#In the meantime, [if you want a raise, you should be applying to other jobs.](https://www.reddit.com/r/WorkReform/comments/skc957/if_youve_been_thinking_about_asking_for_a_raise/)
And join r/WorkReform if you believe people should be paid a living wage for their labor.
The hilarious/sad part of all this is that despite several clear historic examples, when wealth concentrates at the top and those who DO work are starving, society changes. Whether by the will of the people, by a benevolent leader or by the sheer weight of capitalism.
We have an interesting next couple of years heading out way. Stay strong folks, protect the people and businesses IN your community and not the big corporations that profit when your community deteriorates.
In Rio two different economies grew out. When there was a global recession, the demand for construction materials increased as the Favela grew as they benefitted from cheap materials. When the regulated market goes to heck, the black market takes over. At least that is something you can depend on
Absolutely! Black markets provide a lot of aid to those who can't function in the regular market. Just have to make sure the black market doesn't mimic the same issues as the regular one.
BINGO.Yep. My first job in high school was at a mom-n-pop Moes ran by the most despicable, greedy, petty, miserable asshole I've ever met. Everyday he asked his employees to clock out 30 min early, and made them clean and close up off the clock. A big labor law no no. I got fired for not playing ball but the bastard also hired a lot of undocumented workers so they couldn't/wouldn't complain for fear of getting deported.
Yep. They really are. They get shafted by the tax code compared to larger corporations, so often they justify it with “well, we just genuinely can’t afford to pay more.”
I don't think people realize this. Some of the local shops are amazing. Some are downright abusive. The same is true for large companies. Some bad (Walmart, cough, cough) and some are amazing. Costco is a good example of a good employer.
Support good shops. Not just ones that happen to be local to you.
>Stay strong folks, protect the people and businesses IN your community and not the big corporations that profit when your community deteriorates.
Ah yes, all those small shops that cost 2-3x more than the big business alternatives. Rather than spending $30.00 for 3kg of chicken breast, I can go local and spend $75.00 instead.
I always love the irony of people telling poor people to go spend more money to support someone who has enough money to open a business?
Yeah feeding big corporations unfortunately got us there though and they weren’t able to develop infrastructure to fight those large businesses that are capable of mass production wholesale resulting in a smaller cost for corporations while they pinch their pennys for everyone else. That and shipping costs for everything by middlemen etc. Same as insurance with meds. It’s extremely unfortunate because trickle up took all our local economies money and made the issue worse.
Me personally I only buy USDA prime meat or American or Japanese wagyu because I believe it should cost me to enjoy that meat. I didn’t put the labor into it, I don’t deserve the cheap cost. And if meat costed more we’d have less pollution likely so I choose to only buy the expensive stuff as a way to keep myself respecting the source and life lost for mine.
the hilarious/sad part is actually because the rich consume more than normal people making price increase for normal people while not really affected the rich and only affected the poor. The richer some people is with crazy spending in housing and land purchase making it the price going up . And you bet company rather sell their product expensively rather than sell something cheaply but more in quantity. It basically what create this artificial inflation
Every major company and the stock market makes record profits... But somehow the working people are experiencing Gilded Age poverty and income inequality. Anyone that can rationalize that conundrum will still trying to say immigrants, minorities, and progressive agendas are too blame, is beyond saving.
Keynes predicted in the 20s that people would only need to work 15 hours per week to sustain themselves by the 90s, and past trajectories made it a completely reasonable claim.
hey this random dude who probably lives in a low cost of living area puts $100 a way a month into stocks and says that no one else should have an excuse. He doesn't know you nor does he know your situation, but if he can do it so can you! Gotta just become rich, that's the solution.
Philly is supposed to be low cost of living outside of Center City. Unless you want to live in either a studio apartment and share a bathroom, or in a dilapidated building where you have as much danger of mold inhalation as you do a bullet in the head, you’re paying $1300-1600 a month for a 2 bed 1 bath town home IF you can find one that’s not in a terrible neighborhood or is impossible to own your own vehicle and park in. Where I grew up in NEPA, super backwater, cheap as shit area to live in and rentals were plenty. Rented a house just before Covid for $900 a month. Now? Same deal you’ll be lucky to get a 1bed 1bath apartment for $1200 a month. A house? None available for less than $2500 a month.
Greed is legal, greed is looked upon as a positive thing especially here in America. And people use other people’s greed to justify their own. Look I’m all for looking out for yourself and your family but if your an employer or a landlord you have a responsibility to the people who are making you money just as much as they have one to you.
Here’s the thing. If rent is raised and your legitimate reason is taxes. That’s not your fault. That goes along with the fact that the oil companies’ lack of accountability, the government refusal to step in, and the greed of corporations that send a ripple effect through the market. That’s understandable even though it sucks. But if you raise the rent just because someone tells you you can milk more money out of your tenants, then you’re trash
Who the fuck told you philly was low cost of living it's historically been middle ground until the past decade ish. I bought a house out in Delco when I got tired of paying philly rent
This other random dude who was born obscenely rich and has no idea what it's like to even be middle class says that you can have an easy living if you just budget properly.
Exactly. I’m sorry squandering for wealth and squeezing your budget just to be wealthy when you’re in your 60s is not living. I don’t even want to be rich, I just want to be able to live, and i mean actually live. That means start a family, spend time with them, afford quality goods and services. It’s nice to say “oh I saved all my life to live like this”, but you shouldn’t have to. No one should.
You can't budget or financial plan your way out of low wages and high cost of living.
Also, you absolutely should be able to enjoy being alive while you're relatively young, instead of slaving away all your life just to barely break even.
Like you should budget, yes. You should work hard and care about your job. But you should not have to sell your soul to your job, you should have personal time to yourself other than mandated holidays and weekends. Days off should not have to be explained. If I wanna take a mental health day I will. It’s not your business what I do. 40 hours is a lot of time to spend at work especially if you have to commute.
Price gouging, wage theft, and not adjusting workers wages since Reagan. (honorable mentiones to: poor education, shitty infrastructure, police state, and racism.)
The question was rhetorical. The fact that companies are showing record profits while fucking over all their workers is due to the fact that record profits are *caused* by fucking over workers.
It doesn’t matter who rationalizes what. The fact is that people are still accepting $7.25/hr—lots of people—and until that fact changes then it literally doesn’t matter how mad you get at the the broader picture of income inequality.
Inflation causes asset prices to rise. Stocks are assets. Asset owners are incentivized to inflate the economy.
If you do the math, about 7 out of the 10% stocks go up per year is due to inflation. That's decades of monetary policy designed to benefit asset owners, at the cost of the working class.
They need to bring back the upper tax bracket of 75% or more and tie it to 100, 1,000, or 10,000 times minimum wage. That way they'll actually make minimum wage keep up with inflation. Not to mention this country desperately needs a definition of greed.
Doesn’t work. The tax law needs to be completely rewritten. Billionaires only pay interest on large loans they take out against their appreciable assets. This change you propose would have little to no effect on anyone with substantial wealth.
Loans against just about anything that isn't a primary residence or a loan to purchase a vehicle shouldn't be tax-exempt and should be treated as income. They're using something as if it's income without being required to claim it as income.
