America's greatness is its working classes not "wealth" creators

[EconChick]

Republicans are against unions and the minimum wage.Republicans hate the working man.

On a serious note, Chris, I can walk you through the math and show you.

 

[EconChick]

Republicans are against unions and the minimum wage.Republicans hate the working man.

When the min wage goes up, the business owner has to lay others off.

It sounds good on the surface but in the macro it's actually worse for middle class.

A minimal raise in the minimum wage has a temporary effect of raising unemployment by .3%, this usually self corrects within a year.

I posted these stats in another thread yesterday, with links

I have to respectfully disagree. I've been looking at this particular stat for almost 20 years.

One of the problems is that stats and data are extremely distorted these days compared to when they were more trustworthy.

 

[sameech]

Republicans are against unions and the minimum wage.Republicans hate the working man.

When the min wage goes up, the business owner has to lay others off.

It sounds good on the surface but in the macro it's actually worse for middle class and low wage earners.

Yep, but that is what happens when you have people in urban areas deciding what is best for people living outside urban areas. One of my biggest gripes with the tax code is that it discourages small business owners from building capital in their businesses. I think S-corps should be allowed to amass cash tax free until drawn/paid out by the owners so that they can put money aside to expand/hire over time instead of having to be taxed on that money.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Republicans are against unions and the minimum wage.Republicans hate the working man.

I'm a Republican and I fully support Seattle's move to implement a $15 minimum wage. I don't think that they went far enough though. I have no problem with a $20/hr minimum wage but in return for my support I want some concessions.

And before the economically literate jump in to correct me on the effects of minimum wage, spare yourself the trouble, I know what you're going to tell me, it's just that I'm playing a long game here.

Yep, understand the long game. It's actually going to hurt low income earners but it sounds good in the political arena.

Certainly there is appeal in teaching a lesson to the economically illiterate but that's not what I'm driving at.

On one levels, I favor pilot projects. Apart from the long game, Seattle should try their experiment and we can see how it plays out. It never hurts to run such experiments. Too bad about the human cost, but knowledge comes with a price.

The bigger picture here it to break the cycle of "privatizing gains and socializing losses" employed by businesses who use low cost labor and to use the labor market to drive out illegal infiltrators. Secondly, we need to start pushing employees up the value creation ladder. We live in a high cost of living society, so it's utterly nuts to have lettuce farms in the US which can only be competitive with low skill labor while society pays though the nose to educate the kids of that lettuce picker, pay for their medical care, pay for all of the societal infrastructure those people use (sewers, roads, highways, electrical grids, etc all have fixed capacity so they come with a cost per user).

As Romney noted, no matter how unpopular this fact is, we have net taxpayers and we have net tax consumers. It's crazy to keep the numerator fixed and keep expanding the denominator. We need to shrink the denominator and expand the numerator.

 

[SmarterThanTheAverageBear]

Republicans are against unions and the minimum wage.Republicans hate the working man.

When the min wage goes up, the business owner has to lay others off.

It sounds good on the surface but in the macro it's actually worse for middle class.

A minimal raise in the minimum wage has a temporary effect of raising unemployment by .3%, this usually self corrects within a year.

I posted these stats in another thread yesterday, with links

I have to respectfully disagree. I've been looking at this particular stat for almost 20 years.

One of the problems is that stats and data are extremely distorted these days compared to when they were more trustworthy.

You can disagree with opinions, not with facts. The stats show, on average yes 500K jobs are lost when minimum wage goes up, but they replaced with other jobs within 12 months.

Obviously that sucks for those 500K people at the time though, and remember, we're talking bout REASONABLE increases. Certainly jumping from $7.25 to $15 would NOT be reasonable.

I actually have to wonder about something else to. How many people are working two jobs because one doesn't pay enough? If that one job suddenly started paying enough wouldn't most of them quit that second job thereby opening up a position for someone who doesn't have a job? I mean that is a fair point to consider. So you may have less jobs, but you may end up with no less people employed.

 

[EconChick]

Republicans are against unions and the minimum wage.Republicans hate the working man.

When the min wage goes up, the business owner has to lay others off.

It sounds good on the surface but in the macro it's actually worse for middle class.

