Labor Day reminder: If the min wage increased at the rate of inflation & productivity since 1960 it'd be $26 today—not $7.25. Meaning—billionaires & corps have stolen at least $19/hour from working Americans for 60 years.
That’s generational theft from the working class to keep people in poverty.
We don't suffer a lack of resources—but an excess of greed.
More like an average of $8/hr over the 60 years?
(It wasn't $19/hr until the end of the 60 yrs; in 1960 it was less than a dollar. Halfway = $8, so rough estimate use $8 for the entire time period)
Still criminal, or it should be in any society that even pretends to care about workers.
@StevenBarnhart @QasimRashid 1/3 earn less than $15 an hour, however, and setting the floor for legal wages so low depresses everyone’s pay.
Maybe post less knee-jerk cynicism? Rashid’s point is utterly valid… even before we consider outright wage THEFT (a larger number than all other forms of theft combined, and far less likely to result in jail time):
American workers are being robbed
@StevenBarnhart @QasimRashid Unlike your comments?
There’s a real dearth of understanding about the causes of widening inequality. Hint: it’s not some natural force, but policy decisions which have favored the upper 10% of wealthy Americans at the expense of everyone else… but most especially the poorest among us. And there’s a lot of disinformation out there (I see you, Chicago School of Economics!) making education an important precondition for activism.
And what do you think you are engaging in right now
@QasimRashid Good point, but you should note it isn't $19/hour * 40 hr/week * 52 week/year * 60 years (* number of workers shorted), because at the beginning it was < $1/hr ... so if you are going to quote 60 years, the average amount stolen per year is less than $19.
Just being a stickler on the statistics -- the main point that the issue is generational theft by billionaires is completely valid, and it's a LOT of money, taken from the people who need it most by the people who need it least.
@QasimRashid I don't disagree with the argument that there should be a floor to wages, but this statement is cherry-picking the high point from the US minimum wage's 90 year history.
An equally arbitrary argument for using the original minimum wage amount of $0.25/hour in 1938 ($5.38 in 2023, adjusted for inflation) is equally unmoored from real economics.
@QasimRashid I’d include the increase in the cost of housing too, which IIRC would bring it up to around $35
(I’d also make the primary goal of economic policy be that an ordinary income be enough for a family to thrive on a single income, and support that by both making minimum wage automatically update every year and working to keep housing costs from increasing faster than other necessities)
@QasimRashid I make that $38,000 per worker per year (assuming 40 hour weeks and 50 working weeks per year).
A quick search says there were 181,000 workers getting exactly minimum wage (in 2021), which adds up to $6.9 billion per year stolen.
And that’s not even accounting for everyone getting more than $7.25 but less than $26.
Arguably every wage worker is affected by this. If every hourly waged worker (76.1 million people) has lost $19/hour, that’s almost $3 trillion per year stolen.
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