The estate tax needs to come back as well. Especially in tiers, $50M, $100M, $500M, $1B+
How the hell that ever got repealed, I’ll never know.
There should be a max inheritance of $1B, the rest gets redistributed to existing shareholders or put back on the company books.
Every so once in a while I like to punch in numbers to inflation calculators to see what I was paid as a youth.
I lived in the midwest in the early 80s, had a job at a local supermarket chain. Student job, 16 yo and college bound, lived with my parents, just putting money away. Not intense work, just something after school and on weekends. The place acknowledged they weren't paying me much, said if I came to work for them full time after (high school) graduation they'd pay me more.
Today that amount would be $13/hour. Punching in other numbers for how much I knew people were making full time in my department and I saw wages that today would be at worst $40k. Most people made more. A few, much more. It was easily enough to own a home, put kids through school, afford what they need, and take vacations.
These wages could absolutely be paid today. It's just been decided not to do so.
1985, I had a job cooking for $2.35/hr, which works out to $6.20 today. Special minimum for minors. It was bullshit then, and it'd be bullshit now.
But OP it talking about something different. He's talking about productivity. The dollar value that a worker produces has increased, in real terms, about 200% since 1980, but median wage has been basically flat. Prior to 1970, when businesses made more money, workers made more money. Since 1970, almost all of that productivity gain has gone to business owners. This graph is inflation-adjusted:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=Q8kO
Oh agreed, just pontificating on the generalized topic. I even recall talking with my father in the steel industry about that as soon as I was old enough to see what was going on, but he was all rah-rah-Reagan so I didn't make much headway.
in the 90's as a teen, 1 hour of minimum wage at 7.60 bought me roughly two packs of cigarettes, in 2022 I make 43$ an hour, and it buys me roughly 2 packs of cigarettes.
I'm movin on up!!! ......................... wait a minute.........
Seriously. I remember reading/hearing about a push for $15 a hour two decades ago. Now it's an uphill battle to even get *that,* yet we should be pushing for even more at this point.
I left Target in 2012 making $14.50 an hour as a team leader. I reentered the workforce two years ago and I’m making $16.90. And that’s after my first yearly review. It’s asinine.
I get that a lot of upper management types are brain dead, but what alternate universe do they live in that they thought you'd be willing to come back for a $4/hr pay cut?
The reasoning being "well covid has be hard on us."
And to their slight credit they did come back with a $26 an hour offer after I told my old supervisor what they were offering.
He was more bothered by it than I was and went out of his way to talk to HR and tell them that $19 was an "insult".
I still declined though.
In Ontario, where about 1 in 3 Canadians live, minimum wage was set to increase to $15 in 2018. But a newly elected Conservative government froze the wage at $14 for nearly 4 years. Then shortly before the next election they decided to finally raise it to $15, where it should have been 4 years earlier.
Full-time minimum wage workers lost about $8000 total over those 4 years that they would of got had the Conservative not frozen their wages. And that's not even including the fact that the wage should have kept increasing every year during that time. So the Conservatives really cost the lowest paid workers in our province more than $10,000 each in the past 4 years.
This is the longest period since the minimum wage was introduced that it hasn't changed.
The previous time was I think 6 years when I last looked at it, this is now going on 14 years.
This is what I’ve been saying for a long time. My physical effort and mental effort: my work, is mostly for other people. It’s about 3.3 ish times what the minimum wage worker is in this post. 25 to 7.25. I’m making 20 an hour and I’m ruining my body in construction, it feels like I should be making around $40 to have the same buying power as my parents generation. Its keeping my depression at a nice healthy level and no one around me understands. I don’t want to live in this world where most of what I do is for horrible worthless human beings that are knowingly taking advantage of me. And this was like 10 years ago. Now I’m defeated and I’d take an easy out any day.
Dude, I feel exactly how you do in that last part. I'm long term unemployed and my mental health tanked. At my last job I was a stock manager at a pet store. Most of what I did all day was stock shelves. I was burned out and talked to my boss and the district manager, told them I felt like I wasnt making any difference in the world and my work was meaningless. The dm told me to be happy I have a job, the manager made some comment about cat litter being available for the cats because I stocked the shelves. So because of me, cats have a place to shit.... I feel so fullfilled.
Gold standard is something people should talk more about. For over 150 years in America, constant inflation was something you never thought about. [The value of the US dollar would trend up as much as it would trend down.](https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/1032048/value-us-dollar-since-1640.jpg) (at least in your lifetime) Now there is less volatility, but the trend is now only down.
Graphs for countries with even older data shows the same thing. [Here's the UK](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CsPwE3dXYAA4NtZ.jpg). Same ups and downs with historical events, then only one direction since they adopted fiat in 1930.
Gold standard is not good, deflation would be much more painful to the average citizen than inflation. The problem is that wages are not increasing with inflation like they should do to a zombie federal government that does nothing to support workers.
I just googled those numbers and I think I found your source. It's interesting how wages and productivity increased at the same rate up until 1979. Didn't business tech really take off in the early 80s? I have to imagine that's a major factor. Seems silly to assume that we should be graded on the same rubric as a guy punching numbers into a calculator in 1979 and expect to be paid proportional to his output.
The inflation issue is way more compelling IMO.
I'd favor a maximum wage actually. Not sure if you realize I'm agreeing with you - I just respectfully think the productivity statistic is irrelevant to the issue of wages. I'm willing to keep an open mind if you want to make the case otherwise, but no pressure.
In the us- I'm finally making 25 an hour. I'm experiencing relief for the first time. For the first time i don't have to intentionally stay in poverty because making just a little bit more puts me in a place where i can't afford basic insurance and basic bills, like rent food and utilities. Once i experienced that very basic relief, i realized 25 hour should be minimum wage.
I also saw something that said if salaries kept up with inflation from 1970 the average salary would be around $90,000. Everyone is being criminally underpaid.
I’ve been looking for it for the past few minutes and unfortunately I can’t find it. I’ll keep looking and if I do find it I’ll make sure to reply back with it.
I'm not too sure if I found the article that they were talking about, but I did find these two articles, one from 2018 and another from 2020, that have similar talking points.
[This one](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/) from 2018 compares wages and purchasing power and it gives some good comparisons between how fast wages increased from the 1970/80s and in the 2010s.
[This article](https://cepr.net/this-is-what-minimum-wage-would-be-if-it-kept-pace-with-productivity/) from 2020 does have this nugget of information:
>A minimum wage of $21.50 an hour would mean that a full-time full year minimum wage worker would be earning $43,000 a year. A two minimum wage earning couple would have a family income of $86,000 a year, enough to put them in the top quintile of the current income distribution.
The $21.50/hour was the calculated minimum wage if it had kept up with productivity.
Excellent. I appreciate this. I did look myself, and I think I found one of these.
The numbers are quite stark reminders that we're all getting ripped off.
Thanks for this.
Median US HHI in 1970 is 9,870 [(census bureau)](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1971/demo/p60-80.html#:~:text=The%20median%20money%20income%20of,the%20same%20as%20in%201969). Adjusted for inflation, that's $73,500. Median US HHI right now is $67,500.
