Easy E wrote: A simple question, but I am not an economist; so someone please help me out....
If unemployment in the US is low now, why are wages still stagnant? If wages are stagnant, why are we raising interest rates?
I can't answer the question about why wages aren't rising, although I'd like to point out they've been stagnant for a really, really long time - it's seperate from interest rates. I don't know how that would be addressed.
The interest rates were lowered primarily to offset the economic impact of the global financial crisis starting 2007; the purpose was to get more liquidity into the markets. It was never intended to affect wage stagnation - the main role of the Fed as I understand it is to keep unemployment down. As unemployment is now below 4% and the economy is stable, interest rates should return to "normal".
If anyone subsequent to me says anything I posted here is wrong then believe them because my opinion is definitely a lay one.
Short answer? This is broadly a very complex topic that has all sorts of factors, but broadly speaking? Because there is a major imbalance in market power and legal framework between Labor and Capital.
Per worker productivity is at the highest level in human history as a result of increased education and automation, but all the gains have been captured by Capital. Labor has been cut out and effectively commoditized.
When a company rolls out a new ERP system that enables workers to functionally do 3x as much as they used to once trained and experienced on the system, the benefits of that productivity boon go entirely to management/shareholders, while the workers who now have to train and learn and support the new system gain nothing from that and their newfound knowledge and training merely allows them to keep their job (rather than be duffed off as dead weight) as opposed to getting a proportional gain of the now larger pie.
Per this, it seems to be showing about a 3% right now. My annual growth has averaged around 1.5-2% throughout my working career, so that seems good to me, but maybe I've just spent so long being short changed, that's the norm for me now.
Part of the problem is the incredible increases in the cost of health insurance. As that cost continues to increase dramatically faster than the overall economy, your employer has to pay more and more to cover their share of your health insurance.
Much of the increase in productivity has gone to cover increases in health insurance expenses, which leaves less for raises even if there was desire to give raises.
The most correct answer is that it's complicated and realying on a numbet of different factors. The practical answer is that the wage gains have gone to the wealthy. Top 10% have thre quarters the USs wealth, the gap is the worst since the 1920s.
NinthMusketeer wrote: The most correct answer is that it's complicated and realying on a numbet of different factors. The practical answer is that the wage gains have gone to the wealthy. Top 10% have thre quarters the USs wealth, the gap is the worst since the 1920s.
You'll probably notice that those in the 10% provide most of the jobs to the rest of the 90% just because the rich get richer doesn't mean the poor get poorer it depends on your place in the global market. (tis a silly argument as a stand alone statement)
But on the low wage its because of years of a saturated employers market allowing people to hire at slightly lower wages, incremetally without a backlash (because it has been an employers market for so long.) This will probably continue to worsen unless there is a large war, "plague" (antibiotic crisis?) or mass migration of the working class. There are too many people and not enough jobs. Even with the peak in employment it was only social and political pressure that kept the wage as high as they were. Its been an employers market for a while now and the employers have been able to keep dropping the wage (or keep it the same over many years) without the demand for that lower wage dropping.
I was once complaining about inflation to one of those 1% that get to have an impact on the US economy. They said "open up your wallet, do you see more money? No? Then there is no inflation. Inflation is when consumers have more money." This same person pointed out that as a producer, their wage increases did not drive inflation. They also described how after an injection of money to the people, or banks, that the government would have to "claw that money back". That was in 2006~8. Before the banking crisis, and before the healthcare cost increases.
NinthMusketeer wrote: The most correct answer is that it's complicated and realying on a numbet of different factors. The practical answer is that the wage gains have gone to the wealthy. Top 10% have thre quarters the USs wealth, the gap is the worst since the 1920s.
You'll probably notice that those in the 10% provide most of the jobs to the rest of the 90% just because the rich get richer doesn't mean the poor get poorer it depends on your place in the global market. (tis a silly argument as a stand alone statement)
But on the low wage its because of years of a saturated employers market allowing people to hire at slightly lower wages, incremetally without a backlash (because it has been an employers market for so long.) This will probably continue to worsen unless there is a large war, "plague" (antibiotic crisis?) or mass migration of the working class. There are too many people and not enough jobs. Even with the peak in employment it was only social and political pressure that kept the wage as high as they were. Its been an employers market for a while now and the employers have been able to keep dropping the wage (or keep it the same over many years) without the demand for that lower wage dropping.
NinthMusketeer wrote: The most correct answer is that it's complicated and realying on a numbet of different factors. The practical answer is that the wage gains have gone to the wealthy. Top 10% have thre quarters the USs wealth, the gap is the worst since the 1920s.
You'll probably notice that those in the 10% provide most of the jobs to the rest of the 90%
Hrm, such a direct relationship is seldom the case, and a solid 20-35% of the labor pool is publicly or self employed in most western nations, the US among them, while many small business owners provide jobs without making it into the top rungs themselves. Of the rest, its publicly owned entites owning pieces of other publicly owned entities mostly, large organizations each with many actors and interests. Direct "job creator-employee" relationships are the exception.
But on the low wage its because of years of a saturated employers market allowing people to hire at slightly lower wages, incremetally without a backlash (because it has been an employers market for so long.) This will probably continue to worsen unless there is a large war, "plague" (antibiotic crisis?) or mass migration of the working class. There are too many people and not enough jobs.
The jobs are there, unemployment is at record lows. Labor demand however has dramatically more power in the equation than labor supply even given extreme demands. They can outsource, automate, play shennanigans with hours and scheduling, reclassify positions, lay off staff at will and seasonally hire, and datamine local labor market data in ways you could never hope to. More fundentally, most of the time its a classic Big actor vs Small actor negotiation, and that makes it hard for employees to negotiate on even footing, thats the entire concept behind unions and socialized healthcare and the like, to redress a market imbalance inherent to certain sectors.
I can’t comment particularly in the US, but we have the same issue in the UK around wage stagnation and I understand a lot of it comes down to unemployment numbers being a poor measure in the modern world. The quality of the jobs is becoming more important and there is currently no popular measure for that. For example, there is a big issue over here with zero hour contracts, where people are technically “employed”, but aren’t necessarily actually getting much work to do and hence are on very low income. They’re off the government books and because of the cuts to social services (specifically to make being unemployed highly undesirable), they want to avoid losing what work they have, which leaves them trapped in dead-end, menial, work, with few rights and basically no bargaining power.
Michael Roberts has an interesting blog that talks about stuff like this and he wrote a blogpost about this issue last year. Summarized he points to the following reasons...
Michael Roberts wrote:
Labour’s share in the capitalist sector in the US and other major capitalist economies is down because of increased technology and ‘capital bias’, from globalisation and cheap labour abroad; from the destruction of trade unions; from the creation of a larger reserve army of labour (unemployed and underemployed); and from ending of work benefits and secured tenure contracts etc.
If you are interested in this question I suggest you read the whole post.
After the Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it would again raise interest rates, Chairman Jerome Powell stepped out for his customary press conference and admitted that, just like most of the economics world, he’s not entirely sure why employers aren’t raising wages faster. Unemployment is at lows not seen since the late 1990s, businesses can’t stop complaining about how hard it is to find good people to hire, and nonetheless pay has yet to really take off.
“Everywhere we go we hear about labor shortages. But where’s the wage reaction?“ he said. “So it’s a bit of a puzzle. I wouldn’t say it’s a mystery, but it is a bit of a puzzle.”
*******************
This graph tells a really neat, easy to understand story that makes the whole wage puzzle disappear. The graph uses the Department of Labor’s Employment Cost Index, which controls for the composition of the workforce, essentially tracking whether employers have to pay more in order to hire for the same kinds of jobs over time. Why was pay growth faster at the end of the 1990s (the green dots), even though the unemployment rate now is roughly the same? Because in reality more of the adult population had jobs. Why was pay growth slower a few years ago (shown by the yellow dots)? Because fewer people had jobs. It also suggests that the labor market, despite what the official unemployment rate would suggest, has lots of room for improvement before we have to worry about fast-rising wages fueling out-of-control inflation—which, again, is what the Fed ultimately fears.
The one problem with this graph is that it’s admittedly, well, a little dumb. Or, to put it another way, it’s not the sort of sophisticated analysis that economists typically like. It’s only a simple correlation, two sets of numbers plotted against each other that just happen to march more or less in lockstep, which we all know does not actually prove causation. And there are lots of theoretical reasons to question whether the picture is actually showing us a meaningful pattern, or a coincidence.
I knew I did not know enough about this subject, and wanted a diverse array of information.
NinthMusketeer wrote: The most correct answer is that it's complicated and realying on a numbet of different factors. The practical answer is that the wage gains have gone to the wealthy. Top 10% have thre quarters the USs wealth, the gap is the worst since the 1920s.
You'll probably notice that those in the 10% provide most of the jobs to the rest of the 90% just because the rich get richer doesn't mean the poor get poorer it depends on your place in the global market. (tis a silly argument as a stand alone statement)
Which might make sense if they paid wages out of their own pocket. They don't. They get business loans to start up (at a very favorable rate because they're rich), and after that they pay wages out of what customers pay. NO rich man ever pays wages out of his own pocket except for personal servants like the chauffer, maid, cook, etc.
In short, it's CUSTOMERS who provide those jobs, not the owner. He'll fire everyone in a heartbeat if there's no customers.
Maybe its to early due to the new tax season and tax policy of Trump INC. All the Corperation (SP) and business are probably math hammering future estimates of profit. Also the the change in some EPA standards. Just throwing it out there
Also anyone else heard the "no more tipping" to waiter/waitress due they're pay like 13 an hour?
Because people my dads age bought into the lie that unions were evil and threw away the bargaining power their grandparents bled for.
We have short memories. I grew up in a Union home and I know they work because my dad has his pension because of it. Without it he would be screwed and at the mercy of an donkey-cave who dropped a mountain on a bunch of miners and then tricked the families into signing papers that made it so they couldn't sue him.
Now companies can just declare bankruptcy and say feth it if they don't want to negotiate. Hostess, union busting goodness!
Im in a union. Not the best union, but we get yearly raises and are allowed to take our vacation time, get paid for our overtime, and cant be fired or laid off for no reason.
There’s a bunch of possible reasons why wages aren’t growing, even now. No-one knows exactly why, but I’ll try and give as complete a list as possible of the possible causes. Not listed in order of importance, just in the order I remember them. Some of these might not be having any impact, but all are more likely than not to to be playing some role.
1. Market concentration. Across the economy there’s been a general concentration of employers, with mergers reducing the number of firms in each field. It was expected this would produce inflation as companies with larger market power pushed up prices, that hasn’t happened but what likely has happened instead is companies have used their market power to keep wages down.
2. Market overhang from the GFC. In a perfectly mobile economy the crash in demand in the GFC should have pushed wages down. Instead we saw what is known as wage stickiness, where wages will not drop even when unemployment is high. Because wages didn’t drop then they were higher than they ought to be, meaning there remains little impetus to push them higher now. This argument was stronger a few years ago, and gets weaker each year further we get from the GFC.
3. A reduction in worker rights. A reduction in union positions has played a part, but unions have always been sector specific, and the stagnation of wages is remarkably constant across the economy, not just in areas where unions have declined. But there’s other factors as well, like at-will employment laws and the expansion of non-compete employment contracts that have greatly reduced the ability of a worker to fight for a wage increase.
4. Productivity hasn’t historically produced unemployment because companies have used the greater productivity to produce more, or if they have used it reduce staff those people have been shifted indirectly in to growth sectors of the economy. However, this process has relied on there being a constant expansion of other inputs, more land, more minerals, more energy, so that overall production can keep increasing. The modern world is not increasing its supply of raw materials at the same rate as it has historically, commodities are expanding in price. So where surplus labour has been created it hasn’t been consumed. This theory isn’t ideal as it argues more for unemployment than flat wages, but that can be talked around with a look at participation rather than unemployment. Still, it’s a bit meh but needs to be included because of its likely long term predictive power.
