Upon inception it was set at $0.25. It is now $7.25.
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
While I am very pro-minimum wage, it does need to be more regionally based than nationally. The minimum required to get by in LA, New York, and so forth is going to be different than some podunk middle of no where towns in rural America.
Isn’t that why it’s so low? It would also be hard anywhere in the US to live on $7.25 an hour.
I’m not pro minimum wage. Not at all. It’s a symptom of a larger disease. The fact that we need laws to specify the minimum wage someone can make, is ridiculous. It’s 2023 and we have more than enough resources for everyone. Wages should be a thing of the past already. I’d take a basic income allowance or a system that removes money completely somehow tbh.
Completely removing money is forever impossible, as long as we are here. Some people will always be trading. It’s just our human nature, and money is very useful for trading. That means, even if the state of any country discontinues their fiat currency, the trading people that were agreeing upon using that currency, will just switch to any other fiat currency still in existence, or any crypto currency, or gold or whatever else they agree upon.
Teenager take
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Additionally just because that is the minimum wage doesn’t mean people are getting payed that. I live in a state where we just used the fed minimum, and see McDonald’s advertising $17/hr. That’s still a pretty humble rate but the labor market dictates wages not the government.
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 almost 50. It was 3.25 when i started to work at 15.
In about 6 months i was 4.25
I’m about the same age as you and both of you guys are remembering incorrectly.
See my previous comment linked below…
Off by a dime.
Minimum wage also didn’t go up to $4.25 for you “in about 6 months” then if you started at the $3.35…
I got a pay raise. I never said minimum wage went up.
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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
State minimums can be different for certain jobs, and certain jobs are exempt from minimum wage and have a lower set wage. Tipped workers are the ones everyone knows about, but farm workers and others are also exempt.
That in no way contradicts anything I said.
The person I was replying to never said they were exempt from minimum wage… They said what they misremembered the minimum wage to have been.
My point is they may have been remembering the minimum as it was relevant to the work they did at the time, not necessarily the federal minimum.
It is illegal for a company in any state to pay lower than federal minimum wage regardless whether or not the state’s minimum wage is set lower.
Full stop.
Jobs that are considered exempt from federal minimum wage can still have a different set state exempt minimum wage that is higher than the mandated exempt federal wage.
For example, say the exempt wage is $2.75, a state can mandate $3.00 instead.
I understand this to be true as well.
Yes. Which again is completely irrelevant to the discussion.
Thanks.
federal Minimum wage when you were 14, was 5.15 an hour, assuming you are actually 40. It was 2.13 an hour if you were in a tipped position. But it was not 3.25.
Jesus. I’m your age, but my starting minimum wage was $6.50. I thought I was ballin a few years later when I was making $9
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.
Alternatively, 29x the original
Why are you booing him, he’s right
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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?
People working for minimal wage don’t produce more value. Considering advancements in mechanisation and automation over these years, their productivity has actually decreased.
Minimum Wage workers/general laborers are the literal backbone of any work force. Their value is literally instrumental to any and all industries. These industries would simply collapse if minimum wage workers are taken out of the equation. And that’s without pointing out that wage isn’t indicative of how important someone is to a workplace.
And automation doesn’t mean much when you still need an entire force to upkeep all of those machines. And I’d bet my right arm and left leg that if wage pricing is left to corporations that they’ll place said workers at minimum wage if they can get away with it.
Nope. These jobs are a waste of time and money.
Essential workers from the pandemic looking at this shit take like
What essential workers? Ocado is fully automated.
Lol right? I thought we all learned this lesson like 3 years ago.
Yeah this isn’t true. While automation has made machines more effective than humans in many cases, they haven’t made human labor less effective. Not sure why you would think that. Advances in tools and software have made every sector of the workforce more productive. There’s a million little things.
They have flattops at fast food places that cook the top and the bottom of the burger patty at the same time. So one worker can do more. Roofers have faster and lighter nail guns letting them work for longer. Hell, when I did lawn care as a teen you’d see another crew with some fancy new mower every month, and the improvements were usually worth the costs.
Roofers are not minimal wage workers. Minimal wage workers are redundant.
Listen here you little shit we’re here for class solidarity and memes not mathematics
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.