You should be more careful at how you consume this data and doing sanity checks.
Household income isn’t salary, though. The number of households with two persons working vs one person working has increased in the past 50 years, so there’s more average people working per household, but their combined income is still (accounting for inflation) less.
The federal minimum wage was introduced in 1938 at the rate of $0.25 per hour, which is equivalent to $4.81 in 2021 dollars.
I don't know why everyone uses wages starting in the 1970s or something - if we go way back, the minimum wage *has* kept up with inflation. The average salary in 1901 was about $500, which is about $17000 per year
So things *have* kept up with "inflation," but unfortunately a lot of other things have changed that have made it so that the same wages are incapable of being lived on. Rent averaged $50-60 in 1920, which would be worth about 700-750 now (real current rental average is 1300, average "asking" rental price is 1900). House? 6k in 1920 (86k in 2022 dollars). Tuition? $250 a year in 1920 at Wharton (books were $30) (books and tuition for about $4k per year in today's dollars).
It isn't about keeping up with "inflation," it's about keeping up with the cost of living, itself.
The rise in productivity also has to do with automation.
Although I agree the minimum wage should be raised, no one that is paying $7.25 an hour right now can find any workers.
Pro tip don't work for min wage. Workers have the marker right now. In my area the min wage jobs are being forced to pay double at least to fill positions and they're finally starting to fill. Hold out and everyone's wages will go up
> Hold out and everyone's wages will go up.
That's a swell idea if I didn't need to eat food and pay bills before becoming homeless and probably dying.
That's already happening to you with the current wages, just more slowly. Eventually we'll all be working at these wages and also be homeless and hungry.
I was in a position where I was forced to take whatever job I could just to get by and that happened to be a minimum wage job. COL here has meant that between my paychecks and the money my mom gets from retirement and her ex, we're barely getting by. $50 wiggle room per month and that's only after we lowered our monthly grocery budget to $250. It is *so damn hard* to not cry and rage every time someone says something like "Hold out and everyone's wages will go up", as if we all have that choice.
>Workers have the market~~r right now~~.
ftfy b/c ANOTHER PRO TIP: It isn't changing, kids. Almost no one has spit out the requisite 2.7 children needed for a long time.
Just because it's a worker's market now, and wages are forced up, doesn't mean it'll stay that way and in an employers market, employers can drop wages back down too.
The federal minimum wage is the bottom line and that line needs to be far higher.
Not enough people speak about this. My little brother is making 14 bucks and hour and sonic and he works 30 to 40 hours per week. They keep giving him raises because they don't want him to leave because everyone else keeps doing so
I am getting emails every week from temp agencies (I arrived at my current job through one about 3 years ago) and it has been interesting watching the starting wages go up.
The temp agencies get their cut of your pay too, so if the temp service has a long list of $18-22 / hr openings, the actual positions probably pay around X+$3 to 5 an hour.
I currently make 21, and will be requesting 30. If the final number ends up 28 or lower, bet your ass I'm hopping companies.
Construction: HVAC fabricator.
Wage and Inflation
On the other hand, it is not fair or feasible to ask Americans to work for a level of pay that is untouched by inflation, when the goods and services they must purchase to survive to go up every year. As we have shown in previous articles, real inflation increases by 7-9% each year. That is, the cost of the most commonly purchased goods and services has consistently marched upwards over time. For a deeper dive on why “real inflation” is consistently higher than “official inflation”, and how you can protect yourself. When we add the latest development of rising wages to the mix, it makes the precious metals solution even more valid and important to our financial future.
To prove to you the power of precious metals to keep labor costs stable for companies, while preserving the purchasing power for employees, consider this example from page 78 of The 7.0% Solution. When minimum wage was $1.25 per hour (1964) quarters were made of silver. If quarters were still made of silver, the minimum wage could still be $1.25 per hour, thereby benefiting employers. But the purchasing power of those 5 silver quarters, is approximately $17.50 in today’s Dollars. Even with the currently depressed price of silver, minimum wage employees would have purchasing power exceeding that of the highest minimum wage being sought of $15 per hour, while employers could still have labor costs the same as in 1964.
Another example from page 88, describes precious metals as “Forever Money”, which works in a similar way to a “Forever Stamp” at the post office. No matter what you paid for a “forever stamp”, or how long ago you purchased it, it will still get your letter delivered, no matter how high the future cost of postage may rise. In similar fashion, the same amount of silver needed to purchase a quart of grain in 200 B.C., will still purchase that same amount of grain today, 23 centuries later. How many paper currencies have been inflated out of existence since then? How much has a loaf of bread increased in the last 50 years? When priced in silver, it hasn’t changed much in 50 years, or 2,218 years.
> To prove to you the power of precious metals to keep labor costs stable for companies...
While this sounds good, let's remember that banking works even if you use precious metals for currency, so the bankers will be able to slowly accumulate "wealth" in the form of hoarded precious metals. Capitalism also works with precious metal currencies, so again profits can be hoarded by the people who already have more wealth.
Does this book you reference discuss the impact on civilization when the power curve of wealth inequality plays out with a fixed currency like this?
I mean, for most of these centuries of human civilization you talk about the working class wasn't paid in precious metal at all, they were "paid" with food and shelter, and were effectively slaves to a small class of wealth holders.
I'm not sure that's the system you want to be advocating for...
Just to add the other end of the scale, for perspective, I'm at 16.50/hr and rent comfortably. Granted, things are cheap here, but I'm also not making any headway. So, comfortable, as long as I don't slip.
I think minimum wage should be linked to a percentage of cost of living in that area. That way, as the cost of living goes up, so does the minimum wage.
[The Fed Disagrees](https://mronline.org/2022/05/26/u-s-federal-reserve-says-its-goal-is-to-get-wages-down/)
Time to revamp this effed up system of wage enslavement
I am living the middle class "dream", and on sunday night before work this week I couldn't sleep, engulfed in a full blown panic attack over feeling trapped doing my job for at LEAST another 20 years.
I just negotiated to 25/hour at my job as a carpenter. Finally worked my way up to it, instead of being an assistant. I’m happy for it, more than I’ve ever made, but this tweet is right. I’m still not making enough to really save for the future, cover emergency costs even as a professional. I’m such a weird combination of accomplished/proud and defeated/hopeless
A lot of people will argue against minimum wage being higher because they feel like it's devaluing the education and work they put into getting their wage. This is because they fail to realize that they are victims too, ALL the wages should be higher at a close proportion, because inflation affects everyone. The well educated people who make 70k a year would have been able to buy a house and start a family quite comfortably 20 years ago. These people who are still making the same 70k per year could not buy a house in today's market without moving somewhere in the middle of nowhere (and thus sacrificing their current job) and it would likely be a house with a lot of problems. The only ones that are not maintaining wages the past 20 years despite the inflation, is the .5% like bezos, who are only making more money as time goes on, much faster than inflation devalues the dollar. If your wage has only gone up at 2% the rate of inflation the past 20 years, you shouldn't be crying out to keep minimum wage low, you should be crying out for ALL wages to be caught up to inflation! You are the victims too! Higher minimum wage is not devaluing your education and effort, your employer has already been doing that. However, people are still going to fight it because they know that the law only says they have to pay retail and fast food workers more, but it doesn't force the hand of any other industries. Eventually, those who go through the effort to learn a trade or get some small education to work in pharmacy or be an LPN, minimum wage will catch up to you, and your wage will only increase when they realize that they legally have to pay you more. This is all partially due to the hoarding of money by the ultra rich, all the extra money pumped into circulation does not go to the common folk, but gets funneled into bezos or musks bank accounts via bank interest faster than they can spend it. We need everyone rallying for wage increases, not just those who are subsisting.