5. It’s possible wages are based more around cultural values than market demand than we realise. There’s a lot of work that’s looked in to how screwy labour markets really are, situations where certain jobs have lots of spare workers and high unemployment, but wages keep rising, and other situations where there’s been an absolute scarcity of workers but no wage growth. It appears wages are to some extent based on human, cultural ideas of what ‘ought’ to be paid, rather than pure market forces. In the last 30 years we’ve hardly seen managers become somehow more scarce or more valuable, but they’ve seen enormous pay increases while workers have barely kept pace with inflation. This is likely because a cultural value that kept some connection between the pay of workers and manager is now falling, and managers feel more morally able to offer workers pay increases that are a fraction of the pay increases they’re taking for themselves.
6. Uncertainty. Companies will expand and accept paying more to each worker to attract a larger workforce because they have some certainty about the economy they’ll be moving in the upcoming decades. But anyone who tells you they know what the next couple of years will bring is an idiot. No-one knows. This isn’t just because of the lunatic in the White House, though that’s one factor. But the medium term future of energy and of manufacturing are up in the air. Even growth sectors like health are hard to act in with any real confidence right now.
Anyway, there’s what I understand as overall the general list of things that are, in some combination, causing the stagnation we see today. If you want my list of surefire solution head to my webpage;
You know, the more I see this thread, the more I think, ‘why aren’t we rising now?
Granted revolutions tend to end up fairly poorly, historically speaking.
But seriously. Enough is enough. Marxist as a I am, there has to be a happy medium between my (ultimately impracticable) ideal and the crap we have to live with now?
I would suggest that people are getting a better handle on what their work life balance should look like, and are realising that chasing the highest wage isn't necessarily the be all and end all.
Companies are getting on board as well and realising that 'more money' is quite a crude motivational lever to pull. You can attract and retain the best talent more effectivley with things like flexible working hours, working from home, personal development, travel opportunities etc.
Kroem wrote: I think this thread needs some positive vibes!
I would suggest that people are getting a better handle on what their work life balance should look like, and are realising that chasing the highest wage isn't necessarily the be all and end all.
Companies are getting on board as well and realising that 'more money' is quite a crude motivational lever to pull. You can attract and retain the best talent more effectivley with things like flexible working hours, working from home, personal development, travel opportunities etc.
Money is the baseline, while the rest is motivational for above and beyond.
As a worker, I count myself lucky to not only earn a solid wage, but also enjoye seriously good benefits.
Anyone that doesn’t enjoy these things?
Get. Angry.
There’s some arse making scads off cash off of your sweat, and parroting down the line the virtues of hard work, whilst doing none of their own, yet buying their third or fourth house.
Seriously folks.
Get. Angry.
They’re not smarter than you. They certainly don’t work harder than you. They got lucky, and choose to keep you down.
Realise your strength, and those of your fellow workers. There are far, far too few ‘managers’ in the world that can actually do, or would even want to do, the day job.
Thats's what I'm getting at. People now want a good wage and good benefits, not an amazing wage that comes with loads of stress and no benefits.
So that could contribute to wage growth slow down.
I'm sure if most of us moved to London we would get a big pay hike, but the drop in quality of life wouldn't be worth the extra money!
Automatically Appended Next Post: I could even go full hippy mode and suggest that as a society we are judging our own self worth, and that of others, less on the size of our wage packets than we did before which is slowing down the rat race!
Oh whoops! You said you are Scottish so I thought you spent your days wandering the highland glens, not battling through the tube system!
I expect you meet a lot more ambitious people than me then, the prevailing attitude round where I live is that it is worth being paid less to live in such a beautiful part of the world
As a worker, I count myself lucky to not only earn a solid wage, but also enjoye seriously good benefits.
Anyone that doesn’t enjoy these things?
Get. Angry.
There’s some arse making scads off cash off of your sweat, and parroting down the line the virtues of hard work, whilst doing none of their own, yet buying their third or fourth house.
Seriously folks.
Get. Angry.
They’re not smarter than you. They certainly don’t work harder than you. They got lucky, and choose to keep you down.
Realise your strength, and those of your fellow workers. There are far, far too few ‘managers’ in the world that can actually do, or would even want to do, the day job.
What percent of politicians do you think could make it a year working a minimum wage job full time? A third? A quarter? A tenth? Personally I think I'd bet 15%; there's at least some with the drive to act/achieve that they could make it that long.
As a worker, I count myself lucky to not only earn a solid wage, but also enjoye seriously good benefits.
Anyone that doesn’t enjoy these things?
Get. Angry.
There’s some arse making scads off cash off of your sweat, and parroting down the line the virtues of hard work, whilst doing none of their own, yet buying their third or fourth house.
Seriously folks.
Get. Angry.
They’re not smarter than you. They certainly don’t work harder than you. They got lucky, and choose to keep you down.
Realise your strength, and those of your fellow workers. There are far, far too few ‘managers’ in the world that can actually do, or would even want to do, the day job.
What percent of politicians do you think could make it a year working a minimum wage job full time? A third? A quarter? A tenth? Personally I think I'd bet 15%; there's at least some with the drive to act/achieve that they could make it that long.
I think this depends on what kind of politicians you are talking about. Are we talking state representative or higher? If we are talking Governors, Senators, and Cabinet people, yeah, I'd agree with your estimate. However, there are a lot of lower ranking political people that work hard. Being a politician is not their primary 9-5 job. I know a handful that grew up in the area that worked their butts off to make decent lives.
4 sounds pretty out there as an immediate cause, but as you say may have some predictive power.
Thank you for sharing.
Krugman I believe has now come to the party on 1 & 3, but he's got there late. Remember Krugman is international trade by profession and Keynesian by politics. This stuff is more market or instituional, so guys like DeLong have been leading it.
5 is not right leaning. It is saying wages might not be determined by the market. If true it opens the door for a whole lot of socialism.
4 is a long term thing. A real long term thing. Keynes was talking about 4. Still hasn't happened
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: You know, the more I see this thread, the more I think, ‘why aren’t we rising now?
We aren't rising because we have dinner and a bed for the night.
Flat wage growth is unjustified and gets people angry, but it doesn't get them throwing Molotovs at police cars.
We're not rising? What is Trump, what is Brexit, what is Five Star and the League, what is the AfD, what is the Front National, what is PIS and Orban? What is Erdogan, what is civil war in Syria?
We are rising. The inequality caused by the financial crash and recession and the way our neoliberal political class protected wealth and privledge is experiencing a massive backlash across the world.
I wish we were rising in a smarter, more productive way. But we are rising.
Da Boss wrote: We're not rising? What is Trump, what is Brexit, what is Five Star and the League, what is the AfD, what is the Front National, what is PIS and Orban? What is Erdogan, what is civil war in Syria?
We are rising. The inequality caused by the financial crash and recession and the way our neoliberal political class protected wealth and privledge is experiencing a massive backlash across the world.
I wish we were rising in a smarter, more productive way. But we are rising.
Uprisings are rarely 'smart'. 'Smart' is not how you get people to rise up. The only way to get people to rise up is by shouting really, really loud. And make sure that the messages are simple and feel 'good'. Better even, don't bother with messages longer than a few sentences at all. Inspiring slogans are all you need.
We aren't rising because we are here. The minute we're so worried about this that we're not talking back and forth at each other on a forum but actually going out to eat the rich, then we're rising.
Right now? We're just bitter and grumpy and this is the best we have. It's the truth and you know it. To say we're pushing for some great movement is a lie.
My dad's generation killed the union. And in the future I dunno if when it gets to the point we'll even be able to fight back. Union's needed secrecy and violence and now the wealthy use social media and the law as tools to stamp us down.
I don't see it getting better. We had our chance but the dinosaurs of my country decided instead to hand over the reins to thieves and con men who froth at the mouth to take away the things our grandfather's bled for.
Because their so desperate to look down their nose at other people. Because people don't look in their neighbors bowl anymore to make sure they have enough. No no, that's socialist nonsense and it's evil.
Now they get angry if they don't have more. feth this world.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: But seriously. Enough is enough. Marxist as a I am, there has to be a happy medium between my (ultimately impracticable) ideal and the crap we have to live with now?
From my point of view, many people cannot imagine a life or are capable to cultivate a mindset where they aren't participating in the rat race. If there'd be any rational thought left in my country we'd be rioting over the foolishness of the modern system, but we prefer to stay foolish. I cannot fathom a reason behind all this.
Because there are no waiters in LA, only actors waiting for their break.
Most people don't have a problem with the system, just their place in it. They don't really want to break everything down, because then how will they have anything when they get rich?
There is nothing wrong with having a dream and wanting to live it. I cannot comment on the LA - US, locally however, the employers behaviour is nothing short than atrocious.
AndrewGPaul wrote: Because there are no waiters in LA, only actors waiting for their break.
Most people don't have a problem with the system, just their place in it. They don't really want to break everything down, because then how will they have anything when they get rich?
I disagree. Most people don't understand what is happening. Most people like to believe that everyone has the chance to do well and get rich, that all you have to do is work hard and it will come to you, and all they are doing wrong is not working quite hard enough or in quite the right way, or they are but it just needs more time.
The reality is that background has more impact on it than anything, followed by blind luck. You just need to look at school outcomes. There have been research done time and again on the impact of public school in the UK vs state school. Students leaving the same course with the same grades from the same university continue to earn less if they went to a state school vs a private education. There may be many reasons for this, but the basic fact is that those who have a paid for education do better, despite having the same educational outcome. The same goes for people starting companies. People like to continue the myth of the self made millionaire, but in reality most "self made" people come from backgrounds where they are able to take risks and gain connections. Just take a look at Hollywood or the music industry. People like to pretend anyone can make it, but look at any famous mission or actor and you will see one or both parents work in the industry.
1. There is a sizeable middle class, and as a percentage more people in the middle class are moving up than moving down.
2. We live in the most prosperous time in history. People are too last to revolt, especially if they know they will lose out on common comforts and luxuries.
Kroem wrote: I think this thread needs some positive vibes!
I would suggest that people are getting a better handle on what their work life balance should look like, and are realising that chasing the highest wage isn't necessarily the be all and end all.
Companies are getting on board as well and realising that 'more money' is quite a crude motivational lever to pull. You can attract and retain the best talent more effectivley with things like flexible working hours, working from home, personal development, travel opportunities etc.
Those are all lovely things when you're working an already well paid white-collar job and would broadly be considered "middle class" economically(in the non-American sense, ie well-paid professionals, managers, midlevel politicians etc - the USA has a ludicrously broad definition of middle class), but wages haven't just been stagnating for those jobs. Flexible hours, working from home, and personal development mean nothing when your job doesn't pay enough to cover your living expenses.
Once you're coasting along on two or three times the average wage sure, there are all kinds of things companies can offer other than wage increases, but if you're one of the comparatively massive block of the population earning substantially less than the average(or even the minimum, in many cases), then what you want is more goddamn money and it hasn't been happening. And it isn't going to start happening again either, because the next wave of automation won't just be extensive, it will also begin eating into the job sectors at both the top and the bottom of the labour market that automation has traditionally displaced workers into - creation, programming, and maintenance of the new industrial technology at the top, and menial service jobs at the bottom. Not by making whole jobs obsolete, but by radically reducing the amount of people needed to accomplish any given amount of work; one programmer will be capable of outputting the work of four or five people under the current paradigm, call centres will be able to further reduce the number of actual humans since the automated systems will be able to handle more complex interactions, cafes and eateries and supermarkets can cut down to just a manager and maybe one or two staff if they're really big, and the warehouses supplying everyone will only require a manager and one or two techs to run the whole affair. Those comfortable with the present state of affairs just blindly assert that things will self-correct as they have in the past, but in the past waves of automation have always generated at least as many jobs as they've destroyed and so on the scale of an economy even as individuals are screwed over by it the system as a whole remains in balance, but there's no indication that's going to happen this time, everything points to a significant net loss of jobs.
Frankly I only see three likely outcomes if we continue on the present trajectory - it gets so bad there's an actual proper uprising and the whole system is torn down to be replaced with who knows what, or it gets that bad but the extant power elite manage to stamp out any potential uprising before it starts in which case the present wave of proto-fascists will lead us into full-fat cattle carts and secret police fascism, or some politician somewhere will muster up just enough braincells and charisma to sell both the public and the power elite on something like a Basic Income.
