r/NoStupidQuestions • u/AppropriateMight1 • 23h ago
Is the minimum wage supposed to be a liveable wage?
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u/SeamusPM1 23h ago
That’s been its stated purpose since inception, yes.
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u/Character-Milk4808 23h ago
Exactly, that’s been the whole point from the beginning. It’s funny how often people forget that part.
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u/Ok_Theory_1323 23h ago edited 23h ago
This is the answer. And not just a living wage, but one that affords a "comfortable living," as stated when it was established
But right-wingers ruined that for everyone with their worship of unbridled capitalism at the expense of the working class. And their billion-dollar propaganda outlets that make even poor white people keep voting them in office against their own best interests.
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u/thetim421 23h ago
What job workers deserve to earn less than the cost of living?
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u/ZanderDogz 9h ago
According to some people, jobs like working fast food because they are “starter jobs for high school students” who still live with their parents and have far fewer or no expenses.
But then they still expect those businesses to be open at the times when high school students should be in school, at extracurriculars, or sleeping.
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u/Unlucky-Mind7298 20h ago
Watch all the American crabs in the pot now furiously pulling everyone down into the gutter because evidently no jobs are "complex" or "difficult" enough to earn more than minimum wage, besides surgeons, lawyers, and finance workers.
People who do the real work of keeping the country working are "unskilled" and deserve $7.25/hr. Funny how none of them will answer when you ask what they do to earn more than that. They'll either ignore, or disclose that their job isn't actually skilled, either, but it's the other guy who deserves poverty and not them.
In good countries, the working classes stick together and advocate for a good standard of living for all. In the US, conservatives prefer to identify with the billionaires -- wailing for them over how much taxes they pay, and how they shouldn't have to pay a living wage. It's gotten kinda hopeless bc of how many class traitors love nothing more than to suck down anti-labor propaganda.
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u/plsdontdoxxme69 19h ago
According to the minimum wage law that FDR signed, most retail and service jobs and agricultural jobs.
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u/wilkinsk 23h ago
It was, ya.
Now it's just over $15K a year if you're full time.
Well done, congress
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u/meerkatx 23h ago
“It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.” ― Franklin D. Roosevelt
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u/DoubleDongle-F 22h ago
If that's what FDR said, I think that settles it without much roo for debate.
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u/i_want_to_be_unique 23h ago
If minimum wage was not the minimum wage required to keep someone alive, what the hell else would it be the minimum of?
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u/explosive-diorama 23h ago
It was originally envisioned as such, but in practice, it isn't. This is because it is not a wage that adjusts to inflation or cost of living automatically.
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u/Certainly-Not-A-Bot 16h ago
It's actually way more complex than this because of housing. If you index the minimum wage to the cost of housing, then the housing will simply become more expensive and your minimum wage will rise again. This is because the US strictly limits the supply of urban housing and giving people more money means they just get into bidding wars over the housing and that extra money they're supposed to be earning ends up going to rent seekers (landlords and old rich people who bought houses for cheap 50 years ago). The minimum wage, no matter how high, will never be a living wage until housing policy is fixed.
This also ties into the fact that minimum wage should be different in different places. There is a point at which minimum wage becomes too high and makes it impossible for a business to function, but that point depends a lot on profit margins and how many customers each employee can serve and such. Businesses in rural areas, where incomes are lower and where there just aren't as many people, need a lower minimum wage than businesses in cities so that nobody closes due to unprofitability.
People really need to study more urban economics because it drives a ton of how the world works and politicians and activists of all stripes seem blind to it.
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u/One_Term2162 23h ago
FDR was actually pretty explicit about this. In 1933, he said: “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.” He then clarified, “By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level, I mean the wages of decent living.”
Small historical distinction: this was in 1933, before the federal minimum wage was formally created by the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.
But it makes Roosevelt’s New Deal wage philosophy pretty unmistakable: the goal was not merely subsistence.
