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Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

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Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#171

Post by ta20240528 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #118
ta20240528 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question - it has a partial answer: minimum wage is to provide a living to a single young person for a shortish period. Not a family. Especially not families with - for other reasons- only one breadwinner. The problems of poverty (to the extent the US even experiences it) are broader than demanding someone make uneconomic decisions with their investors capital.

> Good question - it has a partial answer: minimum wage is to provide a living to a single young person for a shortish period. This is false and not at all the reason why the minimum wage exists. It was created to bust sweatshops. You are making the same argument as the people that were defending sweatshops. It may be the argument proponents make now to argue against raising it, but it was not why it was created. Roo…

I may make a similar argument, but you go too far sir to imply I am aligned with evil people defending sweatshops.

I agree with Roosevelt that businesses should provide a living wage for their workers. Mine does.

I'm happy to have both: "minimum single-income with extended-family obligations wage" and "young, single individual minimum wage".

You just won't find a lot of the former.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#172

Post by smolder »

roywiggins wrote: post #36
yalogin wrote: post #24

What slowing wage growth? For the poorest the wages have essentially not increased for a long time right? It hasn’t even kept up with inflation. The recent bill actually makes it much worse.

As far as I can tell, over the last few years at least, that's mostly not true: wages outpaced inflation, and it outpaced inflation more for lower-income workers than higher. > In stark contrast to prior decades, low-wage workers experienced dramatically fast real wage growth between 2019 and 2023 https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/ ("real wages" are wages adjusted for inflation)

That's a study that underestimates growth in cost of living, i.e. gouging by rent seekers and businesses, and ignores changes in status, i.e. people leaving the job market or moving down to something worse. It's not surprising that the lowest income earners got a substantial boost in that period, since life is getting substantially more expensive. Importantly, I don't think their "real wage" inflation adjusted values are fair. People being told inflation was one amount when their actual CoL was vastly outpacing that was part of what fueled the anger that got Trump elected again, not that he has helped (or will help) anything since '23 where that analysis ends.

Anecdotally, many people I know would be in dire straits if they didn't own appreciating real property, because their cost of living adjustments at work aren't coming close to matching inflation. Others I know are actually in dire straits. Some are doing fine and getting the benefit of profitable work. Overall things have been awful economically post-COVID, and there are a lot of causal factors, from the policy decisions of the last decade, to the surprises of COVID, natural disasters and geopolitics, to the AI investment bubble and the changing zeitgeist. (Oh and let's not forget simple demographics, birth rate, etc...)

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#173

Post by reliabilityguy »

Hikikomori wrote: post #143
reliabilityguy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trump is out there creating the most regressive tax system via tariffs Tariffs incentivize domestic production. See the case of chicken tax and pickup trucks. While we do pay for tariffs now, later down the road we should not as more things would be made domestically. If you don’t do tariffs, there is no way to force producers to onshore.

Long term stable tariffs yes. But you can't pretend like trumps tariffs were not done in the worst way possible?

Trump uses wild % amounts as a negotiation tactic. Is it the best way to do it? I don’t know. You can’t argue though that it does force the other side to come quickly to negotiation table to talk about the deal. So, if the goal is to get the deal now, then it’s effective. If the goal is something else, then it’s not a good tactic.

I do not have enough information to definitely say whether it’s good or bad. Most of the things in life are neither because they have good side effects, and bad side effects to them. So, I think looking for a “good only” solution is a loosing strategy.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#174

Post by ryanjshaw »

wat10000 wrote: post #146
ryanjshaw wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All arguments against lower class people getting higher wages are IMHO wildly inappropriate. This kind of emotional reasoning is wildly inappropriate IMHO. The commenter is not making an argument against lifting lower class wages. They’re making an observation of how economic theory may apply to this scenario. > pay them fairly Define “fairly”?

They said it’s bad for one group and neutral for another. How is that not an argument against it?

If I make the observation that some vaccines can have anaphylaxis as a side effect, am I making an argument against vaccinations? Obviously not. In that case, you’d take precautions at vaccination sites: have EpiPens available, make people wait 15min after taking the shot before leaving.

In this case, I’m sure you can apply yourself and think of ways we can counter the effects of wage compression now that we’ve unemotionally identified the fact that it occurs.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#175

Post by 9rx »

nickpp wrote: post #161
tpxl wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but so far has failed 100% of the time Labor rights have been a raging success. 40 hour work weeks, minimum wage, sick leave, vacation leave (in non-shithole countries). >BTW, in the US, you are free to set up a company and then pay your workers whatever you want to. What happens when competition with deeper pockets price dumps you into oblivion? Free market is a free market only when there is competition based on…

> What happens when competition with deeper pockets price dumps you into oblivion? Funny you should ask. There was a famous case from the beginning of the last century where German bromide producers price-dumped it the U.S. in an effort to undermine Dow's efforts in the same direction. The result? They failed miserably. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Chemical_Company > your apologism of capitalists is disgusting F…

> Free market capitalism is the only system proven to work, over and over again.