Let's get some things clear when it comes to "paying the bills". Yes, in the 1950's a family could get by on one adult working a full time job.
That family also only had one car (sometimes none), one land line phone, one TV (no cable or satellite), 20% less square footage in their home, no computer, no wifi, no cell phone, no internet, ate out less, went on vacation less, and had significantly smaller wardrobes.
We are a nation of mass-consumers that has fallen into the habit of buying ourselves into happiness. If we were less inclined to these ways we'd likely be happier.
cuda1179 wrote: Let's get some things clear when it comes to "paying the bills". Yes, in the 1950's a family could get by on one adult working a full time job.
That family also only had one car (sometimes none), one land line phone, one TV (no cable or satellite), 20% less square footage in their home, no computer, no wifi, no cell phone, no internet, ate out less, went on vacation less, and had significantly smaller wardrobes.
We are a nation of mass-consumers that has fallen into the habit of buying ourselves into happiness. If we were less inclined to these ways we'd likely be happier.
I call bs on that. Do you have any proof any of what you said is true?
cuda1179 wrote: Let's get some things clear when it comes to "paying the bills". Yes, in the 1950's a family could get by on one adult working a full time job.
That family also only had one car (sometimes none), one land line phone, one TV (no cable or satellite), 20% less square footage in their home, no computer, no wifi, no cell phone, no internet, ate out less, went on vacation less, and had significantly smaller wardrobes.
We are a nation of mass-consumers that has fallen into the habit of buying ourselves into happiness. If we were less inclined to these ways we'd likely be happier.
I call bs on that. Do you have any proof any of what you said is true?
Of course they don't, it's the usual "people can't be poor any more, we have microwaves and iphones now" nonsense. The same "kids today, just buy less of your avocado toast!" guff.
A full-time minimum wage job in the UK pays ~£14,250 a year before tax and national insurance which would be ~792 given the personal allowance, so around 13,450 a year or about 1120 a month.
Assuming you rent a room in a shared flat you'll end up spending about 400-600 on rent and council tax in most cities, more in London. Another 50 or so for energy bills assuming you watch how much you use the central heating in winter. Transport costs assuming you stick exclusively to public transportation could be anywhere from 60 quid a month for a bus pass to a couple of hundred if you need to use a train to get to work. 200 quid a month for shopping assuming you're reasonably frugal while not going for completely gak tier stuff or making everything yourself from scratch which isn't practicable for most folk. So your absolute most basic living expenses required to keep you alive and enable you to hold down a job will leave you with a grand total of 100-200 a month, out of which has to come all non-essential travel, phone & internet access, any small shreds of guilty joy you can wring out of the cheapest night out you can manage without seeming like a cheapskate to your mates etc, and you can forget saving for retirement or putting money aside for a house deposit or to buy pricey appliances or huge wardrobes of clothes( ).
Most folk earn in the 16-18k range, so on the face of it they have a bit more money, but get a flat of your own with your partner and the car you need for that better job and you eat up a big chunk of the extra, nevermind if you want kids or an occasional holiday or, god forbid, you want to take on a mortgage.
And even minimum wage is a best case scenario for a lot of folk. If you're on the minimum wage at an hourly rate with a zero-hours contract, you'll be lucky to get close to the theoretical monthly amount for minimum wage, and though many of them are spectacularly bad ideas designed to paper over the cracks by governments too afraid of being branded as "left wing" by tabloid scum like tax credits, what little support was there from the government for those on low incomes has been decimated.
People are having to go to food banks and ask for special parcels that don't have anything in them that needs to be cooked because they can't afford to run their fething gas oven. We're well past "modern culture is just too materialist maaaaaan" or "young people today ain't got no gumption I tells ya! get a holda' them thar bootstraps and get haulin'!" rubbish at this point, but some folk just refuse to acknowledge it.
cuda1179 wrote: Let's get some things clear when it comes to "paying the bills". Yes, in the 1950's a family could get by on one adult working a full time job.
That family also only had one car (sometimes none), one land line phone, one TV (no cable or satellite), 20% less square footage in their home, no computer, no wifi, no cell phone, no internet, ate out less, went on vacation less, and had significantly smaller wardrobes.
We are a nation of mass-consumers that has fallen into the habit of buying ourselves into happiness. If we were less inclined to these ways we'd likely be happier.
I call bs on that. Do you have any proof any of what you said is true?
Yes, yes I do. In fact, it looks like I may have UNDERSTATED some of it.
I take it you'll accept it if I don't provide links that show that cell phones, cable TV, satellites, commercial WiFi, the internet, and home computers didn't exist in the 1950's.
cuda1179 wrote: Let's get some things clear when it comes to "paying the bills". Yes, in the 1950's a family could get by on one adult working a full time job.
That family also only had one car (sometimes none), one land line phone, one TV (no cable or satellite), 20% less square footage in their home, no computer, no wifi, no cell phone, no internet, ate out less, went on vacation less, and had significantly smaller wardrobes.
We are a nation of mass-consumers that has fallen into the habit of buying ourselves into happiness. If we were less inclined to these ways we'd likely be happier.
I call bs on that. Do you have any proof any of what you said is true?
Yes, yes I do. In fact, it looks like I may have UNDERSTATED some of it.
I take it you'll accept it if I don't provide links that show that cell phones, cable TV, satellites, commercial WiFi, the internet, and home computers didn't exist in the 1950's.
this is an interesring point that does bear some discussion.
I suspect the relative price of many of those items has dropped, leading to greater proliferation. On hand, I can look at prices of things we used to sell and adjust them for inflation. We sold microwaves for $255 in the late 70's, today that would be over a grand, but I can get one at Target or off Amazon for $50-80 today.
But looking at my grandparents home in San Diego, they raised a 6 person family in third the square footage of what my parents live in alone now.
cuda1179 wrote: Let's get some things clear when it comes to "paying the bills". Yes, in the 1950's a family could get by on one adult working a full time job.
That family also only had one car (sometimes none), one land line phone, one TV (no cable or satellite), 20% less square footage in their home, no computer, no wifi, no cell phone, no internet, ate out less, went on vacation less, and had significantly smaller wardrobes.
We are a nation of mass-consumers that has fallen into the habit of buying ourselves into happiness. If we were less inclined to these ways we'd likely be happier.
I call bs on that. Do you have any proof any of what you said is true?
Yes, yes I do. In fact, it looks like I may have UNDERSTATED some of it.
I take it you'll accept it if I don't provide links that show that cell phones, cable TV, satellites, commercial WiFi, the internet, and home computers didn't exist in the 1950's.
I'm sorry but do you ask rape victims what they were wearing? The chrome plated balls on you to come in here and make theses statements is astounding.
Yeah, you know what? Clearly I need to give up my cell phone and internet access, even though without a cellphone I will be a social pariah and without internet access I can't even apply for a job at Wendy's. Because doing so will then result in my boss, who doesn't believe I deserve health insurance and PTO/Vacation while he takes at least two vacations a year, to pay me a wage equal to the standard of living to 2018 instead of 1988. Hallelujah for providing the answer.
Your statements are so disingenuous it is painful to be civil to you. You insist on blaming the people at the bottom of the ladder when this is clearly the fault of the people at the top. When literally all it would take is one donkey-cave to say 'Hey you know what, take my several million bonus/record breaking profits this year and improve our wages." That's it. It has nothing to do with managing the slave wages you're given and everything to do with the callous uncontrolled greed at the top.
The absolute gall of you to suggest otherwise is damning of you on a personal level. To believe that these stagnant wages are the fault of the people who work for them because they don't budget well? I am at a loss for words that I can say to you that would not get me banned.
Is the only way you feel good about your position in life by looking down your nose at others? Does that make you feel superior? Do you rankle and growl at the idea of minimum wage increasing because then those damn slackers down at the McDonalds won't be struggling? I got news for you pal, wages go up we all win, and while wages have been stagnant in this country for a long time, inflation has not. The reason we have to make do with so little isn't because we're bad at budgeting it's because everything has gotten more expensive while our buying power dwindles every year.
I don't know how to end this because I am just beyond ready to get banned but I hope, I hope people see this and realize what kind of bull you're trying to sling.
TLDR- Rent for studio apartment- 1223
Electricity- 129
Food- 271 per month- 1 adult, no kids
Catastrophic Insurance- 249
So before we get into luxury items, that's 1872. Minimum wage is 8.25 here. Working 40 hours a week at that rate, your gross income per month before taxes is 1320.
I appreciate the idea that there are far more luxuries, and indeed, far more things we term necessities nowadays- but even so, I say that if working full time at minimum wage cannot equal the cost of living then there is a deeper issue than excessive internet expense or avocado consumption.
cuda1179 wrote: Let's get some things clear when it comes to "paying the bills". Yes, in the 1950's a family could get by on one adult working a full time job.
That family also only had one car (sometimes none), one land line phone, one TV (no cable or satellite), 20% less square footage in their home, no computer, no wifi, no cell phone, no internet, ate out less, went on vacation less, and had significantly smaller wardrobes.
We are a nation of mass-consumers that has fallen into the habit of buying ourselves into happiness. If we were less inclined to these ways we'd likely be happier.
I call bs on that. Do you have any proof any of what you said is true?
Yes, yes I do. In fact, it looks like I may have UNDERSTATED some of it.
I take it you'll accept it if I don't provide links that show that cell phones, cable TV, satellites, commercial WiFi, the internet, and home computers didn't exist in the 1950's.
Did you look at those links?
The first is a link to average house sizes. Thats it. It doesnt discuss who is buying them, renting them, or having them built. Remember, Millenials are killing the housing market because we cannot afford to buy them!.
The second is a link to how many TVs were owned at the time. Considering it was a brand new technology and ownership went from 6 million to 60 million in a decade, I would say a lot of baby boomers splurged on them.
The third link ends by saying that companies like Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco were not recorded in the findings. Three major grocery retailers were absent. Yeeeeeeaaaaaaah.
Your fourth link didnt work for me.
Five is a link to a book chapter I have to download. Not going to, because my phones internet is awful.
Do you have links to sources that back up your claims? Average home size being larger is not showing much if people are not buying or renting those homes.
Gitzbitah wrote: @ lonestarr777 Whoa there- he may have called this generation soft and greedy, but I don't think that's remotely close to anything like rapists.
@cuda1179 Fair enough- let us explore cost of living then.
TLDR- Rent for studio apartment- 1223
Electricity- 129
Food- 271 per month- 1 adult, no kids
Catastrophic Insurance- 249
So before we get into luxury items, that's 1872. Minimum wage is 8.25 here. Working 40 hours a week at that rate, your gross income per month before taxes is 1320.
I appreciate the idea that there are far more luxuries, and indeed, far more things we term necessities nowadays- but even so, I say that if working full time at minimum wage cannot equal the cost of living then there is a deeper issue than excessive internet expense or avocado consumption.
While Florida is pretty expensive, this gets the point across. Just LIVING on minimum wage is impossible, much less saving up for the education to get anything better. This is where 'blame the poor' arguments always flounder. In the eighties it could barely be done. Now? Nope.
Gitzbitah wrote: @ lonestarr777 Whoa there- he may have called this generation soft and greedy, but I don't think that's remotely close to anything like rapists.
@cuda1179 Fair enough- let us explore cost of living then.
TLDR- Rent for studio apartment- 1223
Electricity- 129
Food- 271 per month- 1 adult, no kids
Catastrophic Insurance- 249
So before we get into luxury items, that's 1872. Minimum wage is 8.25 here. Working 40 hours a week at that rate, your gross income per month before taxes is 1320.
I appreciate the idea that there are far more luxuries, and indeed, far more things we term necessities nowadays- but even so, I say that if working full time at minimum wage cannot equal the cost of living then there is a deeper issue than excessive internet expense or avocado consumption.
While Florida is pretty expensive, this gets the point across. Just LIVING on minimum wage is impossible, much less saving up for the education to get anything better. This is where 'blame the poor' arguments always flounder. In the eighties it could barely be done. Now? Nope.
