[HN Gopher] You're Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour
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You're Lucky Workers Are Only Asking for $15 an Hour
Author : paulpauper
Score : 41 points
Date : 2021-06-24 19:51 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gen.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gen.medium.com)
| janandonly wrote:
| The reality is that if the minimum wage had stayed consistent
| with productivity and inflation since 1968, America's lowest
| earners would be making around $24 an hour by now, an analysis by
| Jacobin found last year. Fifteen dollars is not asking for a lot.
| In fact, it's asking for less than the bare minimum of what we
| should be providing our workers.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| The technology industry sector productivity has exploded, but
| to tie that back into average productivity in support of
| minimum wage is poor analysis.
| labcomputer wrote:
| The reality is that 1968 had the highest inflation-adjusted
| minimum wage _ever_ in the united states. I 'm not sure it
| makes sense to compare to an outlier.
| u801e wrote:
| According to this chart [1] showing the inflation adjusted
| minimum wage over the years, it should be closer to $11 to
| match the dollar value it typically had most of the years it
| was in place.
|
| [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30
| /Ti...
| lvkv wrote:
| Link to that article: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/01/higher-
| minimum-wage-inflation...
| krickkrack wrote:
| Well the reality is also that if $24/hr was the minimum wage
| the price of items would be through the roof and that $24/hr
| would be worth less than what the $15/hr is worth now.
|
| No such thing as a free lunch. You can't just inflate a persons
| worth without having to pay for it somehow.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| We don't really have a definition for productivity for most
| labour, let alone a measure. I take your wider point that it
| should be higher, but any economic arguement invoking
| productivity is suspect...
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Federal minimum wage debate is silly. Places have varying cost of
| living.
|
| Just give people income tax relief/credits based on their living
| situation (including credits that are paid out as cash) and let
| companies fight for workers with whatever wage they want.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Or just read and follow the 10th amendment.
|
| States have varying conditions. Let them implement their own
| min-wages as they see fit.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| "It's not how much you make. It's how much you keep."
|
| One of the things that tends to not enter these discussions is
| that the US has torn down about a million SROs[1] and largely
| zoned out of existence the ability to build other small scale
| homes currently being called Missing Middle Housing.
|
| When walkable neighborhoods were more the norm and you could get
| just a room or small place as market rate housing without having
| to go through some government program with long wait lists, you
| could live on not much money. Now a car is practically required
| to make life work in the US, housing is expensive as hell and
| then we argue about income and I get told by random internet
| strangers that the high cost of rent is irrelevant to discussions
| of homelessness, and never mind that studies contradict such
| claims.
|
| Meanwhile, housing costs and the fact that it's so hard to live
| without a car tends to not come up at all in discussions of this
| sort.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Also something you see in older cities, retail first floor,
| small apartments upper floors. Tended to be cheaper than all-
| residential buildings.
|
| There have been experiments with some buildings without any
| parking being put up but it's rare. And that adds a lot of
| expense.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| Parking minimums are also proven to kill old style walkable
| downtowns with commercial on the first floor and residential
| above. You can't develop those old buildings and also meet
| parking minimums and preserve the dense development.
|
| In practice, you end up tearing down some of the buildings to
| meet those minimums and there is abundant parking that's half
| empty most of the time and it becomes a lot less walkable and
| more spread out, increasing the need for a car. It's
| maddening.
| simfree wrote:
| Here in Seattle in the 2000s there was a huge push to tear down
| or repurpose all the motels along Aurora Avenue as they were
| viewed as promoting prostitution.
|
| Now, with many fewer motels we have shrank our pool of ultras
| affordable, unsubsidized housing and prostitutes just take
| their johns to the alleyways to do the deed.
| macspoofing wrote:
| The only argument in favour of minimum wage is that if set at a
| low enough level it does not seem to have a detrimental effect on
| core prosperity metrics like employment rate. Proponents never
| attempt to claim any positive effect or show evidence of it. It
| doesn't reduce unemployment. It doesn't reduce poverty. In many
| situations it hurts young people who are trying to break into an
| industry, low income workers and small businesses. It also
| incentivizes undocumented ('under the table') employment. It's
| very much like rent control - a policy that feels good, but
| either doesn't do anything or more likely actually causes pain.
