Do you find this acceptable?

[Juxtapose]

https://cepr.net/this-is-what-minimum-wage-would-be-if-it-kept-pace-with-productivity/

Updates

+1 y

Seems like a lot of people love that boot on their neck!

[RealMarek]

Notice the divergence that began around 1971 when Nixon defaulted on US debt by refusing to redeem foreign-held dollars for gold. That’s when the dollar became fully fiat and the petrodollar system was adopted to avoid hyperinflation. You can see all kinds of things go haywire in 1971, just like the chart shown here. As expected, the gap between the rich and everyone else skyrockets because fiat currency is designed to make the rich richer and everyone else poorer in the long run. But there are surprising trends too. The number of attorneys per capita skyrockets, educational performance collapses, the percentage of school funds spent on administrators vs. teachers skyrockets, etc., etc. All kinds of unexpected problems come with using fiat currency. Andrew Jackson said that dishonest money corrupts society. He was right.

[Juxtapose]

You and Andrew Jackson are very right. He hated the central banking system as well and was one of the only presidents to balance the budget.

I don't think Reaganomics helped much either.

[RealMarek]

Reagan made some noise about backing up the dollar with gold during his first campaign, but this was dropped.

You are right, Reaganomics exacerbated the concentration of wealth and, worse, concentrated power in the hands of the elites. No doubt the libertarians in the GOP at the time believed the wealth would trickle down, but as usual these idealists were being duped by the establishment. What would have “trickled down” in a monetary system with hard currency was deployed overseas to take advantage of exchange rate manipulation that was only possible due to the fiat petrodollar system. The tax cut solution favored by libertarian-minded conservatives did not work as intended in a non-libertarian monetary system.

[RealMarek]

As for Andrew Jackson, he is demonized in the education system to keep people from looking at his struggle with the central bank.

[Avicenna]

You can thank business and especially political elites for that. And that's only beginning to scratch the surface on how much they have hosed ordinary people in the past few decades.

[Telekinetic-Potato]

I don't know much about this chart, how productivity was measured and a bunch of other details which would allow me to really make sense of this. I get what it's trying to say and I agree that people are wildly underpaid.

To the people saying companies don't owe you anything, I used to be one of you until I realized the extent to which these companies screw all of us over is beyond your ability to imagine. Like seriously, look up that video on YouTube about the distrubution of wealth and learn about how most people in populated areas are living and you'll see.

In this country, you used to be able to own a house working as a cashier at Macy's.

Now that won't even get you a shoebox apartment an hour away from your job.

Also, no offence but you generally have no idea what you're talking about or how an economy works. Ask anybody with a high executive role managing upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars and they will agree: the key to a healthy economy is for the circulation of currency and assets. When the rich are so rich that 80% of the country (that's not me trying to be dramatic) lives what 60 years ago would have been considered just above the poverty line, money isn't flowing properly. It's going to lead to a very bad place like the one we're headed in because you let your favorite news personality convince you that letting the big companies fuck us was actually a good thing for everyone. While you're letting that sit in your mind, you might want to learn a bit about William Randolph Hearst. Who is largely (but not primarily) the source of the financial problems were facing today.

[Exterminatore]

Where to start with this?


I would say that I don’t believe any company owes anyone a living. No one is entitled to a job or certain pay.


Now that I got that out of the way, I would also say I find it grossly unacceptable that the minimum wage has not kept up with productivity. I would also say that even if law makers have chosen not to mandate the min wage increase with the productivity it’s dually unacceptable that corporations didn’t voluntarily make that their minimum wage. After all, are they not the ones who continually say that they can pay low wages due to lack of job skills? Entry level positions they like to call them. Meanwhile justifying a CEO making hundreds of thousands annually because that CEO merits it. Are they not the ones who like the word meritocracy? Well then, the increased production would be the merit for increased wages wouldn’t it?


Oh I know. Then they cry and cry about how that would mean increased costs for everyone. May I suggest a second option. It means making less money for the shareholders. They can cut back on personal profits and would have to, or else their products would not sell because they would be too expensive.


So there. Easy solution to pay people a fair wage for a fair days work. However we will be long in the grave before such a thing ever occurs.

[Juxtapose]

You literally have to force businesses to be decent, you can't expect them to do it on their own. The weekend, the 40-hour work week, pay time off, maternity leave and so on is all thanks to the labor movement, not corporate benevolence.

[Juxtapose]

*paid time off

[Juxtapose]

And you know what I call a job that can't even keep you alive?

Slavery.