One I heard was "those are just supposed to be starting positions before people move on to something better." He didn't have a response when I asked him what or how.
Gitzbitah wrote: @ lonestarr777 Whoa there- he may have called this generation soft and greedy, but I don't think that's remotely close to anything like rapists.
@cuda1179 Fair enough- let us explore cost of living then.
TLDR- Rent for studio apartment- 1223
Electricity- 129
Food- 271 per month- 1 adult, no kids
Catastrophic Insurance- 249
So before we get into luxury items, that's 1872. Minimum wage is 8.25 here. Working 40 hours a week at that rate, your gross income per month before taxes is 1320.
I appreciate the idea that there are far more luxuries, and indeed, far more things we term necessities nowadays- but even so, I say that if working full time at minimum wage cannot equal the cost of living then there is a deeper issue than excessive internet expense or avocado consumption.
I'd question whether that rent is realistic. According to that site that's the rent of an average studio apartment. So two potential issues...
1. Is the average price representative, or is it too heavily swayed by expensive suburbs. Folk too often use some absurd rent figure when they talk about rental costs. I'm not saying that's what you're doing, I'm just saying it happens (like usng a nice inner suburb as a benchmark while ignoring the outer suburbs are a fraction of the price). I know when I was living in PA I lived somewhere that was waaaay below the average rental price, it was still comfortable and only a few minutes drive from work/shops/etc.
2. Is a "studio apartment" a good representation. I don't know what Florida is like, but out here 1br and studio apartments are largely located within nicer inner suburbs, there isn't many of them in the outer burbs which pushes up the average price. It's actually cheaper to live in a 2br place further out and catch a train or drive in. Assuming you're going to waste money living alone anyway, 3 of the first 4 places I lived after moving out of home were share deals, and that was perfectly fine.
I'm not trying to say you conclusion is wrong, maybe it's unrealistic to live on minimum wage, I haven't checked, I'm just querying whether your calcs are actually representative.
I live in Plant City, a small town between Orlando and Tampa. There's a Walmart and 2 Publixes!
A quick look on zillow shows starting rent prices between 650 and 1000. This is purely anecdotal- the 1223 I listed earlier was pulled from the article I linked to.
For any of the urban areas, like Miami or Tampa, they are very accurate.
Would it alter the equation much if we used the lowest available number?
At 650 rent, total expenses would be 1299. Gross pay at minimum wage would still be 1320 before taxes- that's still untenable.
.
edit- You know, a really interesting exercise would be to do the same thing for your own zipcode. Just look up your state's minimum wage, cost of living, and zillow the lowest rent places available. See if your area can be survived on minimum wage.
I live in Plant City, a small town between Orlando and Tampa. There's a Walmart and 2 Publixes!
A quick look on zillow shows starting rent prices between 650 and 1000. This is purely anecdotal- the 1223 I listed earlier was pulled from the article I linked to.
For any of the urban areas, like Miami or Tampa, they are very accurate.
Would it alter the equation much if we used the lowest available number?
At 650 rent, total expenses would be 1299. Gross pay at minimum wage would still be 1320 before taxes- that's still untenable.
.
edit- You know, a really interesting exercise would be to do the same thing for your own zipcode. Just look up your state's minimum wage, cost of living, and zillow the lowest rent places available. See if your area can be survived on minimum wage.
I did, and it can be done, even if living alone. Of course, I'm living in an area that has one of the lowest costs of living in the country. One dollar here literally is worth two in California.
I don't know if it's just my area, but I have never seen anyone around here be stuck at minimum wage for years. Even the tweakers and white trash get raises.
NinthMusketeer wrote: "Raises" that are cents on the dollar don't really count in my book. That's what I see, almost exclusively.
If I may ask, where do you live, as that's not the norm around here. As someone who employs some lower wage workers, even the bottom barrel teenagers don't stay at minimum after their evaluation periods. The average wage of those that have been with me less than 2 years is 25% over minimum wage.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And as much as some people don't want this admit it, there are a number of people that really aren't worth more than minimum wage. I've fired people in their mid 20s for not being worth minimum wage. No employer should feel obligated to give a raise "just because".
NinthMusketeer wrote: "Raises" that are cents on the dollar don't really count in my book. That's what I see, almost exclusively.
If I may ask, where do you live, as that's not the norm around here. As someone who employs some lower wage workers, even the bottom barrel teenagers don't stay at minimum after their evaluation periods. The average wage of those that have been with me less than 2 years is 25% over minimum wage.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And as much as some people don't want this admit it, there are a number of people that really aren't worth more than minimum wage. I've fired people in their mid 20s for not being worth minimum wage. No employer should feel obligated to give a raise "just because".
California. A year's work at minimum wage is worth 35-50 cents an hour of raise. As for the latter point, I totally agree. What's a problem is people worth well over minimum wage get little to nothing above what any random person doing a semi-competent job. When I was working minimum wage jobs I would watch people do a half the work but get paid more because how long someone had been working meant more than the quality or quantity of work. Around here I see the best employees get 10 cents more of a raise than whatever the standard set by corporate is. And more than once I've seen managers so bad the store ran better when they were on vacation.
NinthMusketeer wrote: "Raises" that are cents on the dollar don't really count in my book. That's what I see, almost exclusively.
If I may ask, where do you live, as that's not the norm around here. As someone who employs some lower wage workers, even the bottom barrel teenagers don't stay at minimum after their evaluation periods. The average wage of those that have been with me less than 2 years is 25% over minimum wage.
Automatically Appended Next Post: And as much as some people don't want this admit it, there are a number of people that really aren't worth more than minimum wage. I've fired people in their mid 20s for not being worth minimum wage. No employer should feel obligated to give a raise "just because".
California. A year's work at minimum wage is worth 35-50 cents an hour of raise. As for the latter point, I totally agree. What's a problem is people worth well over minimum wage get little to nothing above what any random person doing a semi-competent job. When I was working minimum wage jobs I would watch people do a half the work but get paid more because how long someone had been working meant more than the quality or quantity of work. Around here I see the best employees get 10 cents more of a raise than whatever the standard set by corporate is. And more than once I've seen managers so bad the store ran better when they were on vacation.
Back in my "corporate" days I saw this quite a bit too. While there are many things about Unions that I like, I also think that they promote this kind of "effort stagnation". Workers that either can't do more or have no desire to do more keep going up the same pay increases as long as they do just enough to not get fired. People that have both ability and desire soon find out that being the best really has minimal positive effect on their careers.
Yodhrin wrote: Wowzer. So first the problem is "kids these days" just not budgeting properly, and now somehow unions are the reason for stagnating wages.
Why not just start reposting chapters from Atlas Shrugged and be done with it eh
Unions aren't really the reason for overall wage stagnation. I do feel that they hinder performance based pay raises, which is pretty true.
I thought this might be useful to add to the discussion. I'm not surprised that this happened. I have never bought the whole idea that taxes breaks on businesses will have them reinvesting in their country. Not in this age of modernization, communication, and transportation.
Yodhrin wrote: Wowzer. So first the problem is "kids these days" just not budgeting properly, and now somehow unions are the reason for stagnating wages.
Why not just start reposting chapters from Atlas Shrugged and be done with it eh
Unions aren't really the reason for overall wage stagnation. I do feel that they hinder performance based pay raises, which is pretty true.
Do Unions actively prevent employers from seeing a worker performing well and compensating them for it?
Yodhrin wrote: Wowzer. So first the problem is "kids these days" just not budgeting properly, and now somehow unions are the reason for stagnating wages.
Why not just start reposting chapters from Atlas Shrugged and be done with it eh
Unions aren't really the reason for overall wage stagnation. I do feel that they hinder performance based pay raises, which is pretty true.
Well what I was talking about had no union involvement at all, so from what I see there is little to no performance based raises either way, just that the unions get people actual increases across the board as opposed to a pittance.
Also, I mostly blame workers who just show up and don't even do the bare minimum; if they were new employees or there weren't other employees picking up the slack they'd be fired. Showing up and doing average or minimum effort I don't blame people for in a lot of cases, because the company obviously doesn't care about them so it's only fair that they don't care about the company. 'Treat others how you want to be treated' cuts both ways.
Frankly I only see three likely outcomes if we continue on the present trajectory - it gets so bad there's an actual proper uprising and the whole system is torn down to be replaced with who knows what, or it gets that bad but the extant power elite manage to stamp out any potential uprising before it starts in which case the present wave of proto-fascists will lead us into full-fat cattle carts and secret police fascism, or some politician somewhere will muster up just enough braincells and charisma to sell both the public and the power elite on something like a Basic Income.
Just a new guy's two cents, but there is a possible fourth option, complete stagnation. Nothing gets better, nothing gets worse, essentially, Trump's biweekly insanity plea is the most exciting thing that happens. As for the first outcome, I've only been able to imagine one scenario that actually leads to a guaranteed favorable result, and that is basically someone pulling an Emporer of Mankind style power grab.
That, however, might just be the pessimistic part of my optimistic realist outlook kicking in.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Also, I mostly blame workers who just show up and don't even do the bare minimum; if they were new employees or there weren't other employees picking up the slack they'd be fired. Showing up and doing average or minimum effort I don't blame people for in a lot of cases, because the company obviously doesn't care about them so it's only fair that they don't care about the company. 'Treat others how you want to be treated' cuts both ways.
In many cases people work somewhere they never see a manager, often getting their orders and reporting via email or some smartphone app. The only important thing is crossing off all the duties in the app, and as long as you do no one in management even remembers who you are. Companies like this also don't select rank-and-file workers for any performance-based raises - money is better spent on managers who never see their workers, directors who only talk to customers and ofc the shareholders who couldn't care less as long as they get maximum returns. As one might expect this doesn't really inspire any workers to even try beyond the bare minimum required to get the job done.
cuda1179 wrote: I did, and it can be done, even if living alone. Of course, I'm living in an area that has one of the lowest costs of living in the country. One dollar here literally is worth two in California.
Thinking about it, I was living on pretty close to minimum wage when I was living in the USA. Was on a scholarship, which was a bit more than minimum wage, but at the same time managed to save money for a hobby car and bought lunch at uni basically every day, without those two things I would have been getting by on an amount pretty close to minimum wage without even trying, lol.
But that was in PA and living in a large town (i.e. not a big city like Philly or Pittsburgh), I'm sure it varies state to state and city to city.
The minimum wage in Australia is much higher than the US but you still can't afford to live by yourself in the inner suburbs of a major city and will usually have to find at least 1 other person to share the rent.
I thought this might be useful to add to the discussion. I'm not surprised that this happened. I have never bought the whole idea that taxes breaks on businesses will have them reinvesting in their country. Not in this age of modernization, communication, and transportation.
I know my CEO has always been exceedingly clear that any tax break money would go back into share buy backs and dividends to shareholders. He didn't even try to hide it in the all Company meetings. The CEO runs a $15-Billion dollar international company. I am guessing his peers feel the same way, even if they are not as dumb to openly share it with the work force.
Easy E wrote: I know my CEO has always been exceedingly clear that any tax break money would go back into share buy backs and dividends to shareholders. He didn't even try to hide it in the all Company meetings. The CEO runs a $15-Billion dollar international company. I am guessing his peers feel the same way, even if they are not as dumb to openly share it with the work force.
It was the same with the tax holidays for money parked outside the US. They have already planned their investments so the money mostly goes into creating more shareholder value (dividends or share buybacks). Politically it always gets sold as some "trickle down bs" that's good for the worker but ends up mostly in the pockets of the already rich. If you want to improve the economy give money to the poor (improve social safety nets and otherwise reduce their burden). It gets used locally and circulates more. For each unit of currency spend on that you get a better economic boost than cutting taxes for the rich by the same amount.
I thought this might be useful to add to the discussion. I'm not surprised that this happened. I have never bought the whole idea that taxes breaks on businesses will have them reinvesting in their country. Not in this age of modernization, communication, and transportation.