A minimal raise in the minimum wage has a temporary effect of raising unemployment by .3%, this usually self corrects within a year.

I posted these stats in another thread yesterday, with links

I have to respectfully disagree. I've been looking at this particular stat for almost 20 years.

One of the problems is that stats and data are extremely distorted these days compared to when they were more trustworthy.

You can disagree with opinions, not with facts. The stats show, on average yes 500K jobs are lost when minimum wage goes up, but they replaced with other jobs within 12 months.

Obviously that sucks for those 500K people at the time though, and remember, we're talking bout REASONABLE increases. Certainly jumping from $7.25 to $15 would NOT be reasonable.

I actually have to wonder about something else to. How many people are working two jobs because one doesn't pay enough? If that one job suddenly started paying enough wouldn't most of them quit that second job thereby opening up a position for someone who doesn't have a job? I mean that is a fair point to consider. So you may have less jobs, but you may end up with no less people employed.

But I'm sure you know the saying that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Play with assumptions and you have an entirely different set of data.

That's not fact .....that's saying stats are a moving target. Economic stats these days are distorted compared to the past 20 years. They're a mess. They can't be trusted. I've been looking at stats for the min wage question for a very long time. I'm saying I don't agree with your stats.

 

[EconChick]

When someone says, "The Stats" always question the assumptions in those stats.

 

[Shrimpbox]

The 2013 Index of Dependence on Government

This is too much info for me to wade through. Just scroll through to the graphs, they say it all.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Republicans are against unions and the minimum wage.Republicans hate the working man.

When the min wage goes up, the business owner has to lay others off.

It sounds good on the surface but in the macro it's actually worse for middle class.

A minimal raise in the minimum wage has a temporary effect of raising unemployment by .3%, this usually self corrects within a year.

I posted these stats in another thread yesterday, with links

I have to respectfully disagree. I've been looking at this particular stat for almost 20 years.

One of the problems is that stats and data are extremely distorted these days compared to when they were more trustworthy.

I actually have to wonder about something else to. How many people are working two jobs because one doesn't pay enough?

Let me bounce off what you've written with this observation of what's happened in Alberta:

Ms. Carvey found refuge from that panic in the manner of any driven Type-A professional: She made a list of the pros and cons of staying home. The pros won out, and she became part of an enigmatic exodus in Alberta.

The working women of the province are disappearing, just as the province's superheated economy is becoming increasingly short-handed. Unemployment has fallen to unimaginably low levels, and help-wanted signs plaster the windows of retail businesses throughout the province. Businesses are scouring Alberta, indeed the entire country, for workers, going so far as to launch recruiting drives in prisons.

And while that desperate search goes on, women such as Ms. Carvey are turning away from work to become not-so-desperate housewives. Ten years ago, Alberta had nearly the highest proportion of working women (or women looking for work) with daycare-age children and a spouse, second only to Prince Edward Island.

In the ensuing decade, those numbers changed dramatically as large numbers of working mothers moved into the work force. Quebec, close to the bottom of the pack, rose to near the top, a change largely coinciding with its introduction of inexpensive and near-universal daycare. But the change was not limited to Quebec: Every Canadian province saw substantial increases in the number of working women with children under 6.

In every province, that is, except Alberta, where that number has been declining steadily this decade. Ten years ago, nearly seven in 10 women in this group were working, or looking for work -- above the national average. Now, it's closer to six in 10, and well below the nationwide average. Statistics Canada has documented this decline, but doesn't have a definitive explanation for it. Differences in daycare -- Alberta has among the lowest public funding in the country -- are likely part of the explanation. The introduction of a flat tax rate and a doubling of spousal deductions in 2001 certainly eased the financial burden on single-income families.

And some researchers believe that conservative social attitudes, and the resulting workplace expectations for women, are to blame.

…

Prosperity has, at a minimum, arrived at the same time as working mothers were dropping out of the work force. Statscan analyst Vincent Ferrao said it is possible that it might be more than mere coincidence: The rising wealth of Alberta could be enabling some women to stay at home without undue financial hardship. "Wages have been increasing quite rapidly," he said. "Is it possible you only need one person working?"

