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40% Of US Workers Now Earn Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage

31 points by Suraj-Sun 13y ago

madaxe 13y ago
And 0.0001% earn more than the planet's GDP in 1968, inflation adjusted. At this point, the picture isn't going to change without a complete collapse/overthrow of the plutarchy.
- cliveowen 13y ago
  I don't know first thing about economy but it seems obvious even to me that such an "overthrow of the plutarchy" would require to dismiss the whole concept of capitalism, where anyone gets as much as she can.
  - brazzy 13y ago
    Not at all. Capitalism is not a divine all-or-nothing concept, and in fact has not ever been practiced in its "pure" form anywhere.
- peddamat 13y ago
  Why? The Western 'elite' create an Eastern 'elite', which create a 'South American' elite, which create an African 'elite', until there's no more cheap labor. The collective 'elite' replace human labor with automation. Once all labor is automated, there is massive deflation, since no one can afford the output of robot labor. Then we're left with what, a post-scarcity utopia? Can greed take us to this utopia, entirely by accident? I can't think of any other possible outcome on 1000-year timescales.
  - speeder 13y ago
    What I am thinking will happen is lots of ugly wars as inflation and debts cause several crisis, until there is not much trade left, plunging us back into dark age again. Debt, and inflation in the whole world is rising much faster than people income. Yes, now people are richer than ever, I am sure that right now there are more US people being able to buy crap than in 1968, the same in Brazil with the famous "rise of the middle class". But this won't last long. US has crazy debts for example: http://rt.com/usa/us-debt-study-hamilton-economy-103/ http://rt.com/usa/us-debt-study-hamilton-economy-103/ Or Brazil, as I fully expected in 2011 (where we had a crazy GDP growth) is now with lots of inflation (6.7%) and anemic growth (0.9%) And why I expected it? Because it was fueled by debts, and as soon people had to PAY them back, and fail, things would derail. And they don't even fully de-railed yet, the construction market is still misbehaving (house prices where I live rose 200% in the last four years and are still rising, to me is obvious the whole thing will come crashing down US 2008 style when foreclosures start).
    - madaxe 13y ago
      When you keep borrowing from the future (which our economies have been doing since Bretton Woods, pretty much), you eventually have to pay off the debt. You can't keep pushing it back and back. No economist or politician seems to understand this basic tenet. Or they do, but they don't care, as the ones paying off the debt are the disenfranchised underclasses, and the political classes profit from the debt, as they own it.
  - madaxe 13y ago
    That's a nice dream, but the reality is that the jobless masses who can't afford the output will simply be: a) forgotten about b) subjugated (camps, eugenics, media control) c) property Or all or some of the above.
adrianN 13y ago
I don't know much about economy, but I always thought this was an expected outcome of globalization. People in developing countries make more than before (since they get to work at factories instead of farming) and people in developed countries earn less, because of competition from cheap labor in other countries. Lastly, the people who employ cheap labor can increase their profit margins.
- RyanMcGreal 13y ago
  Left to its own devices, the labour market is a Zipf distribution. If you want a large middle class, you need policy to create it.
  - olalonde 13y ago
    It's amazing how people on the Internet know perfectly how the economy works meanwhile nobel laureates disagree on major topics.
- lgbr 13y ago
  I see it this way as well, but most of the people I know who bring up this subject as a problem are either xenophobic or have some sort of cognitive dissonance. These kinds of statistics fail to point out the billions of people who have come out of poverty, and the millions who are now in the middle class, particularly in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China). The response to this point is either "We have to take care of our own first" as if the well-being of an American person is somehow more important than that of 10 Chinese people, or that the progress made in the developing world is insignificant.
  - knowaveragejoe 13y ago
    Indeed, in point-of-fact: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/half-a-billion-people-escaped-poverty-2005-2010/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/half-a-billion-people-escap...
- madaxe 13y ago
  This is only part of it. A rather larger part, which is being masked by this, is automation. Sounds like a very ludditish stance, but we (developers) are the ones who are fuelling this, by replacing white-collar jobs with software, and blue-collar jobs with software and hardware. This, unlike globalisation, isn't going to self-regulate. It's going to result in capital accrual at those who own the intellectual property and the already existing capital. Have you seen mfg goods get cheaper as a result of automation? No. Have margins gone up? Yes. Is this trend going to continue? Yes.
tpainton 13y ago
And it has NOTHING to do with the current administration. That's pure coincidence. This is the sleeping in the bed part..
- RyanMcGreal 13y ago
  The median US wage has been stagnant or falling since the 1970s.
  - peddamat 13y ago
    Is that because median world income has been ~rising since the 1970s?
mcv 13y ago
Fortunately this is more than compensated by the extreme rise in wages for CEOs and other high management positions.
gnur 13y ago
The title is misleading. A more fitting title would be: 40% of US workers earn less per year then the full time minimum wage inflation corrected for today. Without numbers about how many hours worked are worthless, for all we know 40% of US workers only work 1 hour per month and are doing really well.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
VMG 13y ago
FTA: > That isn’t a lot of money, but according to the Social Security Administration, 40.28% of all workers make less than $20,000 a year in America today. So that means that more than 40 percent of all U.S. workers actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968. That is how far we have fallen. So the article compares all wage earners today with full-time workers in 1968.
- netrus 13y ago
  This. These numbers are mostly meaningless.
- mnarayan01 13y ago
  Where full-time means a 40-hour work week. It would probably be more accurate to say that the article takes numbers and compares them to numbers, discovering that the first can be related to the second by a constant multiplier.
- coenhyde 13y ago
  Hours worked is irrelevant. The lifestyle afforded by $21,480 a year is terrible. That's barely enough to support a single person let alone a spouse/family. This means that 40% of the workforce are most likely dependent on someone else. Either another individual or the government as evident in the 47.7 million Americans who receive food stamps. The workforce has changed since 1968. Full time jobs are not as easy to come by now as they were back then. There is indeed underemployment with people working fewer hours but that doesn't change the fact that 40% of the population is living off less than a 1968 minimum wage.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