I know my CEO has always been exceedingly clear that any tax break money would go back into share buy backs and dividends to shareholders. He didn't even try to hide it in the all Company meetings. The CEO runs a $15-Billion dollar international company. I am guessing his peers feel the same way, even if they are not as dumb to openly share it with the work force.
I give him credit. Only the most naive aren't aware of what corporations are going to do with their tax break, at least this CEO is upfront about it.
I thought this might be useful to add to the discussion. I'm not surprised that this happened. I have never bought the whole idea that taxes breaks on businesses will have them reinvesting in their country. Not in this age of modernization, communication, and transportation.
I know my CEO has always been exceedingly clear that any tax break money would go back into share buy backs and dividends to shareholders. He didn't even try to hide it in the all Company meetings. The CEO runs a $15-Billion dollar international company. I am guessing his peers feel the same way, even if they are not as dumb to openly share it with the work force.
I give him credit. Only the most naive aren't aware of what corporations are going to do with their tax break, at least this CEO is upfront about it.
Was the purpose of these tax cuts to raise wages? I figured the purpose of them was to strengthen local businesses and encourage them to actually keep their money in the country, not directly increase wages.
I haven't really been following it though, are the tax cuts payroll tax cuts?
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Was the purpose of these tax cuts to raise wages? I figured the purpose of them was to strengthen local businesses and encourage them to actually keep their money in the country, not directly increase wages.
I haven't really been following it though, are the tax cuts payroll tax cuts?
I believe the argument for the cuts was the old "trickle down" gak - that tax cuts will give the owners/CEOs/etc more money which they'll use to raise wages out of the goodness of their hearts
--
Why aren't wages rising? Because for the most part companies have disempowered labor and become big enough that they've got most people in a hand to mouth existence kept afloat by debt, with no time to organize or speak up because of a constant fear of losing what little they have.
It's euphemistically called "keeping the country competitive" and people still buy it as if it was a good thing.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Was the purpose of these tax cuts to raise wages? I figured the purpose of them was to strengthen local businesses and encourage them to actually keep their money in the country, not directly increase wages.
I haven't really been following it though, are the tax cuts payroll tax cuts?
They were indeed advertised to raise wages and help the common man, standard trickle down stuff. As it has always been, it's still bullcrap on every level from the most conceptual to the most practical.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Was the purpose of these tax cuts to raise wages? I figured the purpose of them was to strengthen local businesses and encourage them to actually keep their money in the country, not directly increase wages.
I haven't really been following it though, are the tax cuts payroll tax cuts?
All of the above.
But the you're right in that the current round of tax cuts were predicated on the myth of restoring American industry, which is stupid if you understand how the US economy has changed in the last 60 years. Service jobs aren't going anywhere except in a few sectors because for the most part you have to actually be on site to provide services. Even if the company is overseas, it doesn't really effect job availability and you can easily encourage a business to stay in the US by giving cuts to the business. There's no need to give tax cuts to ultra-rich mega CEOs who have more money than god except those CEOs tend to be big campaign donors so of course they can buy their way into getting more money.
Other than that tax cuts have always be argued on the grounds that the savings will trickle down to the rest of us inspite of the fact we've been living with trickle down tax cuts for most of the last 35 years and wages have remained stagnant and barely keeping up with inflation (if at all) ever since.
Yodhrin wrote: Wowzer. So first the problem is "kids these days" just not budgeting properly, and now somehow unions are the reason for stagnating wages.
Why not just start reposting chapters from Atlas Shrugged and be done with it eh
Unions aren't really the reason for overall wage stagnation. I do feel that they hinder performance based pay raises, which is pretty true.
There are effective ways of doing it. The agreement we have where I work mandates a pool of X%, and a minimum of Y% to everyone (where Y<X).
The balance can then be allocated on a discretionary basis. It's not perfect because a) X is still below the official level of inflation and b) "lifers" can end up on relatively ridiculous levels after 10 or 20 years relative to newcomers, but those are faults in application rather than theory.>
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Was the purpose of these tax cuts to raise wages? I figured the purpose of them was to strengthen local businesses and encourage them to actually keep their money in the country, not directly increase wages.
I haven't really been following it though, are the tax cuts payroll tax cuts?
All of the above.
But the you're right in that the current round of tax cuts were predicated on the myth of restoring American industry, which is stupid if you understand how the US economy has changed in the last 60 years. Service jobs aren't going anywhere except in a few sectors because for the most part you have to actually be on site to provide services. Even if the company is overseas, it doesn't really effect job availability and you can easily encourage a business to stay in the US by giving cuts to the business. There's no need to give tax cuts to ultra-rich mega CEOs who have more money than god except those CEOs tend to be big campaign donors so of course they can buy their way into getting more money.
Other than that tax cuts have always be argued on the grounds that the savings will trickle down to the rest of us inspite of the fact we've been living with trickle down tax cuts for most of the last 35 years and wages have remained stagnant and barely keeping up with inflation (if at all) ever since.
Agreed. If trickle down worked they would be sharing the wealth they already had. Also, we have all of human history see that if wealth can be centralized it will be centralized.
And that's just the first two most obvious reasons for how utterly inane the idea is.
Even if we remove the tax-cuts from the equation, the state of unemployment and the current American economy should be causing wage inflation. The fact that it is not is very notewaorthy, and it appears to me that the reasons why they are not rising are still not fully understood.
Is this normal? NO. Therefore, what else is unique about the present time to cause this stagnation?
Easy E wrote:Is this normal? NO. Therefore, what else is unique about the present time to cause this stagnation?
* If I remember correctly a lot of the jobs after the 2008 depression where not the good type of jobs. Low benefits, low job security, lowly paid, easy to fire people.
* There's also the fact that interest rates are rather low since then so companies have an easier time getting the money they need but it also means our wages are worth less.
* Then outside investors have also been buying real estate in economically important areas, that means the working class has to spend more of their wages on housing just to keep up. All the while rural jobs have been declining which in turn puts even more pressure on rents in metropolitan areas.
* social safety nets: All kinds of benefits have been cut. Stuff that people working in low earning jobs relied to keep their heads above the water
* In the US: I think health insurance costs have also been rising faster than wages.
* In the US: Student loan, I think those have also been rising faster than wages.
* In the US: I think certain segments of the population have already relied a lot on credit to survive
* Fewer unions, thus less power to protect workers.
* Certain jobs have been automated away or made so easy that you can hire anyone to do it.
A combination of all that (and more) pushes the power balance further towards companies and away from workers (just look at how Amazon can treat its warehouse workers because of those issues) and as a result companies don't have incentives to raise wages for a significant segment of their (easily replaceable) workforce.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Was the purpose of these tax cuts to raise wages? I figured the purpose of them was to strengthen local businesses and encourage them to actually keep their money in the country, not directly increase wages.
I haven't really been following it though, are the tax cuts payroll tax cuts?
Payroll isn't taxed and never has been. Businesses only pay taxes on their profit. By definition, that means they pay taxes on what's left AFTER paying payroll and all other bills.
Contrast this with the taxes on the worker, who is taxed on everything he earns BEFORE paying any bills... and then taxed again on much of what he spends.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Was the purpose of these tax cuts to raise wages? I figured the purpose of them was to strengthen local businesses and encourage them to actually keep their money in the country, not directly increase wages.
I haven't really been following it though, are the tax cuts payroll tax cuts?
Payroll isn't taxed and never has been. Businesses only pay taxes on their profit. By definition, that means they pay taxes on what's left AFTER paying payroll and all other bills.
Contrast this with the taxes on the worker, who is taxed on everything he earns BEFORE paying any bills... and then taxed again on much of what he spends.
What is's saying I think is that the tax burden of payroll taxes is paid by the employee, not the company they works for. That is, the employee is the one who actually loses money in payroll tax, not the company since the company just deducts its end from employee wages and then the government takes another cut from the employee because for some baffling reason there's no actual federal law governing how employers divide up these costs despite the presumed presumption that employee and employer are both paying equal amounts. In practice company's pay very little in payroll tax out of their own coffers.
What is's saying I think is that the tax burden of payroll taxes is paid by the employee, not the company they works for. That is, the employee is the one who actually loses money in payroll tax, not the company since the company just deducts its end from employee wages and then the government takes another cut from the employee because for some baffling reason there's no actual federal law governing how employers divide up these costs despite the presumed presumption that employee and employer are both paying equal amounts. In practice company's pay very little in payroll tax out of their own coffers.
Employers pay as much FICA tax as the employees. They just get to write it off as an expense.
We have had raises in our company here steadily since 2016. The first batch only hit certain pay grades back in 2015, I believe, but over the last two years every pay scale saw increases. Not to mention that we got considerably larger bonuses this year. I won't pin it on the tax laws completely, but between that and a marked demand for our engines, we've been getting raises, bonuses, and overtime fairly regularly. Contrast this with 2013 where I got to take an involuntary unpaid vacation for a month.
Easy E wrote:Is this normal? NO. Therefore, what else is unique about the present time to cause this stagnation?
* If I remember correctly a lot of the jobs after the 2008 depression where not the good type of jobs. Low benefits, low job security, lowly paid, easy to fire people.
* There's also the fact that interest rates are rather low since then so companies have an easier time getting the money they need but it also means our wages are worth less.
* Then outside investors have also been buying real estate in economically important areas, that means the working class has to spend more of their wages on housing just to keep up. All the while rural jobs have been declining which in turn puts even more pressure on rents in metropolitan areas.
* social safety nets: All kinds of benefits have been cut. Stuff that people working in low earning jobs relied to keep their heads above the water
* In the US: I think health insurance costs have also been rising faster than wages.
* In the US: Student loan, I think those have also been rising faster than wages.
* In the US: I think certain segments of the population have already relied a lot on credit to survive
* Fewer unions, thus less power to protect workers.
* Certain jobs have been automated away or made so easy that you can hire anyone to do it.
A combination of all that (and more) pushes the power balance further towards companies and away from workers (just look at how Amazon can treat its warehouse workers because of those issues) and as a result companies don't have incentives to raise wages for a significant segment of their (easily replaceable) workforce.
All good points. In addition, Government has been increasingly business friendly and less labor friendly across the board in the US. I do not know about the EU or other countries.
“Middle-class life is now 30 percent more expensive than it was 20 years ago,” Quart writes, citing the costs of housing, education, health care and child care in particular. “In some cases the cost of daily life over the last 20 years has doubled.”
It would be interesting to graph those costs growth along with wage growth to see the variance.
Of course, I am sure we will all hear about how a middle class life now includes flat-screen TVs, Ipods, and such. Even though those items have been decreasing in costs while staples like food items have increased.over similar timespans.
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ZebioLizard2 wrote: Why is it everytime I see one of those articles, they tend to talk about places as if everyone lives in the highest costing cities of America?
Not to devalue the message of it, but it does seem to be so very common.
Because that is where you find the middle-class and middle-class jobs?
Look around most rural towns and you will see that there are very few Middle-Class jobs, therefore articles about the Middle-class tend to be about people in the City.
A 1500 square foot house? That is a massive house! Of course that is expensive! There is a simple solution to that problem: A nice, comfy apartment. Much cheaper, much more efficient, much better for the environment.
Easy E wrote: In addition, Government has been increasingly business friendly and less labor friendly across the board in the US. I do not know about the EU or other countries.
It's the same everywhere just to different degrees. We went in the same direction of "business friendly" because it's better for the economy which is true because companies have a bigger impact when it comes to the raw numbers. Thankfully we have certain protections that can't easily removed. I can't be randomly fired like in some US states, I won't lose my 30 vacation days (and unlimited sick days) plus national holidays, my employer can't imply/force/push me into working more hours or to do unpaid work. My health insurance company can't find bs excuses to drop me if I were to accidentally become a reason for them having to spend money. But around all those more fundamental issues they have been chipping off bits and pieces. Unemployment benefits and social safety nets are supposedly much worse than before (and quite harsh). Companies get some benefits to stimulate the economy, and so on.
But with all that "good for the economy" talk nobody asks how the workers are doing with all those changes. It's just a slow slide downwards when it comes to prosperity. You don't really feel it from one year to another (except in hasher moments) but more and more people living on the edge of financial disaster get hit and then it's a hard crawl back up because there are fewer safety nets and as a result social mobility is declining.