That hypothesis certainly lines up with Ms. Carvey's experience. Ms. Carvey and her husband, Darby Parker, had the relatively unusual luxury of being free from the financial worries of moving to a single income. Her salary of $70,000, while substantial, was lower than the six-figure compensation her spouse brought home from his oil-patch job. With a small mortgage, a modest home and a six-year-old car, the couple had avoided an overhang of debt.

…

And here emerges another paradox: Alberta's prosperity might have given some families the means to live on a single income. But the fact that they are doing so is dampening future growth, as the province's businesses run short of workers. If Alberta women (again those with children under 6) were working at the same rate as their Quebec counterparts, there would be close to another 17,000 female employees on the market -- a godsend in a province running short of everything from oil-patch executives to coffee-house clerks.

…

If the future prosperity of Canada hinges on convincing women like Ms. Carvey to stay in the work force, or at least to return quickly, it might just be time to start sweating. The proud mother of Cadence, now 15 months old, says she might not ever go back to work. "That career used to define me. Now, I'm not so sure."​

 

[SmarterThanTheAverageBear]

But I'm sure you know the saying that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Play with assumptions and you have an entirely different set of data.

That's not fact .....that's saying stats are a moving target. Economic stats these days are distorted compared to the past 20 years. They're a mess. They can't be trusted. I've been looking at stats for the min wage question for a very long time. I'm saying I don't agree with your stats.

Of course stats can say whatever America s greatness is its working classes not wealth creators Page 13 US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum person writing those stats would like them to say. But if you compare year to year data in respect to minimum wage and unemployment since 1964 you will see that the minimum wage has had minimal effect on the unemployment rate

I won't bore you with EVERY increase here, just a few highlights

In 1968 the minimum wage increased from $1.40 to $1.60. In Dec,1967 unemployment rate was 3,8% . In Dec, 1968 it was 3.4% so the minimum wage went up that year and the unemployment rate actually dropped.


In 1974 the minimum wage increased from $1.60 to $2. Dec 1973 unemployment was 4.9%. Dec, 1975. 8.2% big difference.

In 1981 minimum wage went from $3.10 to $3.35. Dec, 1980 UE was 7.2%. Dec 1981. 8.5%

In 1996 minimum wage went from $4.25 to $4.75. Dec 1995 UE wa4 5.6%. Dec 1996. 5.4%.

In 2007 the minimum wage went from $5.15 to $5.85. Dec 2006 EU was 4.4%. Dec 2007.5%

U.S. Department of Labor - Wage and Hour Division WHD - Minimum Wage
Historical Unemployment Rates in the United States

okay I lied I did bore you . LOL sorry about that. Anyway, other than one grossly bad year out of the samples you can see that unemployment stayed relatively close to where it was the year prior.

Just for fun, I decided to look and see where minimum wage would have been in each of my sample years if it had merely kept up with inflation

1968 - $1.60
1974 - $2.27
1981 - $4.18
1996 - $7.21
2007 - $9.53
2014 - 10.95

Now, I'm sure you can do a little math and figure out that $7.25 is 67% of $10.95. which of course mean that since 1968 the minimum wage has lost 1/3 of it's purchasing power.

CPI Inflation Calculator

Tell me you honestly believe that that is corporate america playing fair with the average worker. It isn't. Plain and simple.

Math doesn't lie. The minimum wage MUST be raised , else we risk losing our middle class completely.

 

[SmarterThanTheAverageBear]

Republicans are against unions and the minimum wage.Republicans hate the working man.

When the min wage goes up, the business owner has to lay others off.

It sounds good on the surface but in the macro it's actually worse for middle class.

A minimal raise in the minimum wage has a temporary effect of raising unemployment by .3%, this usually self corrects within a year.

I posted these stats in another thread yesterday, with links

I have to respectfully disagree. I've been looking at this particular stat for almost 20 years.

One of the problems is that stats and data are extremely distorted these days compared to when they were more trustworthy.

I actually have to wonder about something else to. How many people are working two jobs because one doesn't pay enough?

Let me bounce off what you've written with this observation of what's happened in Alberta:

Ms. Carvey found refuge from that panic in the manner of any driven Type-A professional: She made a list of the pros and cons of staying home. The pros won out, and she became part of an enigmatic exodus in Alberta.