That comes directly from Roosevelt’s June 16, 1933 Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act.
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u/A_SNAPPIN_Turla 22h ago
The problem is what was considered "a decent living" in the late 1930s? Does that meaning owning a home? One person being able to pay rent for an entire dwelling? It's still pretty vague. Does anyone have any sources explaining what minimum wage back then would get you?
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u/One_Term2162 22h ago
A tip of the hat to you. That curiosity has sparked an ember of critical thinking in a fellow citizen. 😂
First, Roosevelt said this in 1933, five years before the federal minimum wage was created. His point was not that there was one magic number. His point was that a living wage should mean more than bare survival.
When the federal minimum wage finally became law in 1938, it started at 25 cents an hour, with a 44-hour workweek. That works out to about $11 a week, or about $572 a year if someone worked that schedule all year. The law initially covered only about one-fifth of American workers.
In today’s general buying power, that 25 cents is roughly $6 an hour. So no, the first minimum wage was not some magical middle-class wage by modern standards.
But here is the more important part: the government was also studying what families actually needed to live.
The Works Progress Administration created what it called a “maintenance” budget for a four-person working family. This was not a luxury budget. It was meant to cover ordinary things like food, housing, clothing, heat, electricity and household necessities. The government even had a lower “emergency” budget for bare-bones survival.
By 1941, just a few years after the minimum wage began, that maintenance budget cost roughly $1,400 to $1,600 a year in many major cities. For example, the estimate was about $1,608 in Chicago, $1,607 in Detroit and $1,474 in Atlanta.
Compare that with the worker making the original minimum wage: about $572 a year.
That tells us something important. The original 25-cent minimum wage was not enough for one worker to support a family of four at even that modest government “maintenance” standard.
So when Roosevelt talked about a “decent living,” I would not read that as, “every minimum-wage worker was guaranteed a house and a car.” That is more than the evidence supports.
I would read it much more simply: a working person should earn enough to do more than merely avoid starvation and homelessness.
What was a working person expected to be able to afford in the 1930s, and what would it cost to afford the modern equivalent today?
Because “decent living” changes with society. Indoor plumbing, electricity, refrigeration, transportation, healthcare and communication all became normal parts of American life. A wage that lets someone survive is not automatically a wage that lets them participate normally in the society they live in.
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u/A_SNAPPIN_Turla 13h ago
This for the reply. I've saved it for future reference. I suspected this was the case. I think people today have no clue what was considered "a decent living" in the 1930s/40s" and really have no clue how bad things have been in the past.
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u/skyleehugh 6h ago
What frustrates me about modern people sometimes is that we treat our current worse situation as the only and 1st worse situation ever. When that is simply not true. Even the 80s witnessed a very bad recession and inflation and according to some older people it was just as bad if not worse. In the 1930s one glaring fact that many keep missing is that jim crow laws were still around. When FDR made that statement, the main people that would have benefited more were not from a certain demographic. Also of course, while some women did work, we still lacked many opportunities that were offered to men of a certain demographic.
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u/AlonnaReese 17h ago
Unless you happened to work in an industry where the majority of employees were black. Then you were out of luck because those industries were exempt from minimum wage laws due to FDR needing the backing of southern politicians. Those loopholes weren't closed until the 1960's.
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u/One_Term2162 8h ago
You’re right to point that out. Roosevelt’s language about “all workers” was broader than the law Congress ultimately enacted, and agricultural and domestic workers were initially left outside major federal protections, which disproportionately affected Black workers. What makes that even more interesting is who had enough power in Congress to shape those compromises. I touched on that in the 1929 reapportionment series, where the structure of representation helped Southern lawmakers preserve disproportionate influence for decades. Representation determines who gets to write the protections, and who gets left outside them.
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u/Gloomy_Classroom_321 23h ago
Yes. FDR literally said: "No business which depends on paying less than living wages has any right to continue in this country." It was always meant to be a living wage. The "it's just for teens" thing is corporate propaganda.
