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I hear about the cost rising but I guess it still doesn't compute for me. My mom paid for college by having a side-job working at the phone company back in the

by tw04 6y ago

I hear about the cost rising but I guess it still doesn't compute for me. My mom paid for college by having a side-job working at the phone company back in the 70s. There's no planet on which a student would make the money required to pay for college in-full with a part-time job. Outside of the bubble that is HN tech workers - wages have stagnated. The wealth being generated is severely concentrated at the very top. I think your average person walking down the street would gladly exchange their $2 gallon of milk for a $4 gallon of milk if they had a $40k/year salary vs. their current $7/hr.

Spellman 6y ago
That's definitely a huge part of it. Cost rising isn't the fault here. It's costs rising faster than wages (especially minimum wage).
toss1 6y ago
Part of this is that before the 1970s, the US minimum wage was set so that a full-time job would keep you above the poverty line. People could raise a family, pay a mortgage, etc. on a minimum wage job. That relationship was broken, but not the assumption that if you are poor, you are lazy. What this is really doing is providing welfare to all the companies paying below-poverty wages - the taxpayers pay for benefits to allow the workers in those positions to live, while simultaneously increasing corporate profits. The portion of GDP going to wages has almost never been lower than it is now [1] It is about corporate regulatory capture redesigning the economy for corporate wealth extraction and not for the benefit of the citizens. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA
- smegger001 6y ago
  I will never understand why we don't just set a minimum wage then index it to rate of inflation then automatically update it annually.
  - Izkata 6y ago
    Didn't one of the dropped-out democratic candidates propose something like that? I swear I've heard this before.
Izkata 6y ago
> $40k/year salary vs. their current $7/hr I really hate when people do this. Those are totally different scales, and it's not obvious how they compare. According to this converter [0] (and ignoring specific differences between wage and salary like overtime), using the defaults of 40-hour work week and 50-week year (to account for holidays): * $40k/year is about $20/hour * $7/hour is about $14k/year [0] https://www.calculators.org/savings/wage-conversion.php https://www.calculators.org/savings/wage-conversion.php

by tw04 6y ago

Spellman 6y ago

That's definitely a huge part of it. Cost rising isn't the fault here. It's costs rising faster than wages (especially minimum wage).

toss1 6y ago

Part of this is that before the 1970s, the US minimum wage was set so that a full-time job would keep you above the poverty line. People could raise a family, pay a mortgage, etc. on a minimum wage job. That relationship was broken, but not the assumption that if you are poor, you are lazy. What this is really doing is providing welfare to all the companies paying below-poverty wages - the taxpayers pay for benefits to allow the workers in those positions to live, while simultaneously increasing corporate profits. The portion of GDP going to wages has almost never been lower than it is now [1] It is about corporate regulatory capture redesigning the economy for corporate wealth extraction and not for the benefit of the citizens. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA

smegger001 6y ago
I will never understand why we don't just set a minimum wage then index it to rate of inflation then automatically update it annually.
- Izkata 6y ago
  Didn't one of the dropped-out democratic candidates propose something like that? I swear I've heard this before.

Izkata 6y ago

> $40k/year salary vs. their current $7/hr I really hate when people do this. Those are totally different scales, and it's not obvious how they compare. According to this converter [0] (and ignoring specific differences between wage and salary like overtime), using the defaults of 40-hour work week and 50-week year (to account for holidays): * $40k/year is about $20/hour * $7/hour is about $14k/year [0] https://www.calculators.org/savings/wage-conversion.php https://www.calculators.org/savings/wage-conversion.php