How come nobody practices it, then? In fact, right now the world's biggest economy is doubling down on trade restrictions.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#176

Post by reliabilityguy »

watwut wrote: post #139
reliabilityguy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trump is out there creating the most regressive tax system via tariffs Tariffs incentivize domestic production. See the case of chicken tax and pickup trucks. While we do pay for tariffs now, later down the road we should not as more things would be made domestically. If you don’t do tariffs, there is no way to force producers to onshore.

That particular outcome is possible when you make tariffs in a smart and predictable way. Trumps tariffs are unpredictable and also make local producers pay more for raw material they need.

> That particular outcome is possible when you make tariffs in a smart and predictable way.

You would have to prove that claim. There is more than one way to achieve a specific goal.

> Trumps tariffs are unpredictable and also make local producers pay more for raw material they need.

It’s one of the consequences. There are other ones. Is your only objective is to ensure that local manufacturers pay the least amount possible for their raw materials? This is very simplistic view of things.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#177

Post by reliabilityguy »

fzeroracer wrote: post #114
reliabilityguy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t the deportations increase the demand for low-paying jobs resulting in increasing salaries?

No, for two reasons. The first is that Americans often refuse to work those jobs (and for good reason, they pay incredibly poorly, have no benefits etc. It is generally a financial loss to do said jobs). We've tried multiple times to try and get Americans to work in the fields: it never works [1]. The second is that a large amount of our economy is heavily subsidized by said cheap immigrant labor and if you just stra…

> The first is that Americans often refuse to work those jobs (and for good reason, they pay incredibly poorly, have no benefits etc. It is generally a financial loss to do said jobs).

Would Americans work those jobs if those jobs paid well?

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#178

Post by vineyardmike »

dns_snek wrote: post #165
roywiggins wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, over the last few years at least, that's mostly not true: wages outpaced inflation, and it outpaced inflation more for lower-income workers than higher. > In stark contrast to prior decades, low-wage workers experienced dramatically fast real wage growth between 2019 and 2023 https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/ ("real wages" are wages adjusted for inflation)

If these reports say that things are better for low income people, why do people living that reality overwhelmingly disagree? Any statistics derived from inflation figures are doomed to be wrong when the inflation data was wrong to begin with. I'm not in the US, but our inflation data was just as wrong as I've heard the US data was. Official numbers were 10% but literally everything went up at least 20%. Everyone I s…

> why do people living that reality overwhelmingly disagree

Because a hard life feels harder when prices rise. If you're at the bottom of the wage statistics, even a large increase in salary (eg. 20%) will still leave you struggling day to day, before inflation in your costs.

> Official numbers were 10% but literally everything went up at least 20%

Inflation numbers consider a wide variety of things. It's probably at least partially the reality that the necessities are rising faster than discretionary purchases. As an example, iPhones are "cheaper" today accounting for inflation since Apple hasn't raised prices much, especially on the high end. Obviously the poorest X% of people aren't buying new iPhones, so they don't get those savings.

Anecdotally, my grocery bill for packaged goods has risen dramatically, while my produce costs are flat. I'm a vegetarian so IDK about meat costs. My utilities have risen, my housing costs have risen, and my subscription prices have risen. Meanwhile, most of my other non-travel spending (eg. home goods like towels, electronics, etc) is pretty flat for years.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#179

Post by tossandthrow »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #174
wat10000 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They said it’s bad for one group and neutral for another. How is that not an argument against it?

If I make the observation that some vaccines can have anaphylaxis as a side effect, am I making an argument against vaccinations? Obviously not. In that case, you’d take precautions at vaccination sites: have EpiPens available, make people wait 15min after taking the shot before leaving. In this case, I’m sure you can apply yourself and think of ways we can counter the effects of wage compression now that we’ve unemo…

To stay in your vaccine narrative: if I say that you expose other people to a health risk for not getting vaccinated - then yes this is an argument for getting vaccinated.

The observation is not that vaccines have (side)-effects, but how these effects affect other people.

And that is what loads the argument.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#180

Post by reliabilityguy »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #168
reliabilityguy wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rising salaries will lead to inflation. Expecting anything else is fantasy No. Riding salaries do not lead to inflation by themselves. What leads to inflation is the increase in money circulating on the market. In other words: printing money leads to inflation.

> Riding salaries do not lead to inflation by themselves. What leads to inflation is the increase in money circulating on the market This is nonsense. If an economy doubles and the money supply grows 10%, you get deflation. If the money supply is stable and half the country gets bombed, you get inflation. Price levels are a function of both money demand and money supply. Ignoring the demand side of the equation doesn…

> This is nonsense.

Nope. This is one of the reasons we had insane inflation after Covid: we printed too much.

For example, here: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042015/how-does-mon...

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