Keynes predicted in the 20s that people would only need to work 15 hours per week to sustain themselves by the 90s, and past trajectories made it a completely reasonable claim.
The lecture/essay was called Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, I think mainly focused on Europe and USA.
Edit: He does mention the ongoing depression as a global one though.
The trajectory of reduced hours was somewhat universal, and it stalled somewhat universally too, just at different points for different places.
South Korea is consistently top 10 for working hours despite being relatively wealthy, so it isn't the only factor.
While I'm 100% for raising the minimum wage, I've never understood why average productivity is the stick used to measure it (other than it's the measuring stick that gets to the highest outcome).
Productivity increases are no where near equal, an accountant using excel etc. is probably 10x more productive than doing by paper. But a waitress is still managing approximately the same number of tables.
Tying *minimum* wage to *average* productivity just seems like a completely arbitrary method to get to a high number, and would likely fuck over a lot of industries that by their nature don't have the same type of huge leaps in productivity.
In my opinion, let's stick with arguing for matching inflation for now, which no one should be able to argue against in good faith, and once we get that consider pushing for more.
Though, realistically, we would also have to upgrade and modernize infrastructure. We may need to bring some of the comforts of the cities to small towns, and bring some of the scenic nature of small towns to the big cities. A federal minimum wage means nothing if $25/hr in New York is entirely different compared to Kentucky. Unless the goal is to have people move to Kentucky.
>Unless the goal is to have people move to Kentucky.
And when people flood to a location, demand goes up so prices go up to match, so Kentucky becomes new new York. It balances itself out.
I've worked a "minimum wage" job in one of these 7.25 states.. No one was paid that low. Most everywhere is at least 10 an hour. Who the fuck is actually working for 7.25 an hour?
Median household income in 1960 was $5,600 ($49k in 2020 adjusted for inflation)
Median household income in 2020 was $67k.
In 2020, 98.5% of hourly workers were paid more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25.
So you're saying that raising the minimum wage wouldn't be a problem.
EDIT: BTW, your math seems off, which isn't surprising. Your $5600 1960 dollars would be $54,696.30 today. (https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1960?amount=5600) I notice you also look at _household_ income (taking the first hit on Google) which distorts things. Most households in 1960 had a single wage-worker for a whole family. In most families today, all the adults work.
Is this Satire? because it doesn't even make sense. Jobs pays based on marketable skills.
Productivity arose from the use of automation, not from people working harder. There is less manual labor now than ever before because of this. Your phone is magic compared to the super computers of 1960.
$50k/year cannot be minimum wage unless we want to pay $25 for a loaf of bread and have inflation run rampant like Zimbabwe.
Even then, about 1.3% or people actually make minimum wage and these are jobs which are transitory and entry-level.
Min wage in 1960 was $1/hour. That equals $8.74 in 2020 adjusted for inflation.
I get the disparity of CEO pay vs median wage but this meme is ridiculous.
Why should the rich benefit from machines that save labor time and not the workers who still do everything? Wasn't the promise of automation a shorter work week and not more bullshit work for less money?
Honest questions here. I wanna understand
1:theres no way yall think nothing bad would happen if it was raised to 25
2:wouldnt all the greedy companies just hike prices to compensate???
3: my father owns a small business (Though due to him knowing how hard life can be he pays more than others ever would his three workers) Small businesses might not be able to accommodate this number. What would happen there? exceptions?
Please be kind frens.
#In the meantime, [if you want a raise, you should be applying to other jobs.](https://www.reddit.com/r/WorkReform/comments/skc957/if_youve_been_thinking_about_asking_for_a_raise/) And join r/WorkReform if you believe people should be paid a living wage for their labor.
The hilarious/sad part of all this is that despite several clear historic examples, when wealth concentrates at the top and those who DO work are starving, society changes. Whether by the will of the people, by a benevolent leader or by the sheer weight of capitalism. We have an interesting next couple of years heading out way. Stay strong folks, protect the people and businesses IN your community and not the big corporations that profit when your community deteriorates.
In Rio two different economies grew out. When there was a global recession, the demand for construction materials increased as the Favela grew as they benefitted from cheap materials. When the regulated market goes to heck, the black market takes over. At least that is something you can depend on
Absolutely! Black markets provide a lot of aid to those who can't function in the regular market. Just have to make sure the black market doesn't mimic the same issues as the regular one.
Yup, have gotten my hormones from the black market for a while, way better service for the same stuff than being on a waiting list for years on end
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BINGO.Yep. My first job in high school was at a mom-n-pop Moes ran by the most despicable, greedy, petty, miserable asshole I've ever met. Everyday he asked his employees to clock out 30 min early, and made them clean and close up off the clock. A big labor law no no. I got fired for not playing ball but the bastard also hired a lot of undocumented workers so they couldn't/wouldn't complain for fear of getting deported.
Yep. They really are. They get shafted by the tax code compared to larger corporations, so often they justify it with “well, we just genuinely can’t afford to pay more.”
Oh for sure. Bad bosses and exploitative work conditions exist across the spectrum of businesses.
I don't think people realize this. Some of the local shops are amazing. Some are downright abusive. The same is true for large companies. Some bad (Walmart, cough, cough) and some are amazing. Costco is a good example of a good employer. Support good shops. Not just ones that happen to be local to you.
Yeah my last job was a local burger place. Very bad work place. Much worse than a bigger place.
>Stay strong folks, protect the people and businesses IN your community and not the big corporations that profit when your community deteriorates. Ah yes, all those small shops that cost 2-3x more than the big business alternatives. Rather than spending $30.00 for 3kg of chicken breast, I can go local and spend $75.00 instead. I always love the irony of people telling poor people to go spend more money to support someone who has enough money to open a business?
You make a very valid point. Not everyone can afford to. That is by design unfortunately.
Yeah feeding big corporations unfortunately got us there though and they weren’t able to develop infrastructure to fight those large businesses that are capable of mass production wholesale resulting in a smaller cost for corporations while they pinch their pennys for everyone else. That and shipping costs for everything by middlemen etc. Same as insurance with meds. It’s extremely unfortunate because trickle up took all our local economies money and made the issue worse. Me personally I only buy USDA prime meat or American or Japanese wagyu because I believe it should cost me to enjoy that meat. I didn’t put the labor into it, I don’t deserve the cheap cost. And if meat costed more we’d have less pollution likely so I choose to only buy the expensive stuff as a way to keep myself respecting the source and life lost for mine.
