this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
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I think the most important context is minimum wage.
In 1982 a full-time job making $3.35 an hour is pulling in approx $6,700 a year. Or 14% of the price of a house.
In 2022, that same worker, working the same number of hours at minimum wage $7.25 an hour is bringing in $14,500 a year. Or 3.5% the price of a house.
The same for groceries. THAT is the fucked up part. It's what happens when people seem OK with 50 trillion dollars going from the bottom 90% to the top 1% over the past several decades.
I mean, that minimum wage should be higher though.
At the same time, if you doubled it, it would still be half as much of a percentage of a house.
No matter which way we slice this up, were fuckkkkkkked
Yeah minimum wage should be quadrupled at the least. But I think the US should have a 50 dollar minimum wage.
50? Wow.
That's more than I make. I mean, I'm not opposed to the idea, but it would be an excuse from every capitalist out there to go crazy with inflation.
We'd probably end up worse off on the end but I wouldn't mind as much because my house is already mortgaged.
They're already going crazy with inflation. We've got nothing left to lose by trying it. And when teenage burger flippers at McDonald's are making 50 an hour, you can go to your boss and ask for a raise with a very good argument. How would you like to make 80 or 100 an hour?
Well, yeah. But honestly, I like what I do. So, I'm not sure I'd ask for a lot more than minimum in that case. Of course, that would change as inflation goes nuts and prices go crazy... But still. The first few months of that would be awesome.
My argument would probably be along the lines of: I make x% above minimum wage, so it seems fair that I should continue to make x% above minimum. Now that the minimum wage is $50/hr, I calculate my fair wage as $y/hr.
I don't think I'd get that full amount, but it would set up a foundation for the rest of the wage negotiation. Right now, at my current job, I believe (if my math is right) I'm around 205% of minimum wage, so if it suddenly went to $50/hr, I would be seeking around $102/hr or so. But behind the scenes, I'd settle for like $80/hr.
I'll add a caveat that I'm not in the USA, and the minimum wage where I am is much more than the US minimum wage. If our minimum wage was closer to the US minimum wage, I'd be closer to 350% or more.
Imagine how much more you'd make if minimum was 50
I don't expect anyone to know this off the top of their heads, but do things seem any better from a global perspective over that same time period? e.g. are there so many fewer kids dying from malnutrition that on average a citizen of Earth chosen at random is likely to be better off?
Yes. We can be as doom and gloom as we want, but the world overall is infinitely better than it was even looking 25 years ago. There's a lot of fucked up shit going on, but there are far fewer people dying of starvation and crushing poverty than ever in human history.
Dope
The fight continues
Fun fact: most statistics regarding global standard of living (access to water, schooling, etc.) peaked shortly before covid and have gone down again in recent years.
Also, much of that improvement happened in China.