Saving $50 per employee when you have 5 employees is $250. It’s nice, but not a game changer. 50 employees: $2,500, 500 employees: $25,000. When you have more employees squeezing pennies out of your workers becomes a relevant boon to the company.
Weirdly that’s been the opposite of my experience, got paid a lot(in local terms) for doing barely anything in an internship. Paid not well for a small business where I knew the owners, but I know why, which is that they basically recruited people who wouldn’t bother negotiating.
Can you name one? I don’t know a single person who actually makes minimum wage. Legit question.
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Yikes, hope things are better now! Thanks for sharing!
Just means you’re not poor. I know loads, and they’re all in the poorest part of the country.
Dollar General, McDonald’s, Krogers, 7-11 just to name a few that you’d recognize. Used to be Walmart but they upped pay a couple of years ago.
yup, I made minimum wage at a Krogers back in 2010 and the folks working there now are making the same $7.25 I was back then.
Maybe it’s a regional thing then, those types of jobs in my area all earn more than the federal minimum wage and even the stage minimum which is $15/hr now.
That said, aside from DG, those other companies are franchise operations. Still, thank you for honestly answering and not just resorting to name calling.
Well I mean of course. Wages are lower in low cost of living areas. In the poorest areas, wages are lowest
Understandable, I was mainly curious about the “large corporations” but it seems there are a few good examples provided. Thanks!
Np
I’m kind of shocked at this, you must be really wealthy and/or out of touch. I make minimum wage at my current job which is 13.65 an hour in the state of Colorado. I make less now than I ever have before at any other job and I spent thousands on a technical degree. Many people all over the country only make minimum wage. Bartenders and jobs like that come to mind, they are often paid $2 or less an hour with “tips” that add up to minimum wage.
Not wealthy nor in a wealthy area but I live in a pretty densely populated state so I just don’t see it. Even convenience store jobs pay $18-20/hr here.
I’ve been working since 14 and that may have been the only year I made the minimum wage too. I don’t generally look at this sort of data so thank you for sharing your anecdotes!
You dont get rich by spending money
Or something to that effect
You don’t get rich without exploiting the labour of others*
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.
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I don’t see how someone on minimum wage can even make ends meet in a lot of places. I live in the boonies and rent in my area is stupid, never mind what they’re asking in the city.
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When I first moved out on my own, I rented a three bedroom two story house for $300 a month, but you could find places for less. Now in the same general area the cheapest I’ve seen is around $1500 for a shithole and is typically much higher than that ($2000-2500 and up) if you don’t want something held together with duct tape and wishful thinking… and you still have to factor in the drive to work, considering I’m about a half hour from the nearest city.
i live in the boonies, too. rent used to be reasonable for what i got (a shitty little walk up). it has now more than doubled in three years. all by a new building owner. over the twenty years previous (and three other owners), it went up a whole one time for about 10%.
rents used to be reasonable and stable in this little town, but not anymore. buildings like this are even being pulled off the residential market completely and turned into short-term rentals (they can charge more for a single 3-day weekend rental than they can for a whole month on a residential lease).
They don’t you cannot rent a 1 bedroom apartment on minimum wage in most if not all of America G Z is getting ducked harder than millennials with no end in sight. If you can afford rent you can’t afford luxuries such as healthier foods or decent health care (which ends up costing more in the fire when things go wrong). The inequality of wealth disbursement is the in the US “In the first quarter of 2023, 69 percent of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of earners. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only owned 2.4 percent of the total wealth.Jul 17, 2023”. I’m very ecstatic that unions are coming back with force and people are fighting back, but it won’t be won overnight and the 1% are going to kick and claw and fight anyways they can ( look at Amazon using the Pinkertons to union bust). I think things can change, but it’s going to take a massive push on voting for people who actually represent the people and holding our politicians to a higher standard than we are now. Changing legislation such as, putting a limit on campaign donations and having a public ledger of where and who the donations came from (see you matter dark money!), repealing citizens united, getting rid of corporate welfare, extending voting rights (making it a national holiday to force businesses to make sure there is time off for their workers to vote while being compensated, and making sure employers no longer have a say in your healthcare (through universal healthcare) and end the privatization of the whole system, fixing the unchecked police system here would go a long way to making sure that those protesting would not be killed or beaten for exercising their first amendment right and would help us get in the right track to help mitigate climate change instead of the misinformation factory that is the oil and gas industry not to mention the disinformation machine that is alt right driven hate speech (looking at you Fox News for giving a breeding ground for that shit for bowers and Rudolf Murdock that with his media empire has done more to fuck humanity over than anyone is history). I do believe in gen z helping to change things for the better, but they can’t do it alone and it seems like the generations before them have given into apathy and and frozen into inaction by just straight death session and despair about the future.