The working women of the province are disappearing, just as the province's superheated economy is becoming increasingly short-handed. Unemployment has fallen to unimaginably low levels, and help-wanted signs plaster the windows of retail businesses throughout the province. Businesses are scouring Alberta, indeed the entire country, for workers, going so far as to launch recruiting drives in prisons.

And while that desperate search goes on, women such as Ms. Carvey are turning away from work to become not-so-desperate housewives. Ten years ago, Alberta had nearly the highest proportion of working women (or women looking for work) with daycare-age children and a spouse, second only to Prince Edward Island.

In the ensuing decade, those numbers changed dramatically as large numbers of working mothers moved into the work force. Quebec, close to the bottom of the pack, rose to near the top, a change largely coinciding with its introduction of inexpensive and near-universal daycare. But the change was not limited to Quebec: Every Canadian province saw substantial increases in the number of working women with children under 6.

In every province, that is, except Alberta, where that number has been declining steadily this decade. Ten years ago, nearly seven in 10 women in this group were working, or looking for work -- above the national average. Now, it's closer to six in 10, and well below the nationwide average. Statistics Canada has documented this decline, but doesn't have a definitive explanation for it. Differences in daycare -- Alberta has among the lowest public funding in the country -- are likely part of the explanation. The introduction of a flat tax rate and a doubling of spousal deductions in 2001 certainly eased the financial burden on single-income families.

And some researchers believe that conservative social attitudes, and the resulting workplace expectations for women, are to blame.

…

Prosperity has, at a minimum, arrived at the same time as working mothers were dropping out of the work force. Statscan analyst Vincent Ferrao said it is possible that it might be more than mere coincidence: The rising wealth of Alberta could be enabling some women to stay at home without undue financial hardship. "Wages have been increasing quite rapidly," he said. "Is it possible you only need one person working?"

That hypothesis certainly lines up with Ms. Carvey's experience. Ms. Carvey and her husband, Darby Parker, had the relatively unusual luxury of being free from the financial worries of moving to a single income. Her salary of $70,000, while substantial, was lower than the six-figure compensation her spouse brought home from his oil-patch job. With a small mortgage, a modest home and a six-year-old car, the couple had avoided an overhang of debt.

…

And here emerges another paradox: Alberta's prosperity might have given some families the means to live on a single income. But the fact that they are doing so is dampening future growth, as the province's businesses run short of workers. If Alberta women (again those with children under 6) were working at the same rate as their Quebec counterparts, there would be close to another 17,000 female employees on the market -- a godsend in a province running short of everything from oil-patch executives to coffee-house clerks.

…

If the future prosperity of Canada hinges on convincing women like Ms. Carvey to stay in the work force, or at least to return quickly, it might just be time to start sweating. The proud mother of Cadence, now 15 months old, says she might not ever go back to work. "That career used to define me. Now, I'm not so sure."​

I don't mean to sound sexist, but women entering the workforce en masse in the 70s is absolutely what drove down wages.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Now, I'm sure you can do a little math and figure out that $7.25 is 67% of $10.95. which of course mean that since 1968 the minimum wage has lost 1/3 of it's purchasing power.

CPI Inflation Calculator

Tell me you honestly believe that that is corporate america playing fair with the average worker. It isn't. Plain and simple.

That bolded statement is good as far as it goes, but it doesn't really go all that far. There are two side to this equation - how much money you earn = what you need to spend to live.

So if purchasing power is increasing at a rate less than inflation while at the same time the cost of consumer goods is increasing at a rate less than the cost of inflation, then just looking at purchasing power doesn't tell you the entire story. What's Walmart schtick?Reducing prices.

Math doesn't lie. The minimum wage MUST be raised , else we risk losing our middle class completely.

The middle class is not part of the minimum wage economy.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Republicans are against unions and the minimum wage.Republicans hate the working man.

When the min wage goes up, the business owner has to lay others off.

It sounds good on the surface but in the macro it's actually worse for middle class.

A minimal raise in the minimum wage has a temporary effect of raising unemployment by .3%, this usually self corrects within a year.

I posted these stats in another thread yesterday, with links

I have to respectfully disagree. I've been looking at this particular stat for almost 20 years.

One of the problems is that stats and data are extremely distorted these days compared to when they were more trustworthy.

