You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour
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You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour
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Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour
#2Medium does get tiring to read...
Archive link: https://archive.is/6JuaJ
Using: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart
I looked over the article and never saw a single justification for $15/hr. outside of "people need it". The Jacobin study included productivity which I don't know if you can even properly quantify into dollars. Certainly, minimum wage is not addressing the needs of the lowest earners in the country. But there must be a metric to go by:
If we use base minimum wage adjusted for inflation the numbers look even worse than they are today. $0.25 in 1938 is $4.74 in today's money. So that's not good. It would appear using these numbers minimum wage has beat average inflation using the BLS' own CPI calculator.
If we loosen the requirements to the last "stopping point", 2009, $7.25 becomes $7.49 according to the same calculator. Not keeping up with inflation, but I don't think even the poorest people are going to write home about coming up 24 cents short.
But this ignoring local minimum wages. Using the following data:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/238997/minimum-wage-by-u...
We arrive at an average minimum wage of $9.78 and a median of $9.45. So, neither of these really indicate a lacking in inflationary tracking even at the state level. So what's the cause?
Well, I'm not an economist but I think the issue is local and not federal. The federal government can set the minimum wage to $15, but that doesn't change the fact the wage curve is heavily skewed by ultra low CoL states and ultra high CoL states. Not being an economist I am willing to ascribe to this something I'm going to call "state-local inflation" where places like California and New York probably demand a minimum wage closer to $25/hr. whereas somewhere like Georgia might do just fine sitting at $10.
As a result I think this medium article is more of a tirade than anything and does not elucidate anything related to the problem other than the tautology that it is a problem (which I do agree with). The solution however, seems far more complicated than the "just raise the wage" protests would make it out to be.
Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour
#3why would minimum wage keep pace with productivity if those workers aren’t the ones being more productive?
overall productivity increase because of tech and globalization, of course a work whose productivity has stayed the same shouldn’t expect to make more just because other parts of the economy do well
Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour
#4Minimum wage should simply keep up with cost of living divided by the reasonable working hours.
Like: cost of living is $1800 a month divided by 3 full days a week times 4 (12), times 8 hours = 1800 / (348) = 1800 / 96 = $18,75 per hour.
Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour
#5why would minimum wage keep pace with productivity if those workers aren’t the ones being more productive? overall productivity increase because of tech and globalization, of course a work whose productivity has stayed the same shouldn’t expect to make more just because other parts of the economy do well
What if the entire industry is automated by an AI.
No software engineers and no workers required.
Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour
#6Minimum wage should simply keep up with cost of living divided by the reasonable working hours. Like: cost of living is $1800 a month divided by 3 full days a week times 4 (12), times 8 hours = 1800 / (3 4 8) = 1800 / 96 = $18,75 per hour.
This is how bad things have gotten: In the 1950s, the minimum wage was supposed to be enough for a person to support their family; today the minimum wage is enough for a college student to make it until their next paycheck, not much more. Unfortunately, a lot of people in this country think this is how it should be.
Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour
#7Minimum wage should simply keep up with cost of living divided by the reasonable working hours. Like: cost of living is $1800 a month divided by 3 full days a week times 4 (12), times 8 hours = 1800 / (3 4 8) = 1800 / 96 = $18,75 per hour.
And so prices will have to go up... Which will increase the cost of living... which will cause the prices to go up.
Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour
#8The reality is that if the minimum wage had stayed consistent with productivity and inflation since 1968, America’s lowest earners would be making around $24 an hour by now, an analysis by Jacobin found last year. Fifteen dollars is not asking for a lot. In fact, it’s asking for less than the bare minimum of what we should be providing our workers.
Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour
#9The reality is that if the minimum wage had stayed consistent with productivity and inflation since 1968, America’s lowest earners would be making around $24 an hour by now, an analysis by Jacobin found last year. Fifteen dollars is not asking for a lot. In fact, it’s asking for less than the bare minimum of what we should be providing our workers.
Link to that article: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/01/higher-minimum-wage-inflation...
Re: You’re Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour
#10why would minimum wage keep pace with productivity if those workers aren’t the ones being more productive? overall productivity increase because of tech and globalization, of course a work whose productivity has stayed the same shouldn’t expect to make more just because other parts of the economy do well
What if the entire industry is automated by an AI. No software engineers and no workers required.
Doesn't matter. Just take workers from the surplus pile. They don't ask for much.