There's this equation of "good for the economy" = "good for the workers" but that's not exactly true for some decades now yet politicians still make a lot of decisions with the assumption that it's true. And it's hurting people, especially the poorer ones.
Mario wrote: There's this equation of "good for the economy" = "good for the workers" but that's not exactly true for some decades now yet politicians still make a lot of decisions with the assumption that it's true. And it's hurting people, especially the poorer ones.
One thing that springs to mind is how everything is just magic money that doesn't exist these days. Politicians (and workers) still think of physical things - a place to live, a factory where you work and cash earned - while the investors see numbers on a screen they can double by buying a succesful business, applying for all possible government subsidies and then selling it off in pieces (plus laying off the workforce) on the date it becomes possible without having to pay anything back. At no point did the owners see any real cash or even visit the place. And on the off chance they actually made a loss (say the sell-off was leaked and stock dumped too cheaply) and the banks they took loans from have to deal with it the same government pays.
Workers are asked to accept less pay or a lower raise so the economy works, while at the same time the numbers guys taking the profits also dip their hands into the money those workers pay as taxes. You basically get robbed both as an individual and a society.
Iron_Captain wrote: A 1500 square foot house? That is a massive house! Of course that is expensive!
I wouldn't call it massive. Then again, our definitions probably differ quite a bit due to my being in the western USA and you in Europe. My own house is 1677 square feet and is pretty typical for the area and current construction style. The master bedroom is pretty roomy, though.
Iron_Captain wrote: A 1500 square foot house? That is a massive house! Of course that is expensive!
I wouldn't call it massive. Then again, our definitions probably differ quite a bit due to my being in the western USA and you in Europe. My own house is 1677 square feet and is pretty typical for the area and current construction style. The master bedroom is pretty roomy, though.
The split is more urban vs rural than necessarily US/Europe. Smaller towns in Europe tend to build apartment rather than detached/row houses, though.
I live on a small-ish town of maybe 25.000 people, and the split between older town houses and detached/semi detached modern houses vs. apartments is maybe 50-50% of the population.
Anything over 50K which is still a small town and the proportion of apartments shoots up to 80-90%. In the US it's not until towns get much bigger that you see big apartment/condo developments, over here even in very small villages under 10K you will see newer developments being blocks.
Iron_Captain wrote: A 1500 square foot house? That is a massive house! Of course that is expensive!
I wouldn't call it massive. Then again, our definitions probably differ quite a bit due to my being in the western USA and you in Europe. My own house is 1677 square feet and is pretty typical for the area and current construction style. The master bedroom is pretty roomy, though.
And ofc, definitions may wary in other ways too. Europeans (usually) don't specify how many bedrooms an apartment or house has, but that seems to be very important when selling in the US. We're more concerned with how many rooms it has in total. Also the reporting on square feet or meters could be different - any non-living areas like storage space, cellar room or such is usually not mentioned in the total.
So for example where I live would be sold as a two-story house with two rooms upstairs, three rooms downstairs, a WC on both floors plus a cellar with various storage space (and the sauna with shower room). The "living" area to ask a price for would be maybe 120 square meters, but the cellar is another 60.
I teach in a secondary school in London and can barely afford living costs, like many of my colleagues. I’m only treading water until I decide to leave, a current work in progress. I can’t really put much into savings each month and I’ll never afford a house in London because they start at £250K for some gakky flat. I’ll need a £50K deposit minimum if the mortgage payments will be close affordable.
All the teachers, nurses and staff in other professional, essential services are priced out. That’s why so many people, like myself, do a few years and leave, long term prospects are terrible. But locals complain that their childrens’ schools struggle to recruit good quality staff and don’t retain staff long term, but bask in the comfort of the colossal price on the home they own. One of the most obnoxious thing about wealthy middle classes are their preoccupation with house prices and anything that could affect them, frequently any opposition to anything comes down to the impact on their house prices regardless of any intention to ever sell.
My school was recently rated Outstanding again, and has been for many years, yet there’s been at least one position in my dept that has been covered by long or short term supply for the whole three years I’ve been here. God knows how the difficult schools manage.
Middle class profession it is only in name. Wages are poor and living costs astronomical.
Howard A Treesong wrote: I teach in a secondary school in London and can barely afford living costs, like many of my colleagues. I’m only treading water until I decide to leave, a current work in progress. I can’t really put much into savings each month and I’ll never afford a house in London because they start at £250K for some gakky flat. I’ll need a £50K deposit minimum if the mortgage payments will be close affordable.
All the teachers, nurses and staff in other professional, essential services are priced out. That’s why so many people, like myself, do a few years and leave, long term prospects are terrible. But locals complain that their childrens’ schools struggle to recruit good quality staff and don’t retain staff long term, but bask in the comfort of the colossal price on the home they own. One of the most obnoxious thing about wealthy middle classes are their preoccupation with house prices and anything that could affect them, frequently any opposition to anything comes down to the impact on their house prices regardless of any intention to ever sell.
My school was recently rated Outstanding again, and has been for many years, yet there’s been at least one position in my dept that has been covered by long or short term supply for the whole three years I’ve been here. God knows how the difficult schools manage.
Middle class profession it is only in name. Wages are poor and living costs astronomical.
I thought the wealthy in London tended to send their children to boarding schools in Rutland and so on?
The proportion of American workers who quit their jobs in May reached the highest level in 17 years, a sign that more people are confident they can find a new job, probably at higher pay.
Businesses advertised fewer jobs in May than the previous month, but the tally of open positions still outnumbered the ranks of the unemployed for the second time in the last two decades, the Labor Department said Tuesday.
The figures reflect a strong job market driven by optimistic employers seeking to expand their workforces. Last week's jobs report showed that businesses hired workers at a healthy pace and the unemployment rate remained very low, at 4%.
The share of workers quitting their jobs reached 2.4% in May, the highest level since April 2001. More quits are a sign of a strong job market because workers typically leave jobs for a new one that pays more. Workers who switch jobs see larger raises than those who stay in the same position, government data show.
I’ve always been ambivalent toward work requirements for social safety nets, but lately I’ve become more opposed. We already have an issue with corporations using these safety nets to pay people below a living-wage and using tax payer money to subsidize the existence of their workforce. But with more work-requirements I feel like it’s just a way for corporations to force the working poor into filling their jobs. Rather than raising wages, getting more applicants, and reducing the need for unemployment benefits and welfare, we end up with a system that forces people to work for corporations for a non-competitive pay while still needing welfare benefits.
d-usa wrote: I’ve always been ambivalent toward work requirements for social safety nets, but lately I’ve become more opposed. We already have an issue with corporations using these safety nets to pay people below a living-wage and using tax payer money to subsidize the existence of their workforce. But with more work-requirements I feel like it’s just a way for corporations to force the working poor into filling their jobs. Rather than raising wages, getting more applicants, and reducing the need for unemployment benefits and welfare, we end up with a system that forces people to work for corporations for a non-competitive pay while still needing welfare benefits.
Work requirements only work if you also require businesses to hire and give a minimum number of hours. Otherwise you're just hurting the very people the safety nets are intended to help.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: Not what I said, are all cities up there with San Francisco, New York, and San Jose when it comes to the cost of living expenses?
Unless every place is that expensive and I've just never known such which is possible.
Yes. . . Take for instance, this contrast: I live near Tacoma, WA. . . a city that is expensive to live in, but not as much as Seattle is. I bought my home 4 years ago for around 250k. It's 2400 sq. ft. situated in a suburb. There's a crazy amount of new construction going on, due to political stuff involving taxes which means that more businesses are actually coming here, more people are hiring, etc. (hell, there's been numerous articles talking about a severe shortage of line chefs for restaurants, and while I'm no economist, apparently restaurant usage is a VERY good barometer of a local economy. . . so, business is boomin' here) which has driven the value of my home up considerably.
How, take how much I paid for 2400 sq ft. and compare that to my cousin, who is listing their 1500 sq. ft. home down in my home state of Oregon. And this house is not in the Portland metro area at all. For the most part, the remaining costs of living in Oregon are still lower than they are here, but housing is ridiculous. EDIT: My cousin is listing their house for 250k, which is fairly average in that city.
Additionally, among all the new single-family home construction, there's a lot of new apartment construction as well. . . The problem is, literally every one of them starts off with a studio at about 900 per month, with 2 bedroom apartments being higher than my mortgage.
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feeder wrote: The whole "Wal-Mart is the largest recipient of welfare benefits" thing comes to mind.
Agreed. I'm reminded of the many studies that outline the "walmart effect" that occurs in many small towns across the country.
For those unfamiliar with those studies, basically speaking, within 5-10 years of a Walmart or Walmart Supercenter opening, most of the previously established, locally owned businesses will be boarded up and gone. What happened in one Wisconsin town is reflected many times over across the nation as well. That is, their town's unemployment rate went down, but their welfare costs to the state more than doubled in that time.
Combine all that with the number of times that Walmart "negotiates" with local and state governments to not pay any taxes on that property, and you can see why it's a recipe that only benefits a select few.
Howard A Treesong wrote: I teach in a secondary school in London and can barely afford living costs, like many of my colleagues. I’m only treading water until I decide to leave, a current work in progress. I can’t really put much into savings each month and I’ll never afford a house in London because they start at £250K for some gakky flat. I’ll need a £50K deposit minimum if the mortgage payments will be close affordable.
All the teachers, nurses and staff in other professional, essential services are priced out. That’s why so many people, like myself, do a few years and leave, long term prospects are terrible. But locals complain that their childrens’ schools struggle to recruit good quality staff and don’t retain staff long term, but bask in the comfort of the colossal price on the home they own. One of the most obnoxious thing about wealthy middle classes are their preoccupation with house prices and anything that could affect them, frequently any opposition to anything comes down to the impact on their house prices regardless of any intention to ever sell.
My school was recently rated Outstanding again, and has been for many years, yet there’s been at least one position in my dept that has been covered by long or short term supply for the whole three years I’ve been here. God knows how the difficult schools manage.
Middle class profession it is only in name. Wages are poor and living costs astronomical.
I thought the wealthy in London tended to send their children to boarding schools in Rutland and so on?
The really rich do, but a lot of well-off middle class parents make sure to buy a house weel inside the catchment area of a very good state school. This saves the huge fees of private schools and also ensures possession of a desirable house which can be sold at a profit when your children leave school.
The really rich do, but a lot of well-off middle class parents make sure to buy a house weel inside the catchment area of a very good state school. This saves the huge fees of private schools and also ensures possession of a desirable house which can be sold at a profit when your children leave school.
We're not in London, but we basically did this. We moved in to the catchment area of the best school in our neck of the woods - cost us an extra £50k for a smaller house than we moved from if I remember rightly, but still a better deal than paying £3000 a term for the local private school.
How, take how much I paid for 2400 sq ft. and compare that to my cousin, who is listing their 1500 sq. ft. home down in my home state of Oregon. And this house is not in the Portland metro area at all. For the most part, the remaining costs of living in Oregon are still lower than they are here, but housing is ridiculous.
How much is your Brother listing for?
Also, the "Wal-mart" effect is interesting. I am wondering how the "Amazon Effect" will play out.
As a local small business owner myself, I feel the effect of that just as much as Wal-mart. Meanwhile, my fellow small-businesses owners spend all of their time trying to fight each other instead of doing something together to protect/defend against these larger corporations eating our lunch.
Also, the "Wal-mart" effect is interesting. I am wondering how the "Amazon Effect" will play out.
As a local small business owner myself, I feel the effect of that just as much as Wal-mart. Meanwhile, my fellow small-businesses owners spend all of their time trying to fight each other instead of doing something together to protect/defend against these larger corporations eating our lunch.
Lol. . crap, forgot that part. . . my cousin is listing for the same price as my house was, so, 250k for "half" the house (I know it's not actually half but close enough)
I chuckled when I read about 900/month being high rent for an apartment. The cheapest apartments in my area (San Diego suburbs) start at 1450 for a 1-bedroom. And that is not for a nice or safe location.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I chuckled when I read about 900/month being high rent for an apartment. The cheapest apartments in my area (San Diego suburbs) start at 1450 for a 1-bedroom. And that is not for a nice or safe location.