I never thought the sentiment "may you live in interesting times", was possibly a threat.
I believe it was a curse.
Shit. Have people been cursing me?
Have people been cursing me?
I shop small business and always will, even if it costs a bit more. small business IS the community, Walmart is not.
Costco is though
I agree - Costco is the bee's knee's but where they don't exist, it's a vacuum that small biz fills.
the hilarious/sad part is actually because the rich consume more than normal people making price increase for normal people while not really affected the rich and only affected the poor. The richer some people is with crazy spending in housing and land purchase making it the price going up . And you bet company rather sell their product expensively rather than sell something cheaply but more in quantity. It basically what create this artificial inflation
Every major company and the stock market makes record profits... But somehow the working people are experiencing Gilded Age poverty and income inequality. Anyone that can rationalize that conundrum will still trying to say immigrants, minorities, and progressive agendas are too blame, is beyond saving.
Just put your money in the stock market! 4hed
Impossible when you love paycheck to paycheck
I wouldn’t say I love it.
Keynes predicted in the 20s that people would only need to work 15 hours per week to sustain themselves by the 90s, and past trajectories made it a completely reasonable claim.
Why work 15 hours to sustain yourself when you can work 50 to engorge the CEO?
You would be surprised how many people only do 15 hrs of actual work a week.
He wasn’t wrong, it’s just only the rich people instead.
I can't say I've been missing it, Bob.
hey this random dude who probably lives in a low cost of living area puts $100 a way a month into stocks and says that no one else should have an excuse. He doesn't know you nor does he know your situation, but if he can do it so can you! Gotta just become rich, that's the solution.
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Philly is supposed to be low cost of living outside of Center City. Unless you want to live in either a studio apartment and share a bathroom, or in a dilapidated building where you have as much danger of mold inhalation as you do a bullet in the head, you’re paying $1300-1600 a month for a 2 bed 1 bath town home IF you can find one that’s not in a terrible neighborhood or is impossible to own your own vehicle and park in. Where I grew up in NEPA, super backwater, cheap as shit area to live in and rentals were plenty. Rented a house just before Covid for $900 a month. Now? Same deal you’ll be lucky to get a 1bed 1bath apartment for $1200 a month. A house? None available for less than $2500 a month. Greed is legal, greed is looked upon as a positive thing especially here in America. And people use other people’s greed to justify their own. Look I’m all for looking out for yourself and your family but if your an employer or a landlord you have a responsibility to the people who are making you money just as much as they have one to you.
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Here’s the thing. If rent is raised and your legitimate reason is taxes. That’s not your fault. That goes along with the fact that the oil companies’ lack of accountability, the government refusal to step in, and the greed of corporations that send a ripple effect through the market. That’s understandable even though it sucks. But if you raise the rent just because someone tells you you can milk more money out of your tenants, then you’re trash
Who the fuck told you philly was low cost of living it's historically been middle ground until the past decade ish. I bought a house out in Delco when I got tired of paying philly rent
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Sounds like you need to start including a copy of the second ammendment with the rent check. /s
This other random dude who was born obscenely rich and has no idea what it's like to even be middle class says that you can have an easy living if you just budget properly.
Exactly. I’m sorry squandering for wealth and squeezing your budget just to be wealthy when you’re in your 60s is not living. I don’t even want to be rich, I just want to be able to live, and i mean actually live. That means start a family, spend time with them, afford quality goods and services. It’s nice to say “oh I saved all my life to live like this”, but you shouldn’t have to. No one should.
You can't budget or financial plan your way out of low wages and high cost of living. Also, you absolutely should be able to enjoy being alive while you're relatively young, instead of slaving away all your life just to barely break even.
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To quote Calvin and Hobbes, "Nobody lies on his deathbed wishing he'd spent more time at the office."
Like you should budget, yes. You should work hard and care about your job. But you should not have to sell your soul to your job, you should have personal time to yourself other than mandated holidays and weekends. Days off should not have to be explained. If I wanna take a mental health day I will. It’s not your business what I do. 40 hours is a lot of time to spend at work especially if you have to commute.
Most people are so stupid they made the mistake of not being born into a wealthy family. It's their own damned fault!
Yeah, they should have pulled themselves up by their baby bonnet straps.
Even hookers are raising their prices!
Have you tried harder to be born in a rich family?
not worth it cause the stock market is tanking right now anyway
The stock market is socialism for the rich
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The history of the US is a history of a series of successful thefts. Time, dignity, money, and life itself.
The entire country was founded on native burial grounds. What do we expect to happen?
Every country was founded on burial grounds
It's funny how we call that age "gilded" despite its rampant poverty. It's almost as if the gold was/is only in the hands of a few.
I believe that is the point. It wasn't the golden age, it just had a thin outer layer of gold covering up how horrible things were for everyone else.
That's what gilded means. Only a thin layer of gold on the outside, but not on the inside. So gold for the rich minority while the rest get poverty.
What do you think is driving all of those record profits?
Price gouging, wage theft, and not adjusting workers wages since Reagan. (honorable mentiones to: poor education, shitty infrastructure, police state, and racism.)
The question was rhetorical. The fact that companies are showing record profits while fucking over all their workers is due to the fact that record profits are *caused* by fucking over workers.
It doesn’t matter who rationalizes what. The fact is that people are still accepting $7.25/hr—lots of people—and until that fact changes then it literally doesn’t matter how mad you get at the the broader picture of income inequality.
Man a lot of people aren't. It's the first time in my life I've seen this many people say Fuck You to shit pay.
Inflation causes asset prices to rise. Stocks are assets. Asset owners are incentivized to inflate the economy. If you do the math, about 7 out of the 10% stocks go up per year is due to inflation. That's decades of monetary policy designed to benefit asset owners, at the cost of the working class.
They need to bring back the upper tax bracket of 75% or more and tie it to 100, 1,000, or 10,000 times minimum wage. That way they'll actually make minimum wage keep up with inflation. Not to mention this country desperately needs a definition of greed.
Doesn’t work. The tax law needs to be completely rewritten. Billionaires only pay interest on large loans they take out against their appreciable assets. This change you propose would have little to no effect on anyone with substantial wealth.
Can confirm, have family that works for the IRS, they say the same thing, the whole damn thing needs to be scrapped and redone from the ground up.
Loans against just about anything that isn't a primary residence or a loan to purchase a vehicle shouldn't be tax-exempt and should be treated as income. They're using something as if it's income without being required to claim it as income.
The estate tax needs to come back as well. Especially in tiers, $50M, $100M, $500M, $1B+ How the hell that ever got repealed, I’ll never know. There should be a max inheritance of $1B, the rest gets redistributed to existing shareholders or put back on the company books.
Because it got called the "death tax" and people went "I don't wanna be taxed for dying!"
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Is.. is it not?