I actually have to wonder about something else to. How many people are working two jobs because one doesn't pay enough?

Let me bounce off what you've written with this observation of what's happened in Alberta:

Ms. Carvey found refuge from that panic in the manner of any driven Type-A professional: She made a list of the pros and cons of staying home. The pros won out, and she became part of an enigmatic exodus in Alberta.

The working women of the province are disappearing, just as the province's superheated economy is becoming increasingly short-handed. Unemployment has fallen to unimaginably low levels, and help-wanted signs plaster the windows of retail businesses throughout the province. Businesses are scouring Alberta, indeed the entire country, for workers, going so far as to launch recruiting drives in prisons.

And while that desperate search goes on, women such as Ms. Carvey are turning away from work to become not-so-desperate housewives. Ten years ago, Alberta had nearly the highest proportion of working women (or women looking for work) with daycare-age children and a spouse, second only to Prince Edward Island.

In the ensuing decade, those numbers changed dramatically as large numbers of working mothers moved into the work force. Quebec, close to the bottom of the pack, rose to near the top, a change largely coinciding with its introduction of inexpensive and near-universal daycare. But the change was not limited to Quebec: Every Canadian province saw substantial increases in the number of working women with children under 6.

In every province, that is, except Alberta, where that number has been declining steadily this decade. Ten years ago, nearly seven in 10 women in this group were working, or looking for work -- above the national average. Now, it's closer to six in 10, and well below the nationwide average. Statistics Canada has documented this decline, but doesn't have a definitive explanation for it. Differences in daycare -- Alberta has among the lowest public funding in the country -- are likely part of the explanation. The introduction of a flat tax rate and a doubling of spousal deductions in 2001 certainly eased the financial burden on single-income families.

And some researchers believe that conservative social attitudes, and the resulting workplace expectations for women, are to blame.

…

Prosperity has, at a minimum, arrived at the same time as working mothers were dropping out of the work force. Statscan analyst Vincent Ferrao said it is possible that it might be more than mere coincidence: The rising wealth of Alberta could be enabling some women to stay at home without undue financial hardship. "Wages have been increasing quite rapidly," he said. "Is it possible you only need one person working?"

That hypothesis certainly lines up with Ms. Carvey's experience. Ms. Carvey and her husband, Darby Parker, had the relatively unusual luxury of being free from the financial worries of moving to a single income. Her salary of $70,000, while substantial, was lower than the six-figure compensation her spouse brought home from his oil-patch job. With a small mortgage, a modest home and a six-year-old car, the couple had avoided an overhang of debt.

…

And here emerges another paradox: Alberta's prosperity might have given some families the means to live on a single income. But the fact that they are doing so is dampening future growth, as the province's businesses run short of workers. If Alberta women (again those with children under 6) were working at the same rate as their Quebec counterparts, there would be close to another 17,000 female employees on the market -- a godsend in a province running short of everything from oil-patch executives to coffee-house clerks.

…

If the future prosperity of Canada hinges on convincing women like Ms. Carvey to stay in the work force, or at least to return quickly, it might just be time to start sweating. The proud mother of Cadence, now 15 months old, says she might not ever go back to work. "That career used to define me. Now, I'm not so sure."​

I don't mean to sound sexist, but women entering the workforce en masse in the 70s is absolutely what drove down wages.

No argument they played a part. What the Alberta experience shows is the feedback loop in action. Labor scarcity drives up wages, on the margin some women will drop out of the labor force because now their family can survive on one income, this adds to labor shortages and drives up wages a bit more, some women on the margin now drop out, and rinse and repeat.

The meta question that isn't addressed in the article is whether "growing economy = good life for citizens."

 

[SmarterThanTheAverageBear]

Now, I'm sure you can do a little math and figure out that $7.25 is 67% of $10.95. which of course mean that since 1968 the minimum wage has lost 1/3 of it's purchasing power.

CPI Inflation Calculator

Tell me you honestly believe that that is corporate america playing fair with the average worker. It isn't. Plain and simple.

That bolded statement is good as far as it goes, but it doesn't really go all that far. There are two side to this equation - how much money you earn = what you need to spend to live.

There are no two sides, corporations are paying 66% of what they paid in MIMIMUM labor in 1968. There is no spin for denying that fact. You would be better off just saying you don't care, at least then you are being honest.