31 points by Suraj-Sun 13y ago

And 0.0001% earn more than the planet's GDP in 1968, inflation adjusted. At this point, the picture isn't going to change without a complete collapse/overthrow of the plutarchy.

cliveowen 13y ago
I don't know first thing about economy but it seems obvious even to me that such an "overthrow of the plutarchy" would require to dismiss the whole concept of capitalism, where anyone gets as much as she can.
- brazzy 13y ago
  Not at all. Capitalism is not a divine all-or-nothing concept, and in fact has not ever been practiced in its "pure" form anywhere.
peddamat 13y ago
Why? The Western 'elite' create an Eastern 'elite', which create a 'South American' elite, which create an African 'elite', until there's no more cheap labor. The collective 'elite' replace human labor with automation. Once all labor is automated, there is massive deflation, since no one can afford the output of robot labor. Then we're left with what, a post-scarcity utopia? Can greed take us to this utopia, entirely by accident? I can't think of any other possible outcome on 1000-year timescales.
- speeder 13y ago
  What I am thinking will happen is lots of ugly wars as inflation and debts cause several crisis, until there is not much trade left, plunging us back into dark age again. Debt, and inflation in the whole world is rising much faster than people income. Yes, now people are richer than ever, I am sure that right now there are more US people being able to buy crap than in 1968, the same in Brazil with the famous "rise of the middle class". But this won't last long. US has crazy debts for example: http://rt.com/usa/us-debt-study-hamilton-economy-103/ http://rt.com/usa/us-debt-study-hamilton-economy-103/ Or Brazil, as I fully expected in 2011 (where we had a crazy GDP growth) is now with lots of inflation (6.7%) and anemic growth (0.9%) And why I expected it? Because it was fueled by debts, and as soon people had to PAY them back, and fail, things would derail. And they don't even fully de-railed yet, the construction market is still misbehaving (house prices where I live rose 200% in the last four years and are still rising, to me is obvious the whole thing will come crashing down US 2008 style when foreclosures start).
  - madaxe 13y ago
    When you keep borrowing from the future (which our economies have been doing since Bretton Woods, pretty much), you eventually have to pay off the debt. You can't keep pushing it back and back. No economist or politician seems to understand this basic tenet. Or they do, but they don't care, as the ones paying off the debt are the disenfranchised underclasses, and the political classes profit from the debt, as they own it.
- madaxe 13y ago
  That's a nice dream, but the reality is that the jobless masses who can't afford the output will simply be: a) forgotten about b) subjugated (camps, eugenics, media control) c) property Or all or some of the above.