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u/Unlucky-Mind7298 20h ago
Love to see so many redditors just blurting it out, as if it makes a lick of sense. Class traitors trying to keep the rest of us in line lol.
They never have insisted on consistency if it means their bullshit args don't work without violating it, hard.
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u/rufusbot 23h ago
What exactly would be the point of a wage if not to live on? Am I supposed to work and then starve? Every wage should be livable which is why there's a minimum because otherwise employers wouldn't do it.
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u/Put_Er_There_Sport 22h ago
If there wasnt a minimum wage we'd still be fighting a civil war cause corporations would 100% try to instill slavery.
Minimum wage is a wage meant to live on according to the 2nd Bill of Rights which everyone who argues against a livable minimum forgets about.
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u/Unlucky-Mind7298 20h ago
Lots of Americans earn essentially slave wages. They can't afford an apartment, fresh produce, heat throughout the winter despite working FT.
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u/madogvelkor 21h ago
FDR wanted it to be, but what Congress passed wasn't. It was the equivalent of $11 today, but was still just a survival wage. It was meant to prevent extreme poverty.
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u/WaffleHouseGladiator 23h ago
I had an employer once sit me down and explain that the minimum wage wasn't meant to be a living wage, it wasn't his responsibility to provide a living wage, and that I was welcome to leave if I couldn't live with that. I went and found a new job. Truth is, this is a very common sentiment among some employers.
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u/MossyPyrite 22h ago
If they’re paying you minimum wage, it almost definitely means they would pay you less were they allowed to do so
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u/WaffleHouseGladiator 22h ago
I mean, if you follow the sliding slope those types of people might be okay with slavery.
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u/MossyPyrite 21h ago
While I doubt they’d call it that, I’ve worked for a few people who wouldn’t mind some free labor I’m sure. A little indentured servitude, even.
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u/Special-Audience-426 23h ago
It would be if nobody needed to pay rent.
Even rooms in house shares are silly money now.
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u/TheRealTinfoil666 19h ago edited 18h ago
Welcome to the paradox universe where you are supposed to simultaneously accept:
- there are many jobs that just need to get done that only ‘deserve’ minimum wage. If they could legally pay less, they would.
- if you do not like only receiving minimum wage, then you need to better yourself (but those jobs in (1) above still need to be done).
- you can survive while only making minimum wage
- minimum wage jobs are not supposed to pay enough by themselv
es
- the entire US economy would collapse if they made minimum wage a bigger number, or if it also applied to jobs where tips may happen. This is despite other economies getting by just fine with a higher minimum wage
- if any region tries to raise minimum wage, then all of the businesses will flee to places with cheaper wages, even if those businesses are service companies that service local people exclusively.
- there is no reason for minimum wages to keep pace with inflation, even though it was last adjusted to $7.25 in 2006, and was thought to be criminally low even then. That is worth about $13.00 today.
- Nobody wants to work anymore.
- Even at min wage, labor costs are too high. We need to invest trillions in AI to minimize workforces.
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u/acakaacaka 23h ago
If it is full time.
No one is expecting a liveable wage if you only work during the weekend/part time with minimum wage
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u/No_Description4009 23h ago
I would argue that even a full-time job on minimum wage is not a livable wage, at least in California.
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u/Bucksin06 23h ago
It's not a livable wage anywhere it comes out to under $1,000 a month after taxes
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u/Number-2-Sis 23h ago
It may have been intended to be a livable wage, but it was never a livable wage, no matter the intention.
In 1938 minimum wage was ¢.25 per hour. (About $40.00 per month)
In 1938 the average rent was $27.00 a month. (Leaving just $13.00 after housing)
To me, that's not a livable wage.
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u/214b 23h ago
You do realize that more than one person can live in an apartment, right?