So if purchasing power is increasing at a rate less than inflation while at the same time the cost of consumer goods is increasing at a rate less than the cost of inflation, then just looking at purchasing power doesn't tell you the entire story. What's Walmart schtick?Reducing prices.

Math doesn't lie. The minimum wage MUST be raised , else we risk losing our middle class completely.

The middle class is not part of the minimum wage economy.

No it isn't , but the middle class are who support Wal Mart, and other big companies, and that in turns allows people to spend money at MY business, and I am DECIDEDLY middle class.

And so on and so forth.

 

[Rikurzhen]

I don't mean to sound sexist, but women entering the workforce en masse in the 70s is absolutely what drove down wages.

Check out the effect of women in the labor force on male earnings:

In 2004, the median income for a man in his 30s, a good predictor of his lifetime earnings, was $35,010, the study says, 12% less than for men in their 30s in 1974 -- their fathers' generation -- adjusted for inflation. A decade ago, median income for men in their 30s was $32,901, 5% higher than 30 years earlier. Ms. Sawhill said she isn't sure why men's wages have stagnated. "It seems there's been some slowdown in economic growth, it's possible that the movement of women into the labor force has affected male earnings, and it's possible that men are not working as hard as they used to."

The study suggests that absolute mobility -- the rate at which an entire generation's lot improves relative to previous generations -- has declined. But within a particular generation, individuals can still get ahead if relative mobility, the rate at which the rich and poor trade places, remains high. Poor fathers may have rich sons, and vice versa.

The report also found that between 1947 and 1974, productivity, or output per hour, and median family income, adjusted for inflation, both roughly doubled. Between 1974 and 2000, productivity rose 56% while income rose 29%. Between 2000 and 2005, productivity rose 16% while median income fell 2%, challenging "the notion that a rising tide will lift all boats," the report says.
​

This is a multifactorial problem but women and immigrants entering the labor force has resulted in income declines for men as well as lower shares of productivity gains.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Now, I'm sure you can do a little math and figure out that $7.25 is 67% of $10.95. which of course mean that since 1968 the minimum wage has lost 1/3 of it's purchasing power.

CPI Inflation Calculator

Tell me you honestly believe that that is corporate america playing fair with the average worker. It isn't. Plain and simple.

That bolded statement is good as far as it goes, but it doesn't really go all that far. There are two side to this equation - how much money you earn = what you need to spend to live.

There are no two sides

Oh FFS, the minimum wage in 1961 was $1.15 per hour. It would take 500 hours of labor to buy this TV set.

The minimum wage in 2014 is $7.25 per hour. It takes 93.5 hours of labor to buy this TV set.

 

[SmarterThanTheAverageBear]

Now, I'm sure you can do a little math and figure out that $7.25 is 67% of $10.95. which of course mean that since 1968 the minimum wage has lost 1/3 of it's purchasing power.

CPI Inflation Calculator

Tell me you honestly believe that that is corporate america playing fair with the average worker. It isn't. Plain and simple.

That bolded statement is good as far as it goes, but it doesn't really go all that far. There are two side to this equation - how much money you earn = what you need to spend to live.

There are no two sides

Of FFS, the minimum wage in 1961 was $1.15 per hour. It would take 500 hours of labor to buy this TV set.

The minimum wage in 2014 is $7.25 per hour. It takes 93.5 hours of labor to buy this TV set.

That is no basis for comparison and you know it.

Electronics in general cost pennies on the dollar compared to what they cost in the 60s.

How about using a company that paid minimum wage then and now and look at their products

In 1961 a McD cheeseburger was twenty cents. Meaning a person could buy almost 6 of them for an hours wages (pretax of course) today a cheeseburger is $1.25 meaning a person can buy 5 of them. Meaning of course that a person has lost 1/6th of their buying power at McDonalds.

Or if you REALLY wanna go big. Let's look at a Corvette.