[TheSpaceGnome]

As @Static_In_The_Attic memtioned, we don't actually have increased production in most job sectors, we have a lot of empty job roles and the filled ones are filled mostly with lazy and incompetent people. Production quantity as dropped sigificantly, especially after covid but long before that as well.

Production quality has also been steadily declining, goods are no longer made to last and planned obsolesence is the norm.

The other problem is pricing has also gone way up.

[Exterminatore]

@Juxtapose

Fully agree. Even though I’m a conservative I’m a big supporter of labor unions. I’m in one myself. Most businesses have no intention to be benevolent to their workers. If not for labor unions and various laws things they would still have 12 year olds loosing fingers in factories while working 80 hour weeks.

[Exterminatore]

@space

There is some truth to what you are saying. Many lazy and incompetent workers. None the less I don’t think it takes away from juxtapose’s position.

[Static_In_The_Attic]

Your chart looks good to me especially with the entitlement generation nowadays that produces nothing but fries, TikTok videos, tax shelters & couch potatoes. Nowadays people think it’s ok to show up to work when they want or not show up at all & still get paid. Nowadays it’s ok to be on your cellphone all day & do nothing & sit back & wonder why companies are failing. Nowadays unemployment is employment & food stamps & free handouts is what it’s all about. Child support is a couch potato’s dream nowadays & having multiple children with multiple fathers is like hitting the lottery.

[Juxtapose]

Oh spare me, the people pulling the most bullshit and being the most lazy are these power tripping managers and these sociopathic CEOs that want to squeeze the workers of every last little bit of profit at their expense.

[TheSpaceGnome]

@Juxtapose

Most stores are empty, and of the people who are still working, the vast majority would have been fired for being unqualified for the job if this were 20 years ago. Wages cannot rise because it will devalue the dollar more, thus making the wage increase worthless. There are greedy CEOs, but they coexisted with wealthy, competent employees before, so thats not the source of the problem, inflation is. People only want to educate themselves and work when there pay can afford the life they want as a reward.

Prices need to be cut globally, or currency switched.

[TheSpaceGnome]

their*

[Juxtapose]

@TheSpaceGnome I just don't want people blaming the workers because we have record productivity and it's fucking bullshit to blame them when they are making these rich CEOs even richer while getting nothing in return.

Go to some subreddits sometime where they detail all the abuse they get at their jobs like having their time stolen (unpaid work).

[Juxtapose]

And businesses will actively discriminate against those with invisible disabilities too. They are advised to by their lawyers to do so in secret because people with disabilities are a liability.

[TheSpaceGnome]

We actually have record low productivity. And if a disability prevents a person from doing the job properly, they should not be doing that job. Thats why disability income exists.

Anti disability discriminiation and gender/race/religion inclusion tactics have turned what was once a meritocracy of skill and talent into "just show up and don't even bother to do the bare minimum".

I cannot count how many times I've been sick of outsourced tech support reading from a prompt, cashiers that are slower than snails, confused af, or are picking their nose.
Waiting in long lines for food that is disgusting because restaurant workers have no clue how to cook properly.
Stores with pretty much no workers.
Inventory shortages, shorter operating hours, no one answering phones, or removing phones from stores entirely.
Waiting months for a product to arrive do to production price hikes and material and delivery worker shortages.
Planned obsolesence from cheap materials and a lack of competent crafting, and workers being lazy, rude, unhygienic, unhelpful, or just doing the job wrong.

Most workers are so bad these days that I actively try to avoid interacting with any as much as possible.

[TheSpaceGnome]

I do not see abuse at most jobs, I see managers coddling incomptetent employees, and many people keeping their jobs that should have been fired.

[TheSpaceGnome]

The other day I watched a guy behind the counter ignore a ringing phone for 5 minutes straight while I looked around the store, he had zero customers occupying his time, this is a common occurance in most stores, these people need to actually do their job if they want to be paid the whole time.

[Juxtapose]

I'm going to have to agree to disagree with you on this one.

[TheSpaceGnome]

Its not an opinion debate, it's actually observable that most workers are acting this way, its also mathematically sound that both wages and prices should be dramatically decreased. We need dollar deflation, a smaller amount of money needs to be able to buy more again.

[NamerOfStars]

You think THAT'S bad? Look up what minimum wage would be if it stayed constant as a percentage of GDP!

[NYCQuestions1976]

People making less effort at their jobs for more money that's worth much less. It's one of those things that most of us can recognize all of the problems, but can't figure out real workable solutions.

[TheSpaceGnome]

Thats actually good, whats bad is pricing did not plummet that amount as well. Constantky increasing wages and prices devalues currency.

[TheSpaceGnome]

Constantly*

[Juxtapose]

Once our currency got set up to inflate like it is, it was over.