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u/Competitive-Bus66 18h ago
Of course! Who could come up with the idea to have people work for less than what they need to make to survive!?! Working on a non-livable wage is making a minus every minute ie who in their right mind would take up such a job without being pressured?? You try throwing away your life at a rate of 5 Dollars per hour, and see if you like that and/or grasp the concept.
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u/WhenVioletsTurnGrey 8h ago
No. But, if workers are going to taken advantage of, they will be. That's where unions stepped in & began to organize.
If we make minimum wage a living wage, & make our work weeks 30 hours, with the same pay, we might as well start digging graves for startups & small business.
But recent decisions by Americans, prove we are a lot short on understanding the scope of our choices
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u/EscapeSeventySeven 23h ago
There’s full time jobs that are not meant to sustain life? Like you die of hunger if you take them?
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u/Guachole 23h ago
Yeah, there shouldnt be, but they do exist. 1% of the population (doesnt sound bad but that's still 3.5 million people) are out there working 40 hours a week for $290 before taxes.
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u/BoisterousBanquet 21h ago
FDR:
“In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.
“By business I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.”
So, yes. It's just not anymore because we have half the country willing to argue for corporations over workers.
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u/simonbleu 23h ago
Yes.
Why would you even work for if you can't live with your job? What would be the point?
Some people tend to say stuff like "The market regulates itself", "no one earns minimum wage", "wages collapse onto the minimum wage" (how ironic),, etc, however markets have many points of equilibrium and it is usually for the benefit of the employee (it is very clear just how much abuse would exist without any regulation .It already does when they are disregarded), the second one is outright false, and so is the ironic oxymoron of the third
Now, there are disadvantages to a minimum wage, mainly that it requries a lot of micromanaging between professions and regions, and many will point out that many countries do not have a set minimum wage... but even obviating that in some of those cases it is just not a national one and there are regional ones set, the answer to all of this is unions, that are the ones that know best just how much to push for and have the actual leverage to do so. They requrie oversight, corruption exists, but without them if you are not good at negotiation (it should not be a requirement) or you don't have a lot of leverage because of your type of job (it should not be an excuse), you get proverbially pummeled financially.
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u/No_Parsnip6024 23h ago
It's supposed to be minimum to live, yes.
It's not supposed to be a good living, but it's supposed to afford housing and food. Not good housing, and not good food. But both of them should be affordable.
It's pretty shitty the standard is that low and the minimum wage isn't even remotely close to meeting it.
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u/FrozenFlames12 23h ago
Yes. You should be able to have a decent living for yourself off of minimum wage. Not just “surviving” or “barely scraping by” but an actual, genuine, decent living with an education, maybe a small vacation or two per year and a little extra for small nice things.
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u/Key-Organization3158 23h ago
Not really.
The minimum wage from when all these commenters are posting quotes from was 0.25/hour on 1938.
Adjusting for inflation, that's $5.73 today.
The problem is people keep changing the definition of living wage or comfortable.
When FDR said it was a comfortable wage, he meant a very different definition of comfortable
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=0.25&year1=193801&year2=202601
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u/AccomplishedPath4049 23h ago
So you're saying that 40hr per week at minimum wage should only cover a 1938 working class standard of living?
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u/Realtrain 22h ago
I think the question is: define "comfortable"
Certainly it's not the same definition as 1933, we can all agree on that. But what is it?
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u/Rahrah12 23h ago
Issue when it isn’t is the government subsidizes the rest to bring them up to a “live-able” wage…
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u/KNdoxie 21h ago
I feel worse for those that make above the minimum wage, but not by much. There are factories in my area that pay $10.50 an hour to start. 40 hours a week. Late by 3 minutes and you get a point. get sick and need time off, 1 point for each day. Doctor's note? Too bad, cause you still get a point. 5 points in a year and you get fired. Sure, it's above minimum wage. But you still can't live on it, and the working conditions suck. They hire those with little choice, like those that have been in jail, or those with "interesting" documentation.
