6 ms·

Minimum wage, fairly, should have been around $32 in 2019 or so. I haven't run numbers lately because it's depressing, but I bet it's worse now. You can't go o

Minimum wage, fairly, should have been around $32 in 2019 or so. I haven't run numbers lately because it's depressing, but I bet it's worse now. You can't go off mcdonalds sandwiches, and you can't use the economic indicators that ignore food and fuel. I've heard wild numbers from "the dollar is worth 50¢ compared to 20 years ago" to "the dollar has lost 98% of its value in the last N years." I'm not an economist, but I do know my electric bill has been thr exact same dollar amount for 12 years, and I've halved my usage twice in those years. That puts the dollar purchasing power for power at 25% of 2013. Gasoline changes prices so much I can't really say, it's about twice as expensive for 87 here as 12 years ago, but 93 is 2.5+ times higher. Food? Don't get me started. I live in the rural south. I don't really care about price fixing in Los Angeles or silicon Valley.

milesrout 2y ago
There is no such thing as what minimum wage should be "fairly". What is the minimum amount you should be able to pay someone an hour? Surely it is the amount where if you didn't, someone else would pay them more. There are many people who do jobs worth much less than $32/hour. That min wage would just make them illegal to employ. >You can't go off mcdonalds sandwiches, and you can't use the economic indicators that ignore food and fuel. You can't use economic indicators that track volatile commodities either. We use baskets of consumer goods and the inflation tracking is very accurate in short time frames but it becomes harder to compare the further out you get. A TV today is much better than a TV even 10 years ago but it is hardly even the same product as one from 1970. >I've heard wild numbers from "the dollar is worth 50¢ compared to 20 years ago" to "the dollar has lost 98% of its value in the last N years." What is wild about that? If you had 50c then and you had invested it in even relatively poorly performing investments it would be worth much more than $1 now. >I'm not an economist, but I do know my electric bill has been thr exact same dollar amount for 12 years, and I've halved my usage twice in those years. That puts the dollar purchasing power for power at 25% of 2013. That you are not an economist is obvious. You are aware that dollars buy more things than energy from your energy provider according to your energy plan, yeah?
- genewitch 2y ago
  > What is the minimum amount you should be able to pay someone an hour? Surely it is the amount where if you didn't, someone else would pay them more. A livable wage in the geographic jurisdiction they are in. Including stuff like transportation, healthcare, food, heat, housing, and insurance. Glad you asked. oh, the company can't compete without exploiting workers? oh well.
  - SR2Z 2y ago
    > A livable wage in the geographic jurisdiction they are in. This is called the Iron Law of Wages. As its name implies, it's neither prescriptive nor pleasant - but it is guaranteed to be liveable. > Including stuff like transportation, healthcare, food, heat, housing, and insurance. The thing that trips people up is that the word "liveable" is a synonym for "subsistence," not "fullfilling." A wage that's only liveable would feel quite exploitative to most people.
    - gknoy 2y ago
      The intention of "minimum wage" in the US is not merely subsistence level. FDR said, "by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living." [0] The "iron law of wages" is instead an economic principle that wages tend to trend downwards until people are paid the minimum possible for subsistence. It's not meant to be a goal. 0: http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html
      - SR2Z 2y ago
        There are ten million stated reasons for the minimum wage! Pretty much the only one that economists can agree on is that it's helpful to prevent abuses of monopsony power in small towns. Regardless of what FDR said, a living wage is guaranteed because people will not accept anything lower. The problem with a "decent" living is that reasonable people can disagree about what that looks like. Roommates? Children? An unemployed spouse? Vacations and retirement? It's not the government's job to guarantee all of that stuff and I would rather we focus on stopping wage and tip theft and protecting the rights of workers (banning noncompetes, decoupling health insurance, etc.) instead of increasing the minimum wage towards some poorly-defined goal. There's also the other side of the minimum wage debate, which is that most of the specific numbers people list as "liveable" do actually result in some folks losing their jobs and becoming unemployable. There was even a recent BERKELEY study that showed this!

milesrout 2y ago

There is no such thing as what minimum wage should be "fairly". What is the minimum amount you should be able to pay someone an hour? Surely it is the amount where if you didn't, someone else would pay them more. There are many people who do jobs worth much less than $32/hour. That min wage would just make them illegal to employ. >You can't go off mcdonalds sandwiches, and you can't use the economic indicators that ignore food and fuel. You can't use economic indicators that track volatile commodities either. We use baskets of consumer goods and the inflation tracking is very accurate in short time frames but it becomes harder to compare the further out you get. A TV today is much better than a TV even 10 years ago but it is hardly even the same product as one from 1970. >I've heard wild numbers from "the dollar is worth 50¢ compared to 20 years ago" to "the dollar has lost 98% of its value in the last N years." What is wild about that? If you had 50c then and you had invested it in even relatively poorly performing investments it would be worth much more than $1 now. >I'm not an economist, but I do know my electric bill has been thr exact same dollar amount for 12 years, and I've halved my usage twice in those years. That puts the dollar purchasing power for power at 25% of 2013. That you are not an economist is obvious. You are aware that dollars buy more things than energy from your energy provider according to your energy plan, yeah?

genewitch 2y ago
> What is the minimum amount you should be able to pay someone an hour? Surely it is the amount where if you didn't, someone else would pay them more. A livable wage in the geographic jurisdiction they are in. Including stuff like transportation, healthcare, food, heat, housing, and insurance. Glad you asked. oh, the company can't compete without exploiting workers? oh well.
- SR2Z 2y ago
  > A livable wage in the geographic jurisdiction they are in. This is called the Iron Law of Wages. As its name implies, it's neither prescriptive nor pleasant - but it is guaranteed to be liveable. > Including stuff like transportation, healthcare, food, heat, housing, and insurance. The thing that trips people up is that the word "liveable" is a synonym for "subsistence," not "fullfilling." A wage that's only liveable would feel quite exploitative to most people.
  - gknoy 2y ago
    The intention of "minimum wage" in the US is not merely subsistence level. FDR said, "by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living." [0] The "iron law of wages" is instead an economic principle that wages tend to trend downwards until people are paid the minimum possible for subsistence. It's not meant to be a goal. 0: http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html
    - SR2Z 2y ago
      There are ten million stated reasons for the minimum wage! Pretty much the only one that economists can agree on is that it's helpful to prevent abuses of monopsony power in small towns. Regardless of what FDR said, a living wage is guaranteed because people will not accept anything lower. The problem with a "decent" living is that reasonable people can disagree about what that looks like. Roommates? Children? An unemployed spouse? Vacations and retirement? It's not the government's job to guarantee all of that stuff and I would rather we focus on stopping wage and tip theft and protecting the rights of workers (banning noncompetes, decoupling health insurance, etc.) instead of increasing the minimum wage towards some poorly-defined goal. There's also the other side of the minimum wage debate, which is that most of the specific numbers people list as "liveable" do actually result in some folks losing their jobs and becoming unemployable. There was even a recent BERKELEY study that showed this!