Just realized I went on a long ass rant, my bad and did not mean to word vomit on you O agree with everything you said . I’ll delete if it gets into the negatives.
Lol no problem, I know what you’re saying. It’s like the entire world revolves around nickel and diming people to death. I’m thankful it’s not as bad in my area as it is in some places but nowhere is safe. I think something has to break sooner or later, and it’s not going to be pretty when it does.
Thanks so much my friend! I don’t know why but I just really needed to get that out in writing for some reason, ya know? Exactly it’s gotten so extreme that in my experience even the people who vote against their own interest and feel they have more in common with billionaires than the homeless on the street are starting to feel the pinch and waking up and wondering what’s going on. Glad to hear your area isn’t as bad and I completely agree that there is no escaping this situation anywhere it’s just “a little less shitty, and a tad bit less exploitative than other places”. I totally agree that it’s going to be real bad if there isn’t change I just hope if it does come down to that we’ll see a drastic shift in the way America operates or it will all be for nothing and just a short reprieve before the machine starts to grind away at the general public once again.
The minimum wage has always been and always will be zero.
💀
Yes any for most of the time it was sufficient
Hasn’t been sufficient for 40+ years.
Ah survivorship bias.
when
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’).
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.
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.
That’s why they’re conveniently not part of the inflation equation.
That’s true, though I can’t say for the US, in the UK, inflation is still ridiculously calculated.
about it, because staples like pasta and rice weren’t included, but champagne was.
I love how its just flipped the numbers around.
inflation is still absolutely sucking us all dry.
However, as a side note, inflation is absolutely essential to keep the economy healthy. Most developed countries around the world have a goal of 2 percent inflation. US inflation is currently 3.7 percent before seasonal adjustments.
Edit: Wow. Lots of people here who need to retake Econ 101.
Most lemmings have never taken econ 101, because they are in middle school
Inflation is important because it punishes the hoarding of wealth and encourages spending. When investments grow greater than inflation but wages grow slower, it’s problematic because the investing class is rewarded for having money while the working class is punished.
well no, the econ 101 guys are the ones calling for getting rid of inflation, you actually need to get a bit further down into the mud to get to “inflation is super important and one of few reasons for investment instead of dragon hordes”
The development of cheaper manufacturing methods has been hiding the decline for quite some time now.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Obligatory GTA 5 “This is 7 dollars” meme
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Only? That’s 29x more. Needs context.
This kind of context?
$1 in 1938 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $21.77 today, an increase of $20.77 over 85 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.69% per year between 1938 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 2,077.49%.
Minimum wage workers today have less purchasing power than they did in the Great Depression
I meant to say 7$ doesn’t mean much. It’s like saying company share price went up by 7$, that’s why stock market changes are expressed in % not in $.
Why are you comparing $1 to $0.25? This is an incorrect way to compare relative purchasing power.
As already pointed out, if $1 in 1938 is equivalent to $21.77 today, then $0.25 in 1938 is equivalent to $5.44 today ($21.76 / 4). Since minimum wage is $7.25, they are earning more per hour now after adjusting for inflation.
Another way to think about it is if someone wanted to buy something for $1 in 1938, they’d need 4 hours of minimum wage work ($1 / $0.25 = 4 hrs). That same $1 expense would be $21.77 today, or $21.77/7.25 = 3.0 hours of minimum wage work.
This isn’t necessarily justification that the minimum wage isn’t in need of an increase today, by the way. I personally think it needs an increase (among other work reforms) and is a decent argument that minimum wage in the US has been too low since it’s inception. But it has increased since 1938 after adjusting for inflation.
I think some of you are conflating inflation and price increases. Inflation is the decrease in the value of money. Price increases are increases in the cost of commodities. I know that sounds a little pedantic, but while inflation can cause price increases, so can other things (things like taxes or monopolies). If the cost of living were locked to inflation, then yes, you’d see a 33% increase in the value of minimum wage. As an example, a 2 bedroom house was around $3900 in 1938. If you made minimum wage, then a house costs about 4 years’ worth of labor. It’s harder to get stats like that today because it varies so much by region… but I live in a pretty low cost-of-living state, and the median cost of a 2 bedroom house here is around $240k. Minimum wage today will earn you about $15k annually, meaning a house now costs 16 years’ worth of labor.