adrianN 13y ago

I don't know much about economy, but I always thought this was an expected outcome of globalization. People in developing countries make more than before (since they get to work at factories instead of farming) and people in developed countries earn less, because of competition from cheap labor in other countries. Lastly, the people who employ cheap labor can increase their profit margins.

RyanMcGreal 13y ago
Left to its own devices, the labour market is a Zipf distribution. If you want a large middle class, you need policy to create it.
- olalonde 13y ago
  It's amazing how people on the Internet know perfectly how the economy works meanwhile nobel laureates disagree on major topics.
lgbr 13y ago
I see it this way as well, but most of the people I know who bring up this subject as a problem are either xenophobic or have some sort of cognitive dissonance. These kinds of statistics fail to point out the billions of people who have come out of poverty, and the millions who are now in the middle class, particularly in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China). The response to this point is either "We have to take care of our own first" as if the well-being of an American person is somehow more important than that of 10 Chinese people, or that the progress made in the developing world is insignificant.
- knowaveragejoe 13y ago
  Indeed, in point-of-fact: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/half-a-billion-people-escaped-poverty-2005-2010/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/half-a-billion-people-escap...
madaxe 13y ago
This is only part of it. A rather larger part, which is being masked by this, is automation. Sounds like a very ludditish stance, but we (developers) are the ones who are fuelling this, by replacing white-collar jobs with software, and blue-collar jobs with software and hardware. This, unlike globalisation, isn't going to self-regulate. It's going to result in capital accrual at those who own the intellectual property and the already existing capital. Have you seen mfg goods get cheaper as a result of automation? No. Have margins gone up? Yes. Is this trend going to continue? Yes.

tpainton 13y ago

And it has NOTHING to do with the current administration. That's pure coincidence. This is the sleeping in the bed part..

RyanMcGreal 13y ago
The median US wage has been stagnant or falling since the 1970s.
- peddamat 13y ago
  Is that because median world income has been ~rising since the 1970s?

mcv 13y ago

Fortunately this is more than compensated by the extreme rise in wages for CEOs and other high management positions.

gnur 13y ago

The title is misleading. A more fitting title would be: 40% of US workers earn less per year then the full time minimum wage inflation corrected for today. Without numbers about how many hours worked are worthless, for all we know 40% of US workers only work 1 hour per month and are doing really well.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

VMG 13y ago

FTA: > That isn’t a lot of money, but according to the Social Security Administration, 40.28% of all workers make less than $20,000 a year in America today. So that means that more than 40 percent of all U.S. workers actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968. That is how far we have fallen. So the article compares all wage earners today with full-time workers in 1968.

netrus 13y ago
This. These numbers are mostly meaningless.
mnarayan01 13y ago
Where full-time means a 40-hour work week. It would probably be more accurate to say that the article takes numbers and compares them to numbers, discovering that the first can be related to the second by a constant multiplier.
coenhyde 13y ago
Hours worked is irrelevant. The lifestyle afforded by $21,480 a year is terrible. That's barely enough to support a single person let alone a spouse/family. This means that 40% of the workforce are most likely dependent on someone else. Either another individual or the government as evident in the 47.7 million Americans who receive food stamps. The workforce has changed since 1968. Full time jobs are not as easy to come by now as they were back then. There is indeed underemployment with people working fewer hours but that doesn't change the fact that 40% of the population is living off less than a 1968 minimum wage.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]