Keeping that in line would mean to socialize wins - it wont happen and doesn't make sense either. Sorry.
Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity
61–70 of 199 posts
Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity
#62This might be the case but many jobs I feel like would no longer be worth paying anyone to do at that rate. That would suggest to me that the productivity of minimum/low wage workers has not increased at the same rate as productivity generally. Which would make sense given most of that increase is attributable to technology which isn’t distributed evenly through different sectors of the economy etc.
Right, this is where this sort of blanket extrapolation breaks down. Has the average productivity grown that much? Sure, I can believe that. Has the productivity at the lower margin grown that much? I seriously doubt that. The value created by stocking shelves at wal-mart just doesn't really change over time. There's a lot of labor on the lower end that is a solved problem with all the productivity wrung out of it de…
It absolutely does! If Wal-Mart can pay more money for something, they would be /willing/ to pay it. The same stocking of shelves, they are able to capture more value from.
Unskilled laborers are just not able to capture that value from Wal-Mart because there is an abundance of unskilled labor and the average person (the laborer) has to derive income from work. They can't just say, "Puh, this isn't worth it any more!"
In addition, there's been a ton of improvements in productivity for warehouse workers. They are absolutely doing more work in the same amount of time.
The same is true at most big businesses.
That being said - at $26 an hour, there would be A LOT more pressure to eliminate more jobs.
Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity
#63I'm struggling to understand how productivity has anything to do with salary. Productivity increases are inevitable for everything as automation keeps improving. Salaries go up with demand for skills. If its more difficult to hire for a critical role (a skilled job or competitive), or the role generates a lot of value for a company, salaries go up. Simple economics. Low skill jobs and physical labor jobs actually req…
In the 1930s, a store clerk in a large city could afford to support a family in a home they would eventually own on their single income. Today, a couple with that same job would likely be in public housing and would be scraping by.
In the 1930s many homes only had icebox "refrigerators" that worked by putting Ice in the top to cool whatever was below.
IMO productivity has been absorbed by getting more for your money in hidden inflation . Eg: today when you buy a phone (and internet access) you get a free encyclopedia (wikipedia), movie theater (youtube), camera, Video recorder, note pad and pen (app), alarm clock, calendar, ... get my drift?
Same with a "home" which is now far more advanced and sq ft per person.
That's where all the productivity gains have gone, the basics of today are more complex than the "complex" things of the past
Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity
#64No it would not. The average productivity of a US worker might have increased by a certain amount, but not the productivity of the minimum wage earners. If their productivity had gone up that much, there would be no need for a minimum wage law, the employers would simply be glad to pay them based on their productivity.
I don't agree that companies even try to pay based on productivity, but the first point is correct. Minimum wage workers have generally not gotten anymore productive.
The impact of, say, Microsoft Office has been enormous on the median white collar worker's productivity. Such gains have been much smaller on low skill manual labor tasks.
Most minimum wage jobs in america are attendants, cooks, aides, etc.
Not the classic factory worker failing to reap the profits of improved capital machinery.
Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity
#65No it would not. The average productivity of a US worker might have increased by a certain amount, but not the productivity of the minimum wage earners. If their productivity had gone up that much, there would be no need for a minimum wage law, the employers would simply be glad to pay them based on their productivity.
Do you think that companies pay based on productivity, or based on the minimum amount they need to pay in order to attract workers? If the former, do you believe that if a remote worker moves from NYC to Idaho, and their employer cuts their pay by 25%, it is because their productivity has dropped by 25%? Or because their employer knows they can get away with paying them less in an area with lower cost of living / les…
Companies do pay the minimum amount they can get away with.
That said, lower paid jobs are also lower productivity jobs. There is obviously an upper limit to what a company is willing to pay that is based on productivity, and higher productivity also requires specialised skills.
No-one is going to be paid $100k to flip burgers at McDonald's both because that job does not produce anywhere near that and because it's easy to find people. If it became too difficult to find people salaries would not go very high because of the productivity cap and they'd find a way to do without people or shut down (because no-one is going to pay $100 for a Big Mac, either).
Now, they could pay a medical lawyer minimum wage if they could get away with. But the supply is quite small because it is highly skilled and productivity is very high, and so pay can be high and can remain high.
Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
s/capitalism/the universe/g Anyways, your statement is not true. Capitalism absolutely has a moral compass, it had the moral compass of the consumptive patterns of society; if that compass points the wrong way then either we must take a hard look at ourselves, or, think about what policies are twisting consumptive patterns to go the wrong way.... Probably a bit of both.
The consumers don't drive much. They just exist in the environment they were born into. The idea we vote with our money doesn't hold much water when the system is rigged with regulations set by the largest corporations to their own benefit. Keeping out competition. And that's just never going to stop either, so the economic system needs examined, not hoping for some sort of libertarian awakening. To make this worthwh…
"Instead of the employer/owner running your gas station, the employees that actually work it have 1 share each."
This is laughably naive. The power, then, devolves to whosoever authority gets to conjure the legal definition of "actual work". How can I be that person, and how can then use my power to enrich my friends and cronies and screw BuckRogers over? After all, all employees are equal, but some employees are equaller, and some are not even employees.
Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity
#67Yes, weaken labour regulations, allow workarounds like the gig economy, break up unions, enforce no increase in minimum, tolerate regulatory capture, permit highly wealthy individuals and organizations to have substantial say over politics through lobbying, campaign donations and think-tank policy marketplaces and guess what?
The elite will pocket basically all of the productivity gains, the more elite the more in your pocket.
Those with no leverage are left with a dwindling share of the pie.
Trickle up economics
Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the 1930s, a store clerk in a large city could afford to support a family in a home they would eventually own on their single income. Today, a couple with that same job would likely be in public housing and would be scraping by.
What is the comparative quality of life like or those two examples?
Owning any single family home (presumably with a yard) seems clearly more attractive than living in a public housing apartment complex.
Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity
#69Wages are based on supply and demand. Minimum wage is an artificial propping up of wages. If there are too many workers, then employers don't need to compete to hire them, and wages are depressed.
Meanwhile we import over a million new legal immigrants each year (along with unknown numbers of illegal aliens), the vast majority of whom are low-skilled workers. The people decrying low-skilled wages are the same ones supporting policies that actively reduce those wages through increased competition.
Re: Minimum wage would be $26 an hour if it had grown in line with productivity
#70> Yet rising productivity is no guarantee of a healthy economy. Equally important is how the fruits of productivity are divided.
It sure seems like you can. Isn't the article about how productivity has gone up without a commensurate increase in wages for the last 50 years? Where's the basis for a skeptical employer to buy this seeming counter-factual?
I support a much higher minimum wage, but this article wouldn't have convinced me of anything I didn't believe already.