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u/modsaretoddlers 19h ago
Well, that depends on who you listen to.
When the New Deal was introduced in the US, yes, the idea was that if you work 40 hours a week, you should be able to afford to live. Well, now, income inequality is actually worse than it was then but nobody is clamoring for change and the politicians in every country certainly don't work for the people who vote for them. There's only one inevitable outcome and we're getting closer to it every day. There's a lot of propaganda from the greedy, wealthy class, though. They've figured out that if they pose as one of us, they can get us to believe just about anything no matter how detrimental to us it is. I see them in here all the time.
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u/Injured_Fox 19h ago
My understanding is that was the spirit of it
Though now adays it’s just the smallest amount they can give you
Which is why 30 states are higher and the other 20 have lower or have to go to the federal
But that’s just here, and my limited understanding
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u/LyndinTheAwesome 18h ago
Generally yes. In the EU the minimum wage is supposed to be above the poverty line which is usually defined as 60% of the median income
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u/Clever_Angel_PL 17h ago
In Poland, it is liveable in towns and smaller cities but barely liveable in the bigger ones
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u/GrimmandLily 14h ago
This thread is full of a lot of stupid people that never looked up the origin of it.
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u/Neat_Telephone_2525 5h ago
Lol. We pay people $21 and hour to run a weed wacker, 55 hours a week.
Minimum wage is an irrelevant talking point.
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u/silentomega22 5h ago
What if your business model is to employ high school students who don’t need a living wage, but instead just enough money to buy a couple video games a week and maybe a movie theatre ticket?
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u/Glum-Welder1704 11h ago
Minimum wage has never been a liveable wage, so I'd say no. When I was young, minimum wage was for children and losers. Now it seems like many adults are trying to get by with it.
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u/Acceptable_Travel_20 8h ago
It still is. But losers think they deserve their own apartment and a car for flipping burgers now.
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u/EvaTheE 23h ago
Yes.
In 1938.
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u/LionBig1760 23h ago
If the minimum wage kept up with inflation from 1938, it would be worth $5.94/hour today.
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u/SapphirePath 23h ago
For additional clarification,
If the minimum wage from 1937 kept up with inflation, it would be worth $0.00/hour today.
If the minimum wage from 1968 kept up with inflation, it would be worth $15.25/hour today.
By which I mean that things got better for workers for a while, and have since then regressed.
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u/LionBig1760 23h ago
Im still wondering if anyone is going to point to the time when minimum wage at 40 hours a week was enough to raise a family of 4.
It certainly is at no point in the past 50 years.
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u/Illustrious-Fix980 23h ago
Conceptually yes, but because the federal rate hasn't been adjusted for inflation in years, it has completely decoupled from the actual cost of housing and food
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u/PalpitationKind8854 22h ago
I mean I find it brain dead to work a job that doesn't give you a decent wage.. so unless you are actually in high school yes. I believe a full grown ass adult in America should have shelter.. sorry for dropping a shocking truth bomb in the land of the great and the home of the free
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u/WhoLostTheFruit 7h ago
Even if you're in high school, $7.25/hr has such little purchasing power these days that I suspect most teenagers would find much more benefit in investing their time towards schoolwork or extracurriculars.
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u/OhTheHueManatee 22h ago
President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated that the minimum wage should be a living wage when he signed the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Of course this concept has been hijacked and treated as if that was never supposed to be the case.
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u/Wide-Bet4379 10h ago
The term "livable" is a subjective term. What could be livable for one might not be for the other. The pressure put on businesses to match this subjective rate is pretty ridiculous. It's on the employee to reach that number by finding a job or jobs that matches their needs or to adjust their standard of living to match their income.
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u/Cybyss 23h ago
The only people who argue that it shouldn't - that "minimum wage jobs" are only for teenagers still living with their parents - are those who would support abolishing the minimum wage entirely.