NinthMusketeer wrote: It's higher than the national of $7.25. If that's high or low... more complicated.
The current minimum hourly wage is 7.52€ here, (8.79$US) but keep in mind that's after all the deduction for healthcare and stuff, you get lots of additional benefits, and if you don't make the minimum of 1150€ per month, you'll get further support, so comparing the two values is actually pretty difficult.
$12.65 in BC later it will be $15 and rent is still cheaper, US minimum wage shocks me (well I guess not, there's a lot of political interest in screwing over the working class) how low it is.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Sweden doesn't have a minimum wage, so no help in comparisons from here.
Nor Finland for that matter, even if laws talk about paying something "fair". But the unions in our countries have probably made it so almost any conceivable job has some sort of minimum pay scale to point at. Just about every line of work is under some union, even if you're not paying to be a member, and employers will pay non-union employees the same because else they'd relly have a problem.
$12.65 in BC later it will be $15 and rent is still cheaper, US minimum wage shocks me (well I guess not, there's a lot of political interest in screwing over the working class) how low it is.
It's not the minimum that's a problem it's that employers almost universally refuse to provide decent raises based on performance. 16-year old shows up to work his first job; minimum wage. Person with years of experience in the service industry needs a job from moving into town; minimum wage. After a year of employment doing the bare minimum; minimum wage +0.30. After a year of employment going above and beyond every week; minimum wage +0.50. Then employers wonder why their employees have no motivation to do anything beyond the minimum.
If anything working at a place for a long period seems like an excuse for employers to load on more duties (that they don't pay extra for) since there's less a chance of that person leaving.
$12.65 in BC later it will be $15 and rent is still cheaper, US minimum wage shocks me (well I guess not, there's a lot of political interest in screwing over the working class) how low it is.
It's not the minimum that's a problem it's that employers almost universally refuse to provide decent raises based on performance. 16-year old shows up to work his first job; minimum wage. Person with years of experience in the service industry needs a job from moving into town; minimum wage. After a year of employment doing the bare minimum; minimum wage +0.30. After a year of employment going above and beyond every week; minimum wage +0.50. Then employers wonder why their employees have no motivation to do anything beyond the minimum.
If anything working at a place for a long period seems like an excuse for employers to load on more duties (that they don't pay extra for) since there's less a chance of that person leaving.
That's a problem here as well, the incentive to stay if you don't like the work is next to none, at least with minimum wage jobs with little to no raises regardless of quality of work.
The tax-cuts went to boost stocks and not increase wages, like they were solid on. Shock!
I guess that is one reason we are not seeing wages rise.
Six months after the Tax Cut and Jobs Act became law, there's still little evidence that the average job holder is feeling the benefit.
Worker pay in the second quarter dropped nearly one percent below its first-quarter level, according to the PayScale Index, one measure of worker pay. When accounting for inflation, the drop is even steeper. Year-over-year, rising prices have eaten up still-modest pay gains for many workers, with the result that real wages fell 1.4 percent from the prior year, according to PayScale. The drop was broad, with 80 percent of industries and two-thirds of metro areas affected.
"Now, economic confidence has been good, we're in a strong economy, GDP is growing, but the question has been, where's the paycheck?" said Katie Bardaro, vice president of data analytics at PayScale.
The answer is, largely, in the companies' coffers. Businesses are spending nearly $700 billion on repurchasing their own stock so far this year, according to research from TrimTabs. Corporations set a record in Q2, announcing $433 billion worth of buybacks — nearly doubling the previous record, which was set in Q1.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I chuckled when I read about 900/month being high rent for an apartment. The cheapest apartments in my area (San Diego suburbs) start at 1450 for a 1-bedroom. And that is not for a nice or safe location.
My god, that is a lot of money.
Aren't you a fellow BC-ian? $1450 for a 1 bedroom is pretty 'affordable' for anything in the Greater Vancouver/Lower Mainland / Lower Island area.
$12.65 in BC later it will be $15 and rent is still cheaper, US minimum wage shocks me (well I guess not, there's a lot of political interest in screwing over the working class) how low it is.
It's not the minimum that's a problem it's that employers almost universally refuse to provide decent raises based on performance. 16-year old shows up to work his first job; minimum wage. Person with years of experience in the service industry needs a job from moving into town; minimum wage. After a year of employment doing the bare minimum; minimum wage +0.30. After a year of employment going above and beyond every week; minimum wage +0.50. Then employers wonder why their employees have no motivation to do anything beyond the minimum.
If anything working at a place for a long period seems like an excuse for employers to load on more duties (that they don't pay extra for) since there's less a chance of that person leaving.
In my experience around a decade back, a year going above and beyond would net you 0.25, not 0.50. The bare minimum probably won't net you a raise at all... but then, if all you're doing is the bare minimum to avoid being fired you probably SHOULDN'T get a raise, nor expect one.
$12.65 in BC later it will be $15 and rent is still cheaper, US minimum wage shocks me (well I guess not, there's a lot of political interest in screwing over the working class) how low it is.
It's not the minimum that's a problem it's that employers almost universally refuse to provide decent raises based on performance. 16-year old shows up to work his first job; minimum wage. Person with years of experience in the service industry needs a job from moving into town; minimum wage. After a year of employment doing the bare minimum; minimum wage +0.30. After a year of employment going above and beyond every week; minimum wage +0.50. Then employers wonder why their employees have no motivation to do anything beyond the minimum.
If anything working at a place for a long period seems like an excuse for employers to load on more duties (that they don't pay extra for) since there's less a chance of that person leaving.
In my experience around a decade back, a year going above and beyond would net you 0.25, not 0.50. The bare minimum probably won't net you a raise at all... but then, if all you're doing is the bare minimum to avoid being fired you probably SHOULDN'T get a raise, nor expect one.
I agree. The numbers were arbitrary and probably not entirely accurate but that isn't particularly important to explain the point; extra effort nets little to no benefit so minimum wage becomes less it's namesake and more 'actual wage'.
Easy E wrote: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/worker-wages-drop-while-companies-spend-billions-to-boost-stocks/
The tax-cuts went to boost stocks and not increase wages, like they were solid on. Shock!
I guess that is one reason we are not seeing wages rise.
Six months after the Tax Cut and Jobs Act became law, there's still little evidence that the average job holder is feeling the benefit.
Worker pay in the second quarter dropped nearly one percent below its first-quarter level, according to the PayScale Index, one measure of worker pay. When accounting for inflation, the drop is even steeper. Year-over-year, rising prices have eaten up still-modest pay gains for many workers, with the result that real wages fell 1.4 percent from the prior year, according to PayScale. The drop was broad, with 80 percent of industries and two-thirds of metro areas affected.
"Now, economic confidence has been good, we're in a strong economy, GDP is growing, but the question has been, where's the paycheck?" said Katie Bardaro, vice president of data analytics at PayScale.
The answer is, largely, in the companies' coffers. Businesses are spending nearly $700 billion on repurchasing their own stock so far this year, according to research from TrimTabs. Corporations set a record in Q2, announcing $433 billion worth of buybacks — nearly doubling the previous record, which was set in Q1.
I work for Caterpillar, we all got raises AND a higher bonus rate. Subaru also got a raise here in town. I'd have to check some people that work in the other industries here in the greater Lafayette, Indiana area but it seems that the tax cuts did indeed to the trick here. Now Walmart and the minimum wage retail stores and fast food joints? I doubt they saw anything from it.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I chuckled when I read about 900/month being high rent for an apartment. The cheapest apartments in my area (San Diego suburbs) start at 1450 for a 1-bedroom. And that is not for a nice or safe location.
My god, that is a lot of money.
Aren't you a fellow BC-ian? $1450 for a 1 bedroom is pretty 'affordable' for anything in the Greater Vancouver/Lower Mainland / Lower Island area.
Don't you need to go to the outer cities to get reasonable rent like Surrey, Delta and Langley? Like I started to find at least decent stuff in the $900-$1000 range on Kijiji that didn't look like an obvious scam, I swear I saw cheaper stuff a few months ago.
Kilkrazy wrote: Part of it is the fact that low end job wages aren't rising, and there are a lot more people in low end jobs now than 10 or 20 years ago.
People in better jobs, like your Caterpillar and Subaru people, are getting some rises.
I hate to be that guy, mostly, but some of those low paying jobs are low paying for a reason, and competition doesn't drive the wages up like other jobs. It's a reverse domino effect with anything $15 an hour and above. One job decides to pay marginally to nominally better than the others, they bump their pay up a touch to keep competitive, dependent on benefits package as well. Lower paying jobs go into it with a churn and burn attitude. For every worker who gets dissatisfied and bails for better pay, even slightly better pay, there are two people just starting out in the work force that will take that job. Sucks, but that's the flow of the market. It only becomes an issue when you have someone who endeavors to be a career shelf stocker at Target. There's better to be had, and a job like that isn't meant to be a main household income job.
Kilkrazy wrote: Part of it is the fact that low end job wages aren't rising, and there are a lot more people in low end jobs now than 10 or 20 years ago.
People in better jobs, like your Caterpillar and Subaru people, are getting some rises.
I hate to be that guy, mostly, but some of those low paying jobs are low paying for a reason, and competition doesn't drive the wages up like other jobs. It's a reverse domino effect with anything $15 an hour and above. One job decides to pay marginally to nominally better than the others, they bump their pay up a touch to keep competitive, dependent on benefits package as well. Lower paying jobs go into it with a churn and burn attitude. For every worker who gets dissatisfied and bails for better pay, even slightly better pay, there are two people just starting out in the work force that will take that job. Sucks, but that's the flow of the market. It only becomes an issue when you have someone who endeavors to be a career shelf stocker at Target. There's better to be had, and a job like that isn't meant to be a main household income job.
Why are people choosing to be employed in low-skill, low-pay, low-security gig economy jobs instead of choosing the kind of job that their parents and grand-parents chose?
And I do really want to point out that *someone* has to do those low paying jobs. There aren't enough teenagers to fill them all so they need to pay a living wage. What "living wage" means is a discussion all it's own but while I don't think burger flipping at a fast food restaurant should pay a lot I also would be very curious to hear the reasoning behind why someone working that job should not be able to have a place to live, food to eat, and be able to afford other basics.
Kilkrazy wrote: Part of it is the fact that low end job wages aren't rising, and there are a lot more people in low end jobs now than 10 or 20 years ago.
People in better jobs, like your Caterpillar and Subaru people, are getting some rises.
I hate to be that guy, mostly, but some of those low paying jobs are low paying for a reason, and competition doesn't drive the wages up like other jobs. It's a reverse domino effect with anything $15 an hour and above. One job decides to pay marginally to nominally better than the others, they bump their pay up a touch to keep competitive, dependent on benefits package as well. Lower paying jobs go into it with a churn and burn attitude. For every worker who gets dissatisfied and bails for better pay, even slightly better pay, there are two people just starting out in the work force that will take that job. Sucks, but that's the flow of the market. It only becomes an issue when you have someone who endeavors to be a career shelf stocker at Target. There's better to be had, and a job like that isn't meant to be a main household income job.
Because people like Just Tony need to look down their nose at other people to feel superior.
There is no argument for "These jobs are supposed to suck" beyond "They make me feel better about my job."
There is enough in the US to go around that no one should be struggling. But then the high and fething mighty wouldn't get to look down their nose at people and dismiss them. So they stand up and scream "No no no!" when someone suggests that minimum wage should get modernized.
We had a guy in our gaming group who posted constantly about how dare people at Mcdonalds thought they deserved a living wage. When we called him out on the fact he too would get a raise if minimum wage went up, to pay him what he was worth for his oh so arduous training, he was a part supplier in a warehouse in a job he lucked into, he proceeded to rationally block each and every one of us.
These people aren't looking for anything but a reason to be superior. They have to have more and be better. That's all there is to this and arguing otherwise is dishonest and shows you really are craven.
