inflation-adusted, the federal minimum wage peaked way tf back in february 1968 at $1.60 an hour (equal to $13.46 in '2022 dollars').
this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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Might as well use the latest numbers for this comparison. Yes, inflation is still absolutely sucking us all dry.
This is if you actually believe CPI is a legitimate measure, despite the cost of all the big ticket expenses like housing, education, and healthcare increasing 5x or more above inflation.
I love how its just flipped the numbers around.
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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.
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There are lies, damn lies, and then there's statistics.
Im not here to say the minimum wage doesnt need to be raised, because it does, but another way of putting that is
"The minimim wage has increased 1500% in 85 years."
That sounds a lot better even though its the same thing.
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When I turned 14, I started working for $3.75 an hour. Minimum wage was $3.25 and I felt damn lucky.
I’m 40
I'm 40 and min wage where I was was $5.25/hr if I recall. (Non-tipped job, tipped jobs were lower.) A 1 bedroom in my area at the time was about $700. I remembering being SO damn confused as to why someone working 40 hours on min wage wouldn't even pay for a 1 bedroom after taxes, much less utilities, car, food, etc. I redid the math over and over again, thinking I must be doing something wrong because school talked all about budgets and stuff...
...but no, school had just failed to tell me that min wage wouldn't actually cover a real-world apartment in my area.
It was all particularly stressful to me because I was in foster care in a group home as a teen, and I did work and school at the same time and they were prepping for us to go live on our own...and no matter how I did the math, I couldn't afford a real apartment on my own EVEN IF someone had been willing to rent to me w/out a co-signer.
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
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Minimum wage here where I am is going to $15.30 oct 1st (Canuck bucks) and I don't think it's enough considering how expensive things are nowadays.
If you do the comparisons in normalized dollars and compare to productivity, minimum wage (if it tracked to the same purchasing power as it did in the 1950s) would be somewhere around $26 in today's dollars. If you do the same but track to inflation, it would be about $22.
When the wage doesn't keep track to inflation, it's not 'increasing', it's a pay cut. When it doesn't track to productivity, it's a pay cut out of labor's part of any growth.
When workers earning suppressed wages compete to buy things like housing, they're bidding against the class of people that received the share of productivity they didn't- and when the folks making more bid up prices of those things, it's a double-whammy of foregone wage + increased cost-of-living.
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Minimum wage is simply the lowest full time salary a company can legally get away with paying. Nothing more, nothing less.
I'm primarily talking about large corporations that make millions and billions, yet claim they can't afford to pay more than minimum wage.
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.
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Federal min wage, many state minimum wages are more than that
Many are over double this... it's honestly a fucking joke at the federal level
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It should be noted that this is the federal minimum wage. Many states set a higher minimum wage than that. For example, California's minimum wage will be $16/hr starting January 1st, Virginia is $12/hr, and New York is $14.20/hr.
Pennsylvania is $7.25 lol.
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Could be worse. 25 cents in 1938 is still only worth $5.44 today.
2 dollars of progress for 85 years... How much has productivity risen during that time?
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Meanwhile in Canada minimum wage is at $16.55 starting Oct 1st.
Though I don't understand how the tipping culter is essential the same between the US and Canada
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I agree it needs to be raised but that's a terrible and misleading way to present the data.
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Why do people even live in the US?
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.
Their instance implies they're Australian which is similar in size to the US, and also further away from most other countries.
You are right that it's difficult for many people to move country though.
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because am born in the u.s.
💀
Difficult to escape.
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.
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They don't make it easy to get out.
I don't know about other people, but I wasn't asked where I would like to be born.
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I think a more alarming stat is that, due to inflation, minimum wage workers have received a pay cut every year for the last fourteen years.
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