| ffggvv wrote:
| why would minimum wage keep pace with productivity if those
| workers aren't the ones being more productive?
|
| overall productivity increase because of tech and globalization,
| of course a work whose productivity has stayed the same shouldn't
| expect to make more just because other parts of the economy do
| well
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >productivity
|
| The productivity is only a matter of local purchasing power. If
| it were any other, why would third world barber be extremely
| less productive than Manhattan one?
|
| So, when higher middle and higher classes increase their
| productivity by tracking global population and selling ads, the
| productivity of people servicing them has to increase.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| What if the entire industry is automated by an AI.
|
| No software engineers and no workers required.
| imtringued wrote:
| Doesn't matter. Just take workers from the surplus pile. They
| don't ask for much.
| xf1cf wrote:
| Medium does get tiring to read...
|
| Archive link: https://archive.is/6JuaJ
|
| Using: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-
| wage/history/chart
|
| I looked over the article and never saw a single justification
| for $15/hr. outside of "people need it". The Jacobin study
| included productivity which I don't know if you can even properly
| quantify into dollars. Certainly, minimum wage is not addressing
| the needs of the lowest earners in the country. But there must be
| a metric to go by:
|
| If we use base minimum wage adjusted for inflation the numbers
| look even worse than they are today. $0.25 in 1938 is $4.74 in
| today's money. So that's not good. It would appear using these
| numbers minimum wage has beat average inflation using the BLS'
| own CPI calculator.
|
| If we loosen the requirements to the last "stopping point", 2009,
| $7.25 becomes $7.49 according to the same calculator. Not keeping
| up with inflation, but I don't think even the poorest people are
| going to write home about coming up 24 cents short.
|
| But this ignoring local minimum wages. Using the following data:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/238997/minimum-wage-by-u...
|
| We arrive at an average minimum wage of $9.78 and a median of
| $9.45. So, neither of these really indicate a lacking in
| inflationary tracking even at the state level. So what's the
| cause?
|
| Well, I'm not an economist but I think the issue is local and not
| federal. The federal government can set the minimum wage to $15,
| but that doesn't change the fact the wage curve is heavily skewed
| by ultra low CoL states and ultra high CoL states. Not being an
| economist I am willing to ascribe to this something I'm going to
| call "state-local inflation" where places like California and New
| York probably demand a minimum wage closer to $25/hr. whereas
| somewhere like Georgia might do just fine sitting at $10.
|
| As a result I think this medium article is more of a tirade than
| anything and does not elucidate anything related to the problem
| other than the tautology that it is a problem (which I do agree
| with). The solution however, seems far more complicated than the
| "just raise the wage" protests would make it out to be.
| janandonly wrote:
| Minimum wage should simply keep up with cost of living divided by
| the reasonable working hours.
|
| Like: cost of living is $1800 a month divided by 3 full days a
| week times 4 (12), times 8 hours = 1800 / (3 _4_ 8) = 1800 / 96 =
| $18,75 per hour.
| janandonly wrote:
| This is how bad things have gotten: In the 1950s, the minimum
| wage was supposed to be enough for a person to support their
| family; today the minimum wage is enough for a college student
| to make it until their next paycheck, not much more.
| Unfortunately, a lot of people in this country think this is
| how it should be.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >In the 1950s
|
| In the 50s US was the only big developed country that was
| nearly untouched by the second world war. That rent has
| decreased massively over time. The 50s economic situation
| would not hold up under any other conditions.
| krickkrack wrote:
| The question you should be asking is why have the prices
| outpaced the minimum wage. Protip: $30 trillion has been
| printed and spent in your name.
| krickkrack wrote:
| And so prices will have to go up... Which will increase the
| cost of living... which will cause the prices to go up.
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