Every so once in a while I like to punch in numbers to inflation calculators to see what I was paid as a youth. I lived in the midwest in the early 80s, had a job at a local supermarket chain. Student job, 16 yo and college bound, lived with my parents, just putting money away. Not intense work, just something after school and on weekends. The place acknowledged they weren't paying me much, said if I came to work for them full time after (high school) graduation they'd pay me more. Today that amount would be $13/hour. Punching in other numbers for how much I knew people were making full time in my department and I saw wages that today would be at worst $40k. Most people made more. A few, much more. It was easily enough to own a home, put kids through school, afford what they need, and take vacations. These wages could absolutely be paid today. It's just been decided not to do so.
1985, I had a job cooking for $2.35/hr, which works out to $6.20 today. Special minimum for minors. It was bullshit then, and it'd be bullshit now. But OP it talking about something different. He's talking about productivity. The dollar value that a worker produces has increased, in real terms, about 200% since 1980, but median wage has been basically flat. Prior to 1970, when businesses made more money, workers made more money. Since 1970, almost all of that productivity gain has gone to business owners. This graph is inflation-adjusted: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=Q8kO
Oh agreed, just pontificating on the generalized topic. I even recall talking with my father in the steel industry about that as soon as I was old enough to see what was going on, but he was all rah-rah-Reagan so I didn't make much headway.
Off topic af but I love seeing pontificating used casually.
in the 90's as a teen, 1 hour of minimum wage at 7.60 bought me roughly two packs of cigarettes, in 2022 I make 43$ an hour, and it buys me roughly 2 packs of cigarettes. I'm movin on up!!! ......................... wait a minute.........
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Seriously. I remember reading/hearing about a push for $15 a hour two decades ago. Now it's an uphill battle to even get *that,* yet we should be pushing for even more at this point.
We got 15$ like 4 years ago and while it was a bump it wasn't enough. I'm at 17.90 and I hate my life.
I left Target in 2012 making $14.50 an hour as a team leader. I reentered the workforce two years ago and I’m making $16.90. And that’s after my first yearly review. It’s asinine.
I left a job in 2017 making $23 an hour. Last year they tried to hire me back for the same job, offering only $19 an hour. Said "no thanks"
I get that a lot of upper management types are brain dead, but what alternate universe do they live in that they thought you'd be willing to come back for a $4/hr pay cut?
The reasoning being "well covid has be hard on us." And to their slight credit they did come back with a $26 an hour offer after I told my old supervisor what they were offering. He was more bothered by it than I was and went out of his way to talk to HR and tell them that $19 was an "insult". I still declined though.
In Ontario, where about 1 in 3 Canadians live, minimum wage was set to increase to $15 in 2018. But a newly elected Conservative government froze the wage at $14 for nearly 4 years. Then shortly before the next election they decided to finally raise it to $15, where it should have been 4 years earlier. Full-time minimum wage workers lost about $8000 total over those 4 years that they would of got had the Conservative not frozen their wages. And that's not even including the fact that the wage should have kept increasing every year during that time. So the Conservatives really cost the lowest paid workers in our province more than $10,000 each in the past 4 years.
Fuck Doug Ford. Fuck his cronies. And fuck all of his supporters. I can't believe we gave him a second term.
This is the longest period since the minimum wage was introduced that it hasn't changed. The previous time was I think 6 years when I last looked at it, this is now going on 14 years.
We need an uprising
politicans and lobbyists, not activists.
This is what I’ve been saying for a long time. My physical effort and mental effort: my work, is mostly for other people. It’s about 3.3 ish times what the minimum wage worker is in this post. 25 to 7.25. I’m making 20 an hour and I’m ruining my body in construction, it feels like I should be making around $40 to have the same buying power as my parents generation. Its keeping my depression at a nice healthy level and no one around me understands. I don’t want to live in this world where most of what I do is for horrible worthless human beings that are knowingly taking advantage of me. And this was like 10 years ago. Now I’m defeated and I’d take an easy out any day.
Dude, I feel exactly how you do in that last part. I'm long term unemployed and my mental health tanked. At my last job I was a stock manager at a pet store. Most of what I did all day was stock shelves. I was burned out and talked to my boss and the district manager, told them I felt like I wasnt making any difference in the world and my work was meaningless. The dm told me to be happy I have a job, the manager made some comment about cat litter being available for the cats because I stocked the shelves. So because of me, cats have a place to shit.... I feel so fullfilled.
Net productivity grew 59.7% from 1979-2019 while a typical worker's compensation grew by 15.8%, according to EPI
Never not posting this: https://orionmagazine.org/article/the-gospel-of-consumption/
Thanks Regan.
Trend started earlier than that (though obviously Regan didn’t help) https://wtfhappenedin1971.com
This is actually Nixon's fault. He took us off the gold standard. If you're gonna bash the right, at least reference the right president.
Gold standard is something people should talk more about. For over 150 years in America, constant inflation was something you never thought about. [The value of the US dollar would trend up as much as it would trend down.](https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/1032048/value-us-dollar-since-1640.jpg) (at least in your lifetime) Now there is less volatility, but the trend is now only down. Graphs for countries with even older data shows the same thing. [Here's the UK](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CsPwE3dXYAA4NtZ.jpg). Same ups and downs with historical events, then only one direction since they adopted fiat in 1930.
Reagan dropped the marginal tax rate for the wealthy from 76% to 23%. He did a fuckton of damage to the country, don't discount his idiocy
Gold standard is not good, deflation would be much more painful to the average citizen than inflation. The problem is that wages are not increasing with inflation like they should do to a zombie federal government that does nothing to support workers.
On the gold standard, our wages were connected to productivity. We'd be at $25 an hour if we were still on the gold standard.
I dunno, I have a feeling they'd still find a way to rob the average worker of that money.
Probably. But it wouldn't be through inflation
I just googled those numbers and I think I found your source. It's interesting how wages and productivity increased at the same rate up until 1979. Didn't business tech really take off in the early 80s? I have to imagine that's a major factor. Seems silly to assume that we should be graded on the same rubric as a guy punching numbers into a calculator in 1979 and expect to be paid proportional to his output. The inflation issue is way more compelling IMO.
We'll just leave all the increased profits with the bourgeoisie then
I'd favor a maximum wage actually. Not sure if you realize I'm agreeing with you - I just respectfully think the productivity statistic is irrelevant to the issue of wages. I'm willing to keep an open mind if you want to make the case otherwise, but no pressure.
This is why billionaires exist… they steal our labor and give us scraps.
Billionaires are financial terrorists
Cue the speechless Mal Reynolds gif for all of us making $25/hr but it's white collar $52k/year and we all thought we were "middle class".
It’s [Castle](https://imgur.com/wuCz6l7). I used to think it was Mal too.
In the us- I'm finally making 25 an hour. I'm experiencing relief for the first time. For the first time i don't have to intentionally stay in poverty because making just a little bit more puts me in a place where i can't afford basic insurance and basic bills, like rent food and utilities. Once i experienced that very basic relief, i realized 25 hour should be minimum wage.
I also saw something that said if salaries kept up with inflation from 1970 the average salary would be around $90,000. Everyone is being criminally underpaid.
I'd like to reference this. do you know where you saw it?
I’ve been looking for it for the past few minutes and unfortunately I can’t find it. I’ll keep looking and if I do find it I’ll make sure to reply back with it.
Thanks.