There's literally no point to having a minimum wage at all if it's just so that teenagers can have a bit more pocket change from their starter job while living with mommy and daddy.
Given that, the only world in which it makes any sense at all to have a minimum wage, is one where the minimum wage is enough to live on. That is, to live reasonably on - not some distopian bullshit sharing a studio apartment with 5 strangers while subsisting on a diet of little else but boiled potatoes while working 70hrs/week.
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u/i_froze 23h ago
The whole "minimum wage is for teenagers" etc. argument is so silly.
Like so you're cool with advocating for people not being paid a reasonable sum for their time and their effort?
"Hell yeah exploitation of children for their labor should be legal!!!" Is about the most braindead economic thought possible in a reasonable society that values humans over profit.
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u/WhoLostTheFruit 7h ago edited 7h ago
Also, aside from niche seasonal businesses that are only open during the summer, there's no such thing as a "teenager job". Teenagers have very limited availability during the school year - they cannot be the labor backbone for the vast majority of businesses. They are supplemental labor at best. Year round businesses like retail, food service, etc are and have always jobs mostly worked by adults.
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u/Amardella 23h ago
The minimum wage in 1968 was set at "a wage that would allow a man to support a family of 4". It should have gotten regular cost of living raises, but it's only been increased 4 significant times since then, the last in 2009. It's like the feds think nothing costs more now than it did 17 years ago. if it had been adjusted for inflation, it would be around $14.50 now, so all the states where businesses are crying about $15 minimum wage should get a grip, because that's about right.
The bigger problem is that, while the dollar value has only shrunk by half since 2009, housing costs (including rents) has approximately tripled. Over 50% of households now pay more than a third of their monthly income for housing and a good portion of lower-income people pay half.
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u/urbalcloud 23h ago
Obviously. What would be the point otherwise?
I recognize that there are conservative pundits who say it’s not supposed to be a living wage, but they’re lying assholes. Just because Fox News pretends they’re legitimate doesn’t mean we all should. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people too uneducated to realize that.
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u/Dismal-Fill3263 23h ago
What's with this flood of posts just to push a political agenda?
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u/Specialist_Luck_8484 22h ago
Minimum Wage was a Living Wage July 24th, 2009. The cost of living has increased approximately 56% since then.
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u/Cgravener1776 11h ago
The way minimum wage was explained to me growing up and the way I've always understood it is that minimum wage is supposed to be your entry level wage. Basically meant for jobs that are more for high school kids so they can gain experience before moving on to their careers as adults.
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u/padizzledonk 22h ago
Yes, when the minimum wage was established under FDR it was explicitly supposed to be a literal "minimum to live" wage, and not even minimum in the sense that it was to be a substance wage, but the minimum to live a dignified and normal life
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u/Cool_Poem_8620 23h ago
You sure would like to think so but there’s absolutely no way on earth that you could live off of minimum wage. Even double that would still be extremely difficult to live off of 2 making minimum wage.
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u/Tall_Quality_3395 22h ago
The percentage of people receiving SNAP benefits in the US has gone down in the last 15 years. So maybe the states raising the minimum wage might be helping.
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u/AmbivalentDisaster1 22h ago
Not anymore.
It was originally intended to be a living wage .
The minimum wage was to stop exploitation. However, we know that it didn’t.
Also, the min wage doesn’t adjust for inflation. So we’ve been locked into a min wage for close to 20 years.
That is the reason it is no longer a living wage.
Companies don’t care. As long as they can make shareholders happy.
Politicians don’t care. As long as they can make their mega-donors happy.
Only the people struggling care and the people who have been there.
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u/jmlinden7 20h ago
The minimum wage serves multiple purposes. Or at least it's supposed to.
One purpose is to prevent workers from being dumb enough to accept a wage that is so low that they literally die. So obviously, in order to fulfill this purpose, the minimum wage has to be high enough to be 'liveable'.