In 1961 a Corvette cost $5700 (give or take) or 4.957 hours @ minimum wage

Today a Corvette costs $45,000 (again give or take base model) or 6,207 hours @ minimum wage

Please stop playing games or I'll just drop out of the thread, I HATE dishonest posting. The minimum wage absolutely has lost 1/3 of its value since the 60s. PERIOD

 

[SmarterThanTheAverageBear]

By the way your $699 tv in 1961, in today's dollars that TV would cost $5400 . Which tells you that electronics prices have fell through the floor compared to the sixties making them a piss poor product to use for this type of discussion, which I fully think you knew.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Now, I'm sure you can do a little math and figure out that $7.25 is 67% of $10.95. which of course mean that since 1968 the minimum wage has lost 1/3 of it's purchasing power.

CPI Inflation Calculator

Tell me you honestly believe that that is corporate america playing fair with the average worker. It isn't. Plain and simple.

That bolded statement is good as far as it goes, but it doesn't really go all that far. There are two side to this equation - how much money you earn = what you need to spend to live.

There are no two sides

Of FFS, the minimum wage in 1961 was $1.15 per hour. It would take 500 hours of labor to buy this TV set.

The minimum wage in 2014 is $7.25 per hour. It takes 93.5 hours of labor to buy this TV set.

That is no basis for comparison and you know it.

Electronics in general cost pennies on the dollar compared to what they cost in the 60s.

How about using a company that paid minimum wage then and now and look at their products

In 1961 a McD cheeseburger was twenty cents. Meaning a person could buy almost 6 of them for an hours wages (pretax of course) today a cheeseburger is $1.25 meaning a person can buy 5 of them. Meaning of course that a person has lost 1/6th of their buying power at McDonalds.

Or if you REALLY wanna go big. Let's look at a Corvette.

In 1961 a Corvette cost $5700 (give or take) or 4.957 hours @ minimum wage

Today a Corvette costs $45,000 (again give or take base model) or 6,207 hours @ minimum wage

Please stop playing games or I'll just drop out of the thread, I HATE dishonest posting. The minimum wage absolutely has lost 1/3 of its value since the 60s. PERIOD

You think that you're gracing people with your presence in this thread? Deflate that ego buddy.

Income alone doesn't tell you jack about living standards. The other side of the equation has to be considered - what will that income BUY. You don't know what you're talking about when you assert that "There are no two sides." Drop out you ignoramus and save people the grief of having to tutor you on the basics of economic analysis.

 

[SmarterThanTheAverageBear]

Now, I'm sure you can do a little math and figure out that $7.25 is 67% of $10.95. which of course mean that since 1968 the minimum wage has lost 1/3 of it's purchasing power.

CPI Inflation Calculator

Tell me you honestly believe that that is corporate america playing fair with the average worker. It isn't. Plain and simple.

That bolded statement is good as far as it goes, but it doesn't really go all that far. There are two side to this equation - how much money you earn = what you need to spend to live.

There are no two sides

Of FFS, the minimum wage in 1961 was $1.15 per hour. It would take 500 hours of labor to buy this TV set.

The minimum wage in 2014 is $7.25 per hour. It takes 93.5 hours of labor to buy this TV set.

That is no basis for comparison and you know it.

Electronics in general cost pennies on the dollar compared to what they cost in the 60s.

How about using a company that paid minimum wage then and now and look at their products

In 1961 a McD cheeseburger was twenty cents. Meaning a person could buy almost 6 of them for an hours wages (pretax of course) today a cheeseburger is $1.25 meaning a person can buy 5 of them. Meaning of course that a person has lost 1/6th of their buying power at McDonalds.

Or if you REALLY wanna go big. Let's look at a Corvette.

In 1961 a Corvette cost $5700 (give or take) or 4.957 hours @ minimum wage

Today a Corvette costs $45,000 (again give or take base model) or 6,207 hours @ minimum wage

Please stop playing games or I'll just drop out of the thread, I HATE dishonest posting. The minimum wage absolutely has lost 1/3 of its value since the 60s. PERIOD

You think that you're gracing people with your presence in this thread? Deflate that ego buddy.

Income alone doesn't tell you jack about living standards. The other side of the equation has to be considered - what will that income BUY. You don't know what you're talking about when you assert that "There are no two sides." Drop out you ignoramus and save people the grief of having to tutor you on the basics of economic analysis.

we're not talking about livign standards, were talking about the minim wage.


You sir are a dishonest person and poster. I don't have the time nor the desire to deal with you any longer. Good evening.