If $1 then is now equivalent to $21.77, then that $0.25 minimum wage then would today only be $5.44 (25% of $21.77). $7.25 represents 133% more purchasing power.
The fuck kinda dollar store math are you doing?
Their math is correct. What is wrong is that prices increases have little to do with inflation. IMO inflation is happening because of the rabid greedy capitalism. Prices are moving only in upward direction.
The math checks out what are you looking at?
97¢ store, you did the math wrong
He is actually correct. The math does check out.
The minimum wage in 1938 was worth about $5.44 in today’s money. The peak minimum wage adjusted for inflation was in 1968 which would have been worth $13.46 in today’s money
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States
In California, fast food workers wages will go up to $20 an hour we found today. That’s more than some college educated people make. Something is wrong here.
If you’re only making $20/hour after a college education, your college education is a broken promise.
This is the correct take. Unfortunately, there seems to be an overwhelming sense of “fuck you, I got mine” amongst a lot of people meaning they’d rather kick other people down than get pushed up.
Your right. Wages should be going up across the board, not just for fast food workers.
And we are in by far the longest stretch of no increase. Thanks biden and democrats.
If that were true, we’d expect to see red states with higher minimum wages than blue states, no?
I aint mentioned republicans. Them being shit doesnt give dems a pass to also be shit
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This shouldn’t be an unpopular opinion. We should be holding all appointed politicians liable.
don’t blame them. you need the white house, the house, and 60 votes in the senate to get most legislation through and into law.
Facts? We don’t need no stinkin’ facts. /s
60 votes thanks to democrats being fine with the filibuster. They had the ability to get rid of it in favor of simple majority.
Lmao Biden and the Democrats? Are you high? Part of Bidens covid relief bill included a $15 minimum wage. It was struck out of the bill by a vote of 58-42. A grand total of 7(well, 6, since Sinema isn’t a Dem anymore and never really was) democrats voted against it. EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN voted against it.
Now tell me, why is it “Biden and the Democrats” fault when they actually try to improve things but fail(even if the 6/7 nay dems had voted yeah, that’s still at best 49 yeahs), but never Republicans fault when they actually DO vote in lockstep to prevent any democrat endorsed legislation from passing, and when a significant percentage of them are actively trying to strip rights away from people?
Oh, I forgot to mention; while Biden doesn’t have the executive power to unilaterally raise the national minimum wage, he DOES have the power to raise the minimum wage for employees of the federal government, which… he did.
I forgot to mention; while Biden doesn’t have the executive power to unilaterally raise the national minimum wage
Irrelevant after all the shit Trump pushed through with EOs. Biden could absolutely use Executive powers to raise the minimum wage
Oh right, that time we learned the senate parliamentarian exists. The convenient scapegoat for why dems failed again.
Republicans are shit, but republicans lost. This was a wholy dem controlled government, theres no one left to blame but dems.
Trolls gonna troll
This was a wholy dem controlled government
Composition of the United States House of Representatives from 1983 to 2023, by party affiliation
The 118th Congress was sworn-in in January 2023, with the Republicans holding a majority with 222 seats. In this year, the Democratic Party was in control of the Senate and the Presidency.
Another view on the same facts…
118th Congress House Lineup: 221 Republicans, 212 Democrats, 2 Vacancies
117th congress
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And we are in by far the longest stretch of no increase. Thanks biden and democrats.
The 118th Congress could do something about that today.
That statement was true for the 117th congress as well, when they controlled both legislatures and the presidency. Theyre not getting another chance like that.
The Democrats aren’t going to achieve their stated goals unless they either curbstomp the republican party or start acting like a unified team with unified goals and don’t let individual representatives vote against the party on big bills. Republicans are in lockstep and only need the slightest majority to get sweeping changes through, and Democrats will keep failing until they either do the same or somehow destroy the republican party, and I don’t see either happening anytime soon
Ya, I would say I lean that direction on many issues but the party is such a disaster. I have to think it’s intentional how ineffective they are.
