TIL Minimum wage has only increased by $7.00 in 85 years in the USA.

Might as well use the latest numbers for this comparison. Yes, inflation is still absolutely sucking us all dry.

Just when boomers were young (8-23 yrs old) … totally tracks!

Looking at the linked graph, there’s a relatively clear plateau from ‘56 to ‘80 … basically from oldest boomers being age 11 to youngest boomers being age 20. I’m a little astonished at how well it lines up with the whole fucking generation. Literally all of them, from the beginning of their teens to the end of their teens (at least), enjoyed the best minimum wage of the modern age.

It also, interestingly, justifies the seperate categorisation of the Jones generation (born 1960-1966) who were the first to see the steady decline.

Meanwhile the cost of living has increased 2077% in 85 years.

If you lived in the US, your numbers (and your memory) are absolutely incorrect.

Editing to add info:

Assuming the previous commenter is actually 40 years old and lived in the US, the minimum wage would have either been $4.75 or $5.15 when they were 14 (not $3.25)...

In fact, minimum wage in the US has never been $3.25.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart

I've worked for a number of different companies since I was a teenager and first got a job. Without a doubt, the cheapest motherfuckers on the planet with the most squalid working conditions are the biggest companies I've worked for. I think part of the key to being a top corporation is being stingy as fuck.

Can you name one? I don't know a single person who actually makes minimum wage. Legit question.

Do you have a source on that nationally? Because that is very very high in many areas.

And many municipalities even higher than many of those high state minimum wages.

California's is actually even weirder, because they recently passed legislation that raises the minimum wage but specifically on franchised businesses

2 dollars of progress for 85 years... How much has productivity risen during that time?

You write that as if moving to a new country is just that easy.

If you're in Europe and have never visited, you might be surprised at just how huge the US is. That, plus having only two adjacent countries, makes leaving very difficult.

Oh yeah, plus you have to get into another country, most of which aren't super welcoming to immigrants, either.

It's a pretty nice country, it's got a little bit of everything. It has flaws, and as Americans we complain about them and try to get them fixed to constantly improve it.

I think a lot of the images of America being so bad comes from our overwhelming volume online.

Stuck.. who would want us? Every country I'd like to live in would require me to be very rich or have a usable skill set. While I have the latter it also needs to be provable which is difficult.

I should have bolted when I was younger but i just didn't have the knowledge.

The best (fairest) way to express it would be in terms of average percent per year for x years. If that matches inflation, then everything is just status quo in some sense.

But that has nothing to do with free market because minimum wage is set by the government?

If you’re only making $20/hour after a college education, your college education is a broken promise.

This kind of context?

$1 in 1938 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $21.77 today, an increase of $20.77 over 85 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.69% per year between 1938 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 2,077.49%.

Minimum wage workers today have less purchasing power than they did in the Great Depression

Who gave a walking prolapsed anus internet access?

The Federal Reserve has mandate to ensure employment doesn't get too high, which is high enough to cause inflation. By increasing interest rates, unemployment increases because it costs more to pay people.

Wages rose when unemployment was low because inflation was running away. The Fed was behind on its mandate shortly after the pandemic. Because interest rates were low, it was relatively inexpensive to hire people, and that's what businesses did, especially after firing so many of them during the pandemic. But, ya know, the pandemic gave people more time to consider what was important to them...and working was pretty low on that list. Thanks to the low interest rates, businesses could pay them more as an incentive to come back to work. That whole "Great Resignation" thing was about workers finally having some bargaining power. And wages rose because workers could demand more.

But now interest rates are having some pressure on inflation. It costs more to hire people, and it costs more to keep people hired. The bargaining power workers had is basically gone. The demand for employees to literally come back into work and stop working from home is evidence that business managers have regained the upper hand. And so, now there's no reason to pay people more. Just threaten to fire them and watch them dance.

So, basically, the need for a minimum wage is because there is no incentive to raise wages themselves but there's every incentive to lower them. And the Fed has other methods of dealing with low unemployment that will kick in before businesses start raising wages to attract workers in most cases. The post-pandemic era was "unprecedented", after all.

The unemployment rate does not take into consideration people who are under-employed or people who are working multiple jobs to get by. You could be working 3 part time jobs (none of which offer benefits) and still not make enough money to pay your bills. The "unemployment rate" is a load of bullshit and should largely be discarded in favor of tracking how many people are living above the poverty line.

Because an employer paying minimum wage is their way of saying “I’d pay you less if it were legal”, because your employer’s interests are in direct competition with your own. A store manager is not only in direct competition with the store across the street, he is also in competition with his own employees. It is in his interest to ensure he maximizes his own profits, but it is in your interest to make as much money as you can aswell.

If worker unions were required by law then I would agree. The issue is that companies will corner the job market to suppress wages. The government applies some pressure the opposite way via minimum wages to help force progress. Self checkouts and various other automated processes don't occur without some kind of selection pressure.

Think of minimum wages as forcing weaker companies out of the market.

Why are you booing him, he's right

All the blue team cares about is the mean thing someone said the other day

Tribalistic nonsense. I assume you're referring to the Democratic party?

Wondering where you're getting that stereotype from? Do you think believing it's a problem that trans people exist is just, "saying a mean thing"?

"Both sides"-ism aside, if you're gonna do it, you should at least be honest about the things each side are currently focused on and what their platform is...

The equivocation goes away pretty quickly when we're honest to ourselves about the differences between parties. Usually that's intentional, and the entire point is to minimize the absolutely insane fascist, anti-democracy priorities of current American conservatives. I understand that, but...

Ever stop for a moment to think that maybe, if you're that embarrassed about the things the party you identify with are saying/doing, that you can't even be honest to yourself about the levels of insanity they're reaching, then maybe it's time to take a step back and think about what you're so vocally supporting.

Both sides!

don't blame them. you need the white house, the house, and 60 votes in the senate to get most legislation through and into law.

Lmao Biden and the Democrats? Are you high? Part of Bidens covid relief bill included a $15 minimum wage. It was struck out of the bill by a vote of 58-42. A grand total of 7(well, 6, since Sinema isn't a Dem anymore and never really was) democrats voted against it. EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN voted against it.

Now tell me, why is it "Biden and the Democrats" fault when they actually try to improve things but fail(even if the 6/7 nay dems had voted yeah, that's still at best 49 yeahs), but never Republicans fault when they actually DO vote in lockstep to prevent any democrat endorsed legislation from passing, and when a significant percentage of them are actively trying to strip rights away from people?

Oh, I forgot to mention; while Biden doesn't have the executive power to unilaterally raise the national minimum wage, he DOES have the power to raise the minimum wage for employees of the federal government, which... he did.