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Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

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Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#61

Post by carbonguy »

strictnein wrote: post #10
aahortwwy wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to public policy I think it's better to focus on how things turn out in reality rather than how they were intended or designed to turn out.

Correct. And how it turned out is that very, very few people earn minimum wage. In 1979 it was 13.4% In 2017 it was 2.3% In 2017, 1% of workers aged 25 or older earned minimum wage. 8% of working teenagers do. https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2017/home.htm

While it's true that very few people earn exactly the federal minimum wage, which is what your source is discussing, it's probably worth mentioning that "Currently, 29 states and D.C. have minimum wages above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour." [1] Saying that "very few people earn minimum wage" while referring to federal minimum wage statistics is not particularly informative - and even the statistics you cite are somewhat misleading, as they refer to people earning the federal minimum wage or less, although it's implied that those earning less are mostly tipped workers.

It turns out to be somewhat difficult to find statistics for which fraction of workers earn their state's minimum wage or less; focusing just on California [2], it seems that at least 4%, or ~630,000, CA workers were earning at or below the CA minimum wage in 2017. In other words, the 1.3 million figure given as "the number of minimum wage workers" is almost certainly off by a large factor, once you take into account different minimum wages.

[1] https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/state-min...

[2] https://www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/data/oes-employment-a...; the 630k figure comes from looking at the industries in the "State of California" summary sheet that have a "25th percentile" wage of 10.50 or less, then taking 25% of the workers in those industries to get a lower-bound estimate.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#62

Post by souprock »

chrissnell wrote: post #2

Yes, but the minimum wage is the minimum wage. This isn't designed to be something that you start at and stay at your whole life.

No, the true minimum is -infinity, and $0 is quite common. The legal minimum wage just excludes a particular range. Jobs that would naturally be in that range get pushed to one side or the other, with working conditions adjusting to compensate.

Some jobs go to 0, called "volunteer work" or "unpaid internship", and they get friendly conditions. There might be very flexible hours, a nice break room with delicious snacks, and work-sponsored parties.

Some other jobs go to the legal minimum wage, with work conditions degrading. The employer becomes more demanding because that is possible at the increased level of pay. Hours become inflexible for the employee, but flexible on short notice for the employer. The break room gets bad-value vending machines. People get fired for trivial things.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#64

Post by stretchwithme »

A society with no technology has hardly any wealth gap.

People who can leverage multiple technologies can multiply their efforts. Mass communication, mass distribution and automation of all sorts.

But Wall Street bonuses are subsidized by the fact the government socializes their biggest failures. Bailouts just encourage them to take greater risks, leveraging debt in dangerous ways that will blow up the system again.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#65

Post by luckylion »

vmception wrote: post #32
pathseeker wrote: post #6

So? It would be even higher if it grew at the same rate as a typical Google SWE's comp did from 2010 to 2020. Some industries are doing really well.

Marketable skills, what a concept. I’m being flippant, but there really could be constructive share ownership amongst the general population.

> I’m being flippant, but there really could be constructive share ownership amongst the general population.

If only everyone could work in adtech and digital surveillance, we'd have endless growth and high profits throughout the world! But that's obviously not the case, so how would somebody working for trucking company arrive at the same compensation that somebody in adtech would?

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#66

Post by dataflow »

xupybd wrote: post #14

NZ just raised our min wage to $20 an hour. I work at least 50 hours a week. A teenager at MacDonalds now earns a good fraction of my income if they work the same hours. Despite my 4 year degree, near decade of experience and the responsibility's that I hold.

I assume your objection is that this is unfair to you who spent all that time and effort into getting your current role? What would you have done differently had you known the future would be like this?

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#67

Post by hkt »

xupybd wrote: post #14

NZ just raised our min wage to $20 an hour. I work at least 50 hours a week. A teenager at MacDonalds now earns a good fraction of my income if they work the same hours. Despite my 4 year degree, near decade of experience and the responsibility's that I hold.

50 hours a week sounds brutal. I don't see the problem with the teenager (or adult with family) earning $20, but maybe you should consider working somewhere with shorter days?

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#68

Post by bawolff »

xupybd wrote: post #14

NZ just raised our min wage to $20 an hour. I work at least 50 hours a week. A teenager at MacDonalds now earns a good fraction of my income if they work the same hours. Despite my 4 year degree, near decade of experience and the responsibility's that I hold.

Maybe you're just not as good at your job or it isn't as valuable as you think it is. Capitalism isn't a senority system; degrees,experience and responsibility mean jack if you can't convince someone you are worth it.

Alternatively, if you think flipping burgers for a "good fraction" of your current income is a good deal that you are envious of, then maybe you should go flip burgers. If not, what are you complaining about?

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#69

Post by worker767424 »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #53
worker767424 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it helps, a robot will be doing their job in 5 years.

No it won't. A human will be flipping those burgers and serving them to customer.

They're already replacing cashiers with kiosks. No reason to think some of the relatively more mundane kitchen jobs aren't next.

Re: Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

#70

Post by downandout »

stretchwithme wrote: post #64

A society with no technology has hardly any wealth gap. People who can leverage multiple technologies can multiply their efforts. Mass communication, mass distribution and automation of all sorts. But Wall Street bonuses are subsidized by the fact the government socializes their biggest failures. Bailouts just encourage them to take greater risks, leveraging debt in dangerous ways that will blow up the system again.

Taxpayers not only recovered everything from the 2008 bailouts, they actually earned a $15.3 billion profit. How is that “socializing their biggest failures”?

From [1]:

Early estimates for the total cost of the bailout to the government were as much as $700 billion, however TARP recovered funds totalling $441.7 billion from $426.4 billion invested, earning a $15.3 billion profit or an annualized rate of return of 0.6%...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabiliza...

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