[TheSpaceGnome]

The obvious solution to that would be to make a new currency.

[This_Is_My_Opinion8]

The issue is that those two are not directly connected. You can be super productive and the minimum wage still goes down.
But I wonder about that productivity line. Did that source had an explanation of how it was calculating it?

[LiamJHayden]

This does not tell us how much of the productivity increase is the result of automation.

Also, the real world minimum wage is $0.

[Juxtapose]

LOL nobody is going to work for nothing dude unless they're stupid.

[GoodGuyBreakingBad]

I think Minimum Wage should be raised or eliminated all together.

[nawtee_me]

This is not correct. It shows in 1975 about 7.00 and hour. minimum wage was 3.00 and hour back then.

[Juxtapose]

It says it's in 2020 dollars.

[KrakenAttackin]

At least where I live people flipping burgers are making $15+/HR.

[Juxtapose]

Certainly beats the federal minimum wage!

[Guardian45]

Increased or changed. Perhaps a fixed basic income?

[TheSpaceGnome]

Fixed income can't work with inflating currency.

[gorydetails]

I do not. Minimum wage should be eliminated.

[Juxtapose]

Businesses are not going to be benevolent on their own, you have to force them to have some level of decency. The 40-hour work week, having the weekend and so on is all the result of the labor movement and it still has a long way to go.

No minimum wage? Congratulations, now illegal immigrants or the truly desperate will be the only people hired. You will also see tipping become prevalent in industries where previously was not, the corporations eager to shift the burden on to the customer of paying their employees.

[Juxtapose]

Also child labor getting eliminated was a result of the labor movement.

[gorydetails]

Wait, you think employers who hire people who don't have a legal right to work in the US are concerned with following minimum wage laws for them? lol.

Minimum wage laws were designed to keep black people out of the workforce. I should be able to negotiate in a fair market over what my labor costs.

[Juxtapose]

They have to follow federal minimum wage the vast majority of the time. You can fuck a McDonald's up if you document them breaking the law.

[gorydetails]

You can fuck a McDonald's up if they're hiring illegals, too.

[PeanutbutterAnd]

So should unions, but that will never happen.

[Part2603]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH4MkHcG8n0

[Part2603]

https://youtu.be/WH4MkHcG8n0?t=105 specifically

[Juxtapose]

Yeah and businesses shouldn't be hiring them either. This just goes to show that businesses need more oversight.

[gorydetails]

You still have not proved your point.

[Juxtapose]

I already did, you just refuse to see it.

[gorydetails]

No, you actually didn’t. And your reply to KrackenAttackin disproves your whole point. You claim employers would pay nothing if there wasn’t a minimum wage, but in a situation where they could pay minimum wage they pay more. Wonder why that is

[Juxtapose]

Don't you get it? They pay you as little as they can get away with.

Child labor would still be around if it wasn't for the labor movement.

[gorydetails]

Ok, we’ve unequivocally disproved that statement. If employers “paid you as little as they can get away with”, then why do people near @KrakenAttackin get more than minimum wage?

[Juxtapose]

Because that's literally as little as they can get away with. You think they wouldn't pay less if they could still maintain the same level of profits or even more? These are people who would gladly welcome back child labor.

[Juxtapose]

Businesses don't care about you, they would send you to die if it earned them an extra $5 and they had no liability or downside to them whatsoever. They are amoral.

[gorydetails]

No, you established minimum wage is as little as they can get away with. If minimum wage is $10 and they’re paying $15, they’re paying $5 more an hour than the “little they can get away with”.

[Juxtapose]

Now this is getting into petty semantics.

[gorydetails]

Lol, no the specific reality is not semantics.

[Juxtapose]

Whatever you say.

[gorydetails]

lol, it’s ok, I know you backed yourself into a corner.

[Juxtapose]

Nice try but you're not baiting me into a stupid semantics argument. I know what I said and I know what I meant.

[gorydetails]

Yeah, and you were utterly disproven. The existence of companies paying more than minimum wage destroys your argument.

[PeanutbutterAnd]

Yes.

[Juxtapose]

Why?

[PeanutbutterAnd]

The federal government should establish a minimum wage that's fair. They failed to do it. They seem to have no problem deciding and voted for their own wage, but the federal minimum wage would have you sleeping on the sidewalk.

I heard about the United Auto Workers having "Job Banks."
That meant that if the company came up with a new machine for you to use, you could refuse. You would then get paid big bucks to just stay at home. The company offered to pay for your wage and tuition to go to school to learn how to work your new machine, but the unions said that wasn't fair.
This is why China and other countries are laughing at us.