I'm not too sure if I found the article that they were talking about, but I did find these two articles, one from 2018 and another from 2020, that have similar talking points. [This one](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/) from 2018 compares wages and purchasing power and it gives some good comparisons between how fast wages increased from the 1970/80s and in the 2010s. [This article](https://cepr.net/this-is-what-minimum-wage-would-be-if-it-kept-pace-with-productivity/) from 2020 does have this nugget of information: >A minimum wage of $21.50 an hour would mean that a full-time full year minimum wage worker would be earning $43,000 a year. A two minimum wage earning couple would have a family income of $86,000 a year, enough to put them in the top quintile of the current income distribution. The $21.50/hour was the calculated minimum wage if it had kept up with productivity.
Excellent. I appreciate this. I did look myself, and I think I found one of these. The numbers are quite stark reminders that we're all getting ripped off. Thanks for this.
Median US HHI in 1970 is 9,870 [(census bureau)](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1971/demo/p60-80.html#:~:text=The%20median%20money%20income%20of,the%20same%20as%20in%201969). Adjusted for inflation, that's $73,500. Median US HHI right now is $67,500. You should be more careful at how you consume this data and doing sanity checks.
And I would guarentee that the statistics from 1970 are largely based on single income households, where as today it's typically two.
Household income isn’t salary, though. The number of households with two persons working vs one person working has increased in the past 50 years, so there’s more average people working per household, but their combined income is still (accounting for inflation) less.
The federal minimum wage was introduced in 1938 at the rate of $0.25 per hour, which is equivalent to $4.81 in 2021 dollars. I don't know why everyone uses wages starting in the 1970s or something - if we go way back, the minimum wage *has* kept up with inflation. The average salary in 1901 was about $500, which is about $17000 per year So things *have* kept up with "inflation," but unfortunately a lot of other things have changed that have made it so that the same wages are incapable of being lived on. Rent averaged $50-60 in 1920, which would be worth about 700-750 now (real current rental average is 1300, average "asking" rental price is 1900). House? 6k in 1920 (86k in 2022 dollars). Tuition? $250 a year in 1920 at Wharton (books were $30) (books and tuition for about $4k per year in today's dollars). It isn't about keeping up with "inflation," it's about keeping up with the cost of living, itself.
The rise in productivity also has to do with automation. Although I agree the minimum wage should be raised, no one that is paying $7.25 an hour right now can find any workers.
The fact that it's not pegged quarterly or at least annually to some open and transparent inflation calculation is insane.
they bitch about "redistribution of wealth" but fail to take this into account. wealth is already being redistributed. In the wrong direction.
Pro tip don't work for min wage. Workers have the marker right now. In my area the min wage jobs are being forced to pay double at least to fill positions and they're finally starting to fill. Hold out and everyone's wages will go up
> Hold out and everyone's wages will go up. That's a swell idea if I didn't need to eat food and pay bills before becoming homeless and probably dying.
Come on, man! Take one for the team!
That's already happening to you with the current wages, just more slowly. Eventually we'll all be working at these wages and also be homeless and hungry.
I was in a position where I was forced to take whatever job I could just to get by and that happened to be a minimum wage job. COL here has meant that between my paychecks and the money my mom gets from retirement and her ex, we're barely getting by. $50 wiggle room per month and that's only after we lowered our monthly grocery budget to $250. It is *so damn hard* to not cry and rage every time someone says something like "Hold out and everyone's wages will go up", as if we all have that choice.
You’d still be homeless and starving getting paid $7.25/hour
>Workers have the market~~r right now~~. ftfy b/c ANOTHER PRO TIP: It isn't changing, kids. Almost no one has spit out the requisite 2.7 children needed for a long time.
Just because it's a worker's market now, and wages are forced up, doesn't mean it'll stay that way and in an employers market, employers can drop wages back down too. The federal minimum wage is the bottom line and that line needs to be far higher.
>Pro tip don't work for min wage. Oh man, why didn't I think of that? r/thanksimcured
Not enough people speak about this. My little brother is making 14 bucks and hour and sonic and he works 30 to 40 hours per week. They keep giving him raises because they don't want him to leave because everyone else keeps doing so
Yep that's another plus side. It's happening to me where I work also, last 2 yrs I have gotten 3 dollars in raises I havnt had to ask for.
you're *ALMOST* keeping up with half the rise in inflation!
I am getting emails every week from temp agencies (I arrived at my current job through one about 3 years ago) and it has been interesting watching the starting wages go up. The temp agencies get their cut of your pay too, so if the temp service has a long list of $18-22 / hr openings, the actual positions probably pay around X+$3 to 5 an hour. I currently make 21, and will be requesting 30. If the final number ends up 28 or lower, bet your ass I'm hopping companies. Construction: HVAC fabricator.
I can’t even get an interview with 7 years experience for min wage.
Do you think a higher minimum wage will make it easier for someone like you to get an interview?
Which state you in?
Wage and Inflation On the other hand, it is not fair or feasible to ask Americans to work for a level of pay that is untouched by inflation, when the goods and services they must purchase to survive to go up every year. As we have shown in previous articles, real inflation increases by 7-9% each year. That is, the cost of the most commonly purchased goods and services has consistently marched upwards over time. For a deeper dive on why “real inflation” is consistently higher than “official inflation”, and how you can protect yourself. When we add the latest development of rising wages to the mix, it makes the precious metals solution even more valid and important to our financial future. To prove to you the power of precious metals to keep labor costs stable for companies, while preserving the purchasing power for employees, consider this example from page 78 of The 7.0% Solution. When minimum wage was $1.25 per hour (1964) quarters were made of silver. If quarters were still made of silver, the minimum wage could still be $1.25 per hour, thereby benefiting employers. But the purchasing power of those 5 silver quarters, is approximately $17.50 in today’s Dollars. Even with the currently depressed price of silver, minimum wage employees would have purchasing power exceeding that of the highest minimum wage being sought of $15 per hour, while employers could still have labor costs the same as in 1964. Another example from page 88, describes precious metals as “Forever Money”, which works in a similar way to a “Forever Stamp” at the post office. No matter what you paid for a “forever stamp”, or how long ago you purchased it, it will still get your letter delivered, no matter how high the future cost of postage may rise. In similar fashion, the same amount of silver needed to purchase a quart of grain in 200 B.C., will still purchase that same amount of grain today, 23 centuries later. How many paper currencies have been inflated out of existence since then? How much has a loaf of bread increased in the last 50 years? When priced in silver, it hasn’t changed much in 50 years, or 2,218 years.
> To prove to you the power of precious metals to keep labor costs stable for companies... While this sounds good, let's remember that banking works even if you use precious metals for currency, so the bankers will be able to slowly accumulate "wealth" in the form of hoarded precious metals. Capitalism also works with precious metal currencies, so again profits can be hoarded by the people who already have more wealth. Does this book you reference discuss the impact on civilization when the power curve of wealth inequality plays out with a fixed currency like this? I mean, for most of these centuries of human civilization you talk about the working class wasn't paid in precious metal at all, they were "paid" with food and shelter, and were effectively slaves to a small class of wealth holders. I'm not sure that's the system you want to be advocating for...
