Shawn Fain argued that workers should get the same 40% raise CEOs have received
https://apnews.com/article/uwa-strike-gm-ford-stellantis-pay-dacdfe9ec0736f4fbf3ce7ee38b4bcf4
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Now adjust for inflation on top of that.
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1.15&year1=196101&year2=202111
Inflation isn’t that much on its own. It would be about $10 per hour according to the inflation calculator, but inflation calculators also don’t take CoL changes which have skyrocketed.
I don’t know what math they used to get the $25 number, but inflation might be baked into it anyways. No way 1000% on top of $25 would be realistic is any way.
The CPI does not accurately reflect how worthless our money has become, in my opinion. I’m unemployed now, but when I was making 140k USD/year a couple months ago it felt to me like that minimum wage should be about there. It’s enough to feel comfortable and safe, without much luxury. This ought to be considered the absolute bare minimum quality of life for full time workers and their dependents in the world’s wealthiest nation.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Yet there’s another revealing figure that underscores how the minimum wage — created by Congress after the Great Depression as a way to ensure that Americans were fairly paid for their labor — has failed to keep up with the times.
“That may sound pretty crazy, but that’s roughly what the minimum wage would be today if it had kept pace with productivity growth since its value peaked in 1968,” wrote Dean Baker, senior economist at the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research, in a recent blog post.
Inequality also widened during the pandemic, with the wealth of the richest Americans surging as stocks soared, while those at the bottom were more likely to get laid off than white-collar workers and also more likely to work in jobs where they faced a great chance of catching COVID-19.
For one, more than tripling the federal baseline wage would result in a host of undesirable economic effects, from a spike in unemployment (as employers would need to cut jobs in order to pay the workers they could afford to keep on) to higher inflation.
Although businesses and institutions like schools must reopen — and stay open — for the labor market to continue healing from the impact of COVID-19, the Delta variant’s rapid spread argues in favor of shutting down to safeguard public health.
“The fact that we saw some wage increases at the bottom and the middle in recent months is a positive sign for workers, but it doesn’t represent a long-run shift in the power balance in the workplace.”
The original article contains 1,258 words, the summary contains 258 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Has unskilled labor actually become more productive? My guess is that productivity increases are happening mostly for medium- and high-skilled workers, and that’s why minimum-wage workers are naturally getting left behind.
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There is no such thing as an unskilled worker. You have to learn how to use a mop or a broom, and carrying boxes or painting a room takes skill. Also, the server who drops a tray gets yelled at, while the top exec who costs the company millions is shrugged off.
It’s absolutely expected at the bottom rungs. Computers have taken some jobs away but stores are so understaffed these days. Just watch jon Oliver’s report on the people who work at dollar stores. There is no way I would have put up with that crap for such a low wage when I was younger but now it’s much more common.
