.
In rural areas, 1930's living did not include amenities like plumbing or electricity in most places. In urban areas, you're looking at an interior room in a cold water tenement or a boarding house type situation.
It would be tough to do it in the city without becoming a victim of crime, but you can pull it off in many rural areas. Note that the 10 hours of work would be paid work. You'd be doing all sort of tasks on your own behalf. If you lived in the northern US, for example, right now you'd be chopping wood and preserving food in preparation for winter, for example.
Right, which leads to the question: which is the more "bullshit" job? Adding widgets to Facebook at $100k per year? Or unpaid time chopping wood to burn for fuel? Both of them lead to a warm room in the winter, but one is exhausting, dangerous, unpaid, and incredibly ineffecient.
You can have home, land, and installation of home on land for about 25K, if you're willing to settle for small values of each. Ebay has cheap land in rural places. You can buy a new manufactured home for less than 20K: https://www.factoryexpomobilehomes.com/micro.asp . You can get ten years' supply of basic food for probably $3000, depending on exactly what you get, from Costco: http://www.costco.com/emergency-kits-supplies.html . After property taxes and septic installation and other miscellaneous niceties, if you round up to 36K, that's basically $250 a month that you'd need to clear after taxes.
Edit: for 10 years; I'm assuming you'll have to replace such a cheap home after 10 years, but if not, the amortized cost is considerably lower.
Well, you'd need to move somewhere rents are really low. Rents were lower back then because rent is largely a zero-sum game, but they've risen a lot more in city cores.
Actually, you should probably buy your own house. In a lot of places that's quite cheap; if there's low competition for space, it wouldn't take very long at 40 hours/week (living a cheap place) before you can afford your own.
You forget that nasty reality called property and school taxes. In reality, one never owns one's home. You own it as long as you can pay any remaining mortgage and all the taxes. Let's also not forget maintenance costs. Ever paid the bill to replace a leaking roof or kitchen appliances or...
Deprecation of assets via property tax is an incredibly good idea. When you don't have that, people see property as a speculative asset class, buy property, do nothing productive with it and...that's basically the Chinese property bubble.
Yes, you must pay taxes on your home, but that's because your home is consuming resources from the locality even if it is owned outright.
The grand parent made a really good point. Lets say I don't want to consume local resources. I still have to pay taxes. As far as I know, this is true in the US and Canada. I believe this may not be true elsewhere. Regardless, the "having to pay taxes" has implications such that one can never completely leave the rat race.
Btw ... I'd be happy to be corrected. Are there places in the US/Canada without such taxes? Since they are levied locally, I imagine they could exist.
The mere existence of your land imposes a burden on local resources. Unless it's completely paved over (unlikely) it may start on fire, which may spread to nearby property. Paved over or not, it may be used by people without your permission as a base for criminal activity, necessitating a police response whether you want it or not.
Let's say it was paved, and a solid steel structure built with a roof so steep it was of no practical use to humans. You've eliminated the fire and criminal issues, but now rainwater runoff is flooding the road and your neighbors' property, you're causing ecological damage by eliminating vegetation and animal habitats, and you're blocking sunlight from your neighbors' yards.
And since you're not consuming local resources, that means you have no way to get to or from your property, so really, what good is it to you anyway?
There is no practical way for you to go about your life that has zero impact on those around you. So yes, you must always, to some extent, deal with the reality that there are other humans on this planet.
Country property taxes are generally pretty low in rural areas. Not zero mind you, it's the local gov's primary source of funding barring states sales tax, and gosh forbid if there are kids in the county to be schooled. If you don't want to pay property taxes, move to a fourth world country like Somalia.
China doesn't have property taxes, but the schools are underfunded and local governments are addicted to condemning farmer property and reselling it to run the cities. Not to mention the bubbles that result, since you can just sit on property as a static investment if it isn't taxed annually. Property taxes are good, trust me, the alternative (being priced out of the market by speculators) suck.
Rents are only zero-sum because somebody figured out how to price-fix realty. In a healthy world you will have lotta new beautiful towns and affordable rent everywhere (but a select few historic places).