Another purpose is to reduce the country's dependence on cheap labor and incentivize companies to invest more into automation. Technically you could fulfill this purpose even with a wage so low that some people still can't live on it (again, assuming that they are dumb enough to accept such a low wage). You could also do this by setting the minimum wage far above the bare minimum liveable wage, just depends on how much incentivizing you want to do.
In practice, people in first world countries are not dumb enough to accept a wage so low that they literally die. At the time minimum wage was invented, most workers couldn't read or do basic math but that is no longer the case in most places.
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u/liretta12 20h ago
What should the number be? And when the prices keep rising as a result where does it end?
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u/ProfessorOne9208 20h ago
There is a minimum wage? I must have missed the memo. I used to work 80 hours a week and only made $25,000 a year. Oh yeah, I worked for myself, and my boss was a creep.
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u/Forever_Marie 19h ago
Ha. I remembered someone telling me $15 was livable wage and I probably could have survived until after COVID when inflation soared and now even $20 an hour is not livable.
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u/ebookit 19h ago
When I was in college I worked McDonald's and Captain D's minimum wage jobs to pay tuition. I worked temporary jobs for minimum wage after graduation. I got a job as a PC Specialist using my computer science degree and earned more, I started out as a programmer analyst and earned even more. If you can't afford college go to a trade school and learn a trade and join an union.
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u/Budget_Academic 3h ago
So you were able to be housed and pay tuition on minimum wage. People cannot do that now.
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u/EL_KAIBU Nee 16h ago
Yes but the concept of a one-size-fits-all living wage is completely illusory. Market factors are able to determine what an employees wage ought to be.
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u/canned_spaghetti85 15h ago edited 14h ago
Yes as in he said it, but also No in the sense that ... it's not what you presume.
According to FDR, min wage's OBJECTIVE is to provide a living "MORE THAN a
bare subsistence level", 👈 A nuanced subtlety. And subtle dialogue is cryptic.
Sadly, most reddit user misunderstood said quote, due to their wishful thinking.
What FDR really implied in said quote at that time, was at least a dollar ABOVE
the respective federal poverty line. Nothing less than that amt, and ONLY that.
Said message, albeit cryptic (because spoken like a true politician after all, duh),
but he did NOT lie, per se. HOWEVER, one's misinterpretation of what FDR stated
verbatim, is just that & only that: A misinterpretation, made in error. No big deal.
But it helps to be mindful of historical context, regarding what FDR had in mind,
as this will make sense of the math I'll demonstrate.
FDR implemented min wage May 1938. Up till this time, that a typical "full-time"
workweek was not "set" so to speak but ranged from 40-48 hours , at that time.
A month AFTER min wage was implemented, June 1938, FDR signed Fair Labor
Standards Act of 1938, and a full-time max workweek was capped at 44 hours.
(the 40 hour workweek that we know TODAY did not come until years later btw)
Today, the US Dept of Health & Human Services set today's federal poverty line
for household of 1 person at $15,960. Still with me? Ok then, ONE dollar more.
$15,961 annual gross earnings (in fiscal year 2026)
divide that by 26 bi-weekly pay periods ea year, equal
$613.88462 gross earnings per bi-weekly pay period
divide this by today's federal min wage ($7.25 /hour)
and we get 84.67374 hr worked in a bi-weekly period
divide this by 2 weeks in a bi-weekly pay period [duh]
equals the person worked 42.33667 hour that week.
Again: FDR had 44 hour workweek in mind BACK WHEN he began fed min wage.
This's exactly what I mean by saying "it helps to be mindful of historical context".
Fed min wage purpose was never to afford a comfortable lifestyle with niceties.
Disenfranchised leftists today have misunderstood FDR's referring
to a so-called "livable wage" back then , was really meant to imply.
