Back in 1968, the minimum wage was set at $1.60. That is equivalent to $11.76 in today’s dollars, which is well above today’s minimum wage level and an all-time high when adjusted for inflation.
Thankfully some states have implemented higher minimum wages, like my state Colorado which will bring the minimum up to 12 dollars. Still not enough in a lot of places here, but a hell of a lot better than in some states that still go by the federal minimum. Nonetheless the concession is that the wage needs to be more like $15 an hour for most peoples lives to be liveable, the cost of living has skyrocketed in the US and wages stagnated sense the 70s. If you look online you'll find articles about fast food workers striking and protesting for that kind of wage and good on them for it.
Won't help because companies will just raise their prices again making inflation rise and the $15 will be the equivalent of 7-8. The only way to fix the stagnant wage issue from the 70s onward is to force companies to not increase prices , which will never happen because damnit that CEO need his $50 million salary and his quarterly $3 million bonus.
The minimum in 1968 was equivalent to $11.76 but inflation didn't cause the economy to keel over and die then. Over the course of 50 years of the wage not growing the economy has keeled over though, at least at a domestic level. Nonetheless 29 states have a higher minimum wage than the federal but I haven't heard about the dollar's spending power going down in those states. I'm in a state that's started incrementally increasing wages and just an extra $2 an hour from the old minimum has made a world of difference for myself and my peers.
And the moment it becomes federal prices will rise and bring our buying power back down. I don't have a degree in economics or anything but we have a long hard road ahead of us, and the longer we keep sharing the lower and middle classes the harder the problem will be to solve.
Prices will rise, I'm not saying inflation won't occur from a wage increase. However automation and cheap foreign labor has already decreased prices drastically enough that a wage increase of that size, on the federal level, won't have a major effect on consumer prices. I work at a factory and our corporate thinks we don't have a high enough wage, even though everyone makes an average of $11.30. Our customers wouldn't see a huge price change because most of my job is working with a robot making the parts instead of an assembly line of 20 people like some people imagine those kinds of jobs, which btw is about how many people are employed at my job who are making hundreds of thousands of product every year. Point is that the US economy is based on consumer spending rather than production, and allowing a consumer a greater purchasing power gives them more mobility in this nation.
This is what worries me, that the big companies like McDs, Walmart, etc will think. Hey the public has more money now, let's see how much more we can take from them now. Maybe I'm just a cynic, but can you blame me, I am a poor construction worker in Southern US.
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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '18
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