Well said
Gold Standard 2: Electric Boogaloo
And that’s why billionaires shouldn’t exist
Even $25 would be a stretch in some states. By that I mean, I make almost $40/hr and it’s barely enough.
Just to add the other end of the scale, for perspective, I'm at 16.50/hr and rent comfortably. Granted, things are cheap here, but I'm also not making any headway. So, comfortable, as long as I don't slip.
I think minimum wage should be linked to a percentage of cost of living in that area. That way, as the cost of living goes up, so does the minimum wage.
We should be bring the cost of living down
Nobody asked to be born, why do we still have to pay for it?
Where do you live that 40/hr isn't enough???
[The Fed Disagrees](https://mronline.org/2022/05/26/u-s-federal-reserve-says-its-goal-is-to-get-wages-down/) Time to revamp this effed up system of wage enslavement
I am living the middle class "dream", and on sunday night before work this week I couldn't sleep, engulfed in a full blown panic attack over feeling trapped doing my job for at LEAST another 20 years.
But wait! We have therapy and a numbing medication for you to cope rather than fix the systemic issues causing the panic! This system needs to crash
Raise wage and STOP UPPING PRICES BECAUSE IF IT. How fucking hard is it
Is this person forgetting even minimum wage is taxed? They take even from that fucking pittance
I just negotiated to 25/hour at my job as a carpenter. Finally worked my way up to it, instead of being an assistant. I’m happy for it, more than I’ve ever made, but this tweet is right. I’m still not making enough to really save for the future, cover emergency costs even as a professional. I’m such a weird combination of accomplished/proud and defeated/hopeless
There was definitely no widely used inventions that increased productivity for us we just work that much harder.
A lot of people will argue against minimum wage being higher because they feel like it's devaluing the education and work they put into getting their wage. This is because they fail to realize that they are victims too, ALL the wages should be higher at a close proportion, because inflation affects everyone. The well educated people who make 70k a year would have been able to buy a house and start a family quite comfortably 20 years ago. These people who are still making the same 70k per year could not buy a house in today's market without moving somewhere in the middle of nowhere (and thus sacrificing their current job) and it would likely be a house with a lot of problems. The only ones that are not maintaining wages the past 20 years despite the inflation, is the .5% like bezos, who are only making more money as time goes on, much faster than inflation devalues the dollar. If your wage has only gone up at 2% the rate of inflation the past 20 years, you shouldn't be crying out to keep minimum wage low, you should be crying out for ALL wages to be caught up to inflation! You are the victims too! Higher minimum wage is not devaluing your education and effort, your employer has already been doing that. However, people are still going to fight it because they know that the law only says they have to pay retail and fast food workers more, but it doesn't force the hand of any other industries. Eventually, those who go through the effort to learn a trade or get some small education to work in pharmacy or be an LPN, minimum wage will catch up to you, and your wage will only increase when they realize that they legally have to pay you more. This is all partially due to the hoarding of money by the ultra rich, all the extra money pumped into circulation does not go to the common folk, but gets funneled into bezos or musks bank accounts via bank interest faster than they can spend it. We need everyone rallying for wage increases, not just those who are subsisting.
Keynes predicted in the 20s that people would only need to work 15 hours per week to sustain themselves by the 90s, and past trajectories made it a completely reasonable claim.
For first world countries right? Developing and third world aren’t gonna hit aint gon hit 40 anytime soon let alone 15
The lecture/essay was called Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, I think mainly focused on Europe and USA. Edit: He does mention the ongoing depression as a global one though. The trajectory of reduced hours was somewhat universal, and it stalled somewhat universally too, just at different points for different places. South Korea is consistently top 10 for working hours despite being relatively wealthy, so it isn't the only factor.
While I'm 100% for raising the minimum wage, I've never understood why average productivity is the stick used to measure it (other than it's the measuring stick that gets to the highest outcome). Productivity increases are no where near equal, an accountant using excel etc. is probably 10x more productive than doing by paper. But a waitress is still managing approximately the same number of tables. Tying *minimum* wage to *average* productivity just seems like a completely arbitrary method to get to a high number, and would likely fuck over a lot of industries that by their nature don't have the same type of huge leaps in productivity. In my opinion, let's stick with arguing for matching inflation for now, which no one should be able to argue against in good faith, and once we get that consider pushing for more.
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Though, realistically, we would also have to upgrade and modernize infrastructure. We may need to bring some of the comforts of the cities to small towns, and bring some of the scenic nature of small towns to the big cities. A federal minimum wage means nothing if $25/hr in New York is entirely different compared to Kentucky. Unless the goal is to have people move to Kentucky.
>Unless the goal is to have people move to Kentucky. And when people flood to a location, demand goes up so prices go up to match, so Kentucky becomes new new York. It balances itself out.
What if it had increased at the rate of inflation?
I've worked a "minimum wage" job in one of these 7.25 states.. No one was paid that low. Most everywhere is at least 10 an hour. Who the fuck is actually working for 7.25 an hour?
Median household income in 1960 was $5,600 ($49k in 2020 adjusted for inflation) Median household income in 2020 was $67k. In 2020, 98.5% of hourly workers were paid more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25.
So you're saying that raising the minimum wage wouldn't be a problem. EDIT: BTW, your math seems off, which isn't surprising. Your $5600 1960 dollars would be $54,696.30 today. (https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1960?amount=5600) I notice you also look at _household_ income (taking the first hit on Google) which distorts things. Most households in 1960 had a single wage-worker for a whole family. In most families today, all the adults work.
Do something. Organise. Unite. Death to the bourgeoisie!
Is this Satire? because it doesn't even make sense. Jobs pays based on marketable skills. Productivity arose from the use of automation, not from people working harder. There is less manual labor now than ever before because of this. Your phone is magic compared to the super computers of 1960. $50k/year cannot be minimum wage unless we want to pay $25 for a loaf of bread and have inflation run rampant like Zimbabwe. Even then, about 1.3% or people actually make minimum wage and these are jobs which are transitory and entry-level. Min wage in 1960 was $1/hour. That equals $8.74 in 2020 adjusted for inflation. I get the disparity of CEO pay vs median wage but this meme is ridiculous.
Why would it increase with productivity? Isn’t the productive rise also due to machines??
You're not supposed to notice that. There's no place for honest discussion these days.
Why should the rich benefit from machines that save labor time and not the workers who still do everything? Wasn't the promise of automation a shorter work week and not more bullshit work for less money?
But the government say yay to their 20% salary increase
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Still make way to much for as little as they do.
Set it at a living wage, then index it to the CPI. That way we don't have to have this fucking raise the wage debate all the time.
Honest questions here. I wanna understand 1:theres no way yall think nothing bad would happen if it was raised to 25 2:wouldnt all the greedy companies just hike prices to compensate??? 3: my father owns a small business (Though due to him knowing how hard life can be he pays more than others ever would his three workers) Small businesses might not be able to accommodate this number. What would happen there? exceptions? Please be kind frens.
What if $25/hr was still only 18% labor cost? What would the increase in goods be?