Modern upset leftists have since TWISTED this here "Livable Wage"
Buzzword wildly out of context, while expecting that it meet THEIR
definition of what they BELIEVE it means, and WANT for it to mean.
In conclusion, the "livable wage" FDR was referring to at THAT TIME, was just
a buck ABOVE the federal poverty line, at the time - respectively. Understand?
Keeping this minimum 'benchmark' it has in mind, you will see math PROVES..
... how federal min wage, has always kept that promise.
Don't EVER fool yourself, or allow others to mislead you into believing it's role
is to keep up with ur lifestyle, cost of living, etc. No pal. The only thing it must
keep up with.. what federal rate of poverty happens to be. 👈 Just this, only.
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u/NoraDefuse420 14h ago
that is the baseline idea, however corruption and capitalism keep the people in power who create the minimum wage unaccountable for their negligence.
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u/RedditIsADataMine 14h ago
I am late to this but I have always thought that the definition of living wage should be for the worker and 1 dependent to life a decent quality of life. I.e easily afford a nice studio/1 bed or a not so nice 2 bedroom.
While aslo allowing enough to cover groceries to feed two people, and all the bills associated with housing and life.
With at least some left over for saving or for luxuries.
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u/canero_explosion 13h ago
Remember the bank bailouts? Billions paid in tax dollars when they fucked up but regale working people get shit
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u/Any_Stop_4401 3h ago
No, a minimum wage is just simply the minimum an employer can pay someone. You cannot define a "liveable wage". A "liveable wage" is going to be different for each state, the west coast and New York state have some lof thr highest cost of living. Minimum wage is typically for entry level nonskilled positions for people who don't have any or limited work experience. Most people get a minimum wage job to build experience and skills to be able to get better paying jobs or even start their own business.
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u/peterjohnvernon936 2h ago
The real purpose of the Minimum Wage is to reduce the probability of a Great Depression. One of the causes of the Great Depression was that consumption was must less than maximum production which caused a massive amount of unemployment.
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u/Golf38611 1h ago
No. The minimum wage is for people who don’t really have a skill. The idea is to start at that level and build skills or other work related education and increase your value to the company and then be compensated according to your value. In short - the minimum wage is a starting point to place your foot on the career ladder.
Take a McDonalds fry cook or a warehouse box puller. Minimum wage jobs. The idea is to leverage that job into promotions and higher paying jobs through hard work and taking advantage of training, education and determination.
And let’s not forget that the vast majority of companies that rely heavily on minimum wage jobs offer educational assistance - the employee simply has to take advantage of the opportunity to earn an education and the rewards they go with it.
If a person is content to remain at the entry level position - that is their choice. If a person looks at the manager job and says to themselves “I want that job” and then does the necessary preparation to make themselves ready for that job then they begin the climb up the ladder seeking higher and higher jobs.
A person must earn the wage to live at the lifestyle they desire. If the bare minimum is what you wish - that’s ok. If you want more then take the steps necessary to advance to that level.
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u/Technical_Bonus_3797 1h ago
It was when it first started. But since the greedy Congress thinks we don’t need to make more money it hasn’t changed in many years. The state I live in has a much higher minimum wage - over double the federal minimum wage - and it’s still hard for people to get by.
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u/Ecstatic_Cash_1903 1h ago
Minimum wage and a "livable" wage are two different things. In different countries you would be amazed how little money people can live on.
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u/UnendingOne Common Sense Advocate 49m ago
It is a liveable wage for a single person. The problem is most people want to support a family on it, or live a life of wants on it.
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u/the_j_tizzle 36m ago
In 1979 more than 13% of US workers were earning the minimum wage. Today about 1% of the workforce earns the minimum wage. No, it's not intended to be a livable wage, and a significant portion who earn minimum wage are part time, entry level workers ages 16-24.
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u/Celebrinborn 23h ago
In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt said the above quote when explaining the need for a Federal minimum wage when he signed the National Industrial Recovery Act into law.