I read an interesting piece a while back, (and I infuriatingly can't find it again), that showed why people are drawn to 'conservative' and 'progressive' platforms. People put importance on different values, and one of the things that conservatives generally value highly is a hierarchy of order.
Something that is socially viewed as 'easy', must, by virtue of this hierarchy, be worth less than something that is viewed as 'difficult'.
Flipping burgers at McDonalds and running a machine press for Ford are both basic, entry level jobs. The hierarchy of order demands that one is valued more than the other.
It's not necessarily about 'feeling superior' but more about trying to ensure reality more closely aligns with your world view.
Funny how that 'World View' coincides with being an donkey-cave so easily. The biggest jerks I've met have all shared this mentality. feth anyone with less than them.
Foodstamps? bs they don't need it. HUD? Work harder for that roof over your head you lazy bums. WIC? How dare my tax dollars go to feeding some kid instead of building tanks we don't need!
You can sugar coat it however you want. At the end of the day their not a good human being for believing and acting like this.
lonestarr777 wrote: Funny how that 'World View' coincides with being an donkey-cave so easily. The biggest jerks I've met have all shared this mentality. feth anyone with less than them.
Foodstamps? bs they don't need it. HUD? Work harder for that roof over your head you lazy bums. WIC? How dare my tax dollars go to feeding some kid instead of building tanks we don't need!
You can sugar coat it however you want. At the end of the day their not a good human being for believing and acting like this.
Sure, if your end goal is to feel righteous and superior to those 'donkey-caves'. But no one is going to examine their thinking and POV by being shouted at and told they are trash.
When I was younger, I held some pretty toxic views and I didn't think I was a bad person, that was just how I saw the world and how I related to it. It wasn't until I was forced to learn about my thought process that I realized I was carrying critical thinking errors like Black and White Thinking.
You may say this kind of stuff should be obvious, and that people who don't come to the same conclusion as you are (stupid, evil, heartless, whatever), but that really doesn't help anyone.
Point of the fact is though, they are being heartless, stupid, and evil. Calling it feel good justifications 'World View' and 'Point of View' and so on, isn't helping anything.
In fact all I can do here is point it out. All it takes is a look to the US politics thread and many posts in here to tell anyone that these people aren't magically going to change their minds because someone makes a rational and reasoned debate with them. Usually it's just the opposite because our underdeveloped monkey brains go "He's challenging our thinking, throw gak at him!"
I don't subscribe to this bs of "We have to be better than them." Being better than them has done nothing but put people trying to do good on the backfoot and give ground to these jerks.
Someone acts like a damn donkey-cave you call them on it. You can tell me it doesn't help all day long. But neither does wasting your breath on people who aren't gonna budge no matter what you tell them or explain to them.
Believe me, we tried to educate the guy in our group for about a week about why he was being petty, with a much nicer attitude than I have now mind you I'm just burnt out anymore, and for a week it was a stonewall temper tantrum how we were wrong.
Sometimes it just is that simple. Sometimes people just suck.
I think people may have better luck having a discussion around whether a full time job should pay enough to live.
Questions like "Should a McDonalds worker receive $15 an hour?" turns a lot of people off, you'll get a lot of "No". Asking the question of "Should someone working 40+ hours a week at McDonalds be able to have food to eat and a place to live?" is a question much harder to answer in the negative to. The reality is that in a lot of places having a place to live and food to eat, damn near requires the $15 an hour. But each question is likely to get very different responses.
Look, calling someone a bad person is not going to convince them that they should change their mind. Sure it may make you feel better but it doesn't help solve the problem. Feeling superior because you are not a "donkey-cave" may make you feel better but it doesn't help the situation, so you're really no better than the person you're looking down on, neither of you are helping the problem.
Don't insult, try and understand and educate. Some people won't respond but especially on the Internet there are a lot of people that silently read threads like these. A well reasoned argument that isn't insulting may make them at least consider their views on the topic.
Income inequality like we are seeing right now (at least in the US) has been a major indicator of severe social unrest historically. Whether it will be again now is more open to discussion but I would very much like to avoid social unrest like widespread riots or revolution.
Questions like "Should a McDonalds worker receive $15 an hour?" turns a lot of people off, you'll get a lot of "No". Asking the question of "Should someone working 40+ hours a week at McDonalds be able to have food to eat and a place to live?" is a question much harder to answer in the negative to. The reality is that in a lot of places having a place to live and food to eat, damn near requires the $15 an hour. But each question is likely to get very different responses.
The problem is, many of the same people who shout down $15/hour will give the same reasoning for their being against your second question. . . You've seen it ITT, and if you've been on these fora long enough, you'll have seen it in other threads. The typical trickle-down BS theories being espoused, that somehow, a "McJob" holds no skills for the person working it, and that those jobs are "for" a certain class/type of person, despite the very drastically different reality and all these things mean that working McD's means the person working it "deserves" less.
Thing is, there IS a skillset to working fast food. I mean, I look through the drive thru window, and I see the "standard" set forth by the company. . . 60 seconds, and I'm supposed to have my food and driving away. . . If I'm ordering for just myself, that's no problem, but if I've ordered for my whole family (4 people) that becomes a bit more tricky. That would equate to roughly 15 seconds per person's meal to achieve that 60 second goal. . . And they have to repeat that same 60 second standard over and over and over and over and over. . . for 4-8 hours per day (assuming a part timer works a 4 hour shift, and up to the "standard" 8 hour work day) with the only breaks being the legally required ones and the short lunch break. Most of the people who are so dead set on low-wage workers earning what they're actually worth tend to stfu when you challenge them to work those jobs. Challenge them to meet those same standards, and they know they can't do it.
I work for a Fortune 100 company and in light of the Trump tax breaks and all, the entire US division announced an across the board minimum wage increase to $16/hr for every employee. This was a significant jump for a number of positions.
The funny thing is that those "easy" service industry jobs are some of the hardest in the country. I doubt even 1 in 5 CEOs of those companies could last a month working an entry position. I had an office job that involved a bunch of moving numbers around, running programs to make them match other numbers, and contacting people for better numbers when they didn't match. None of it was beyond what the average high schooler could achieve, and it required a hell of a lot less effort than my old grocery store job. Still paid 50% more.
MDSW wrote: I work for a Fortune 100 company and in light of the Trump tax breaks and all, the entire US division announced an across the board minimum wage increase to $16/hr for every employee. This was a significant jump for a number of positions.
I know Target did this. They were able to because their automated Self-checkout systems paid for it. They needed less workers at each store, so they could afford to pboost the wages of those left, without impacting the bottom line and help their employee retention. However, the net effect is less jobs.
I know Target did this. They were able to because their automated Self-checkout systems paid for it. They needed less workers at each store, so they could afford to pboost the wages of those left, without impacting the bottom line and help their employee retention. However, the net effect is less jobs.
Now you see the future!
And in the world of false narratives, there are those who would easily see that and say, "SEE!!!! this is why higher wages is BAAAAAAAD!!!!!!!"
When most of us that live in reality, and have made at least a cursory study of this stuff knows, automation is coming. . . McD's has been trying to move to kiosks and less human interaction since the 80s. Only now the technology is in a place where it's feasible for them.
Honestly, I prefer ordering from a kiosk on the infrequent times I go into a McDonald's. It's faster and I have only myself to blame if I forget to add bacon to my burger.
On the other hand,I hate supermarket self-checkouts with a passion. Those can feth right off forever.
vonjankmon wrote: And I do really want to point out that *someone* has to do those low paying jobs. There aren't enough teenagers to fill them all so they need to pay a living wage. What "living wage" means is a discussion all it's own but while I don't think burger flipping at a fast food restaurant should pay a lot I also would be very curious to hear the reasoning behind why someone working that job should not be able to have a place to live, food to eat, and be able to afford other basics.
For that matter, many of those jobs need people when the kids are in school. So unless one is literally saying those businesses should ONLY be in operation when the kids are available to work, it's a lie.
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MDSW wrote: I work for a Fortune 100 company and in light of the Trump tax breaks and all, the entire US division announced an across the board minimum wage increase to $16/hr for every employee. This was a significant jump for a number of positions.
Out of curiosity... why only after the tax breaks? It's not like your corporate income tax was ever assessed on your payroll. Indeed, paying more payroll leaves less raw profit to BE taxed while adding value to the company by attracting better workers.
Yeah, if people don't want a coffee in the morning before work from Starbucks/Tim Hortons/Dunkin Donuts, or lunch from Subway/whatever on their break, sure.
But if only kids should be working at these places, then fast food joints and supermarkets should only be open from an hour after school until like 10pm.
EDIT: They are starting to raise the minimum wage in BC to $15 in the next few years, and all I hear from people around me is that they should get an equivalent pay raise. I just shake my head - that's literally just making inflation worse at that point, rather than giving you more buying power.
feeder wrote: On the other hand,I hate supermarket self-checkouts with a passion. Those can feth right off forever.
I love them usually much faster than the old way plus as someone who lives by themselves, I only need a few items so it's even faster. When I get to the store "I get in and out" I try not to waste time, speed walk from place to place, weaving through people, see a gap about to close and don't
want to walk behind a slow poke quickly get through that gap, see someone trying to sneak in front of line I cut them off, etc I got other things to do besides grocery shopping and I'm not very patient, also what's there to do at a grocery store besides eat samples and buy food? Why would you
want to linger? Occasionally I'll slow down move to the side (in an attempt to reduce the amount of space I use at the store) to do quick Google search to see if the product is a dud or not or if it's part of the recipe.
Kilkrazy wrote: Part of it is the fact that low end job wages aren't rising, and there are a lot more people in low end jobs now than 10 or 20 years ago.
People in better jobs, like your Caterpillar and Subaru people, are getting some rises.
I hate to be that guy, mostly, but some of those low paying jobs are low paying for a reason, and competition doesn't drive the wages up like other jobs. It's a reverse domino effect with anything $15 an hour and above. One job decides to pay marginally to nominally better than the others, they bump their pay up a touch to keep competitive, dependent on benefits package as well. Lower paying jobs go into it with a churn and burn attitude. For every worker who gets dissatisfied and bails for better pay, even slightly better pay, there are two people just starting out in the work force that will take that job. Sucks, but that's the flow of the market. It only becomes an issue when you have someone who endeavors to be a career shelf stocker at Target. There's better to be had, and a job like that isn't meant to be a main household income job.
Why are people choosing to be employed in low-skill, low-pay, low-security gig economy jobs instead of choosing the kind of job that their parents and grand-parents chose?
vonjankmon wrote:And I do really want to point out that *someone* has to do those low paying jobs. There aren't enough teenagers to fill them all so they need to pay a living wage. What "living wage" means is a discussion all it's own but while I don't think burger flipping at a fast food restaurant should pay a lot I also would be very curious to hear the reasoning behind why someone working that job should not be able to have a place to live, food to eat, and be able to afford other basics.
Kilkrazy wrote: Part of it is the fact that low end job wages aren't rising, and there are a lot more people in low end jobs now than 10 or 20 years ago.
People in better jobs, like your Caterpillar and Subaru people, are getting some rises.
I hate to be that guy, mostly, but some of those low paying jobs are low paying for a reason, and competition doesn't drive the wages up like other jobs. It's a reverse domino effect with anything $15 an hour and above. One job decides to pay marginally to nominally better than the others, they bump their pay up a touch to keep competitive, dependent on benefits package as well. Lower paying jobs go into it with a churn and burn attitude. For every worker who gets dissatisfied and bails for better pay, even slightly better pay, there are two people just starting out in the work force that will take that job. Sucks, but that's the flow of the market. It only becomes an issue when you have someone who endeavors to be a career shelf stocker at Target. There's better to be had, and a job like that isn't meant to be a main household income job.
Why?
I'll address this all at once. Sorry if it seems I'm not separating out anything that needs focused on.
I have no idea why someone would want a career in retail or the fast food industry. When I first got hired on at Cat full time, back in 2012, I was making the lowest amount a Level 3 Machinist could make at the plant, and it was not enough to cover our bills. My wife worked as well as an in home care nurse, but had our daughter Charlotte in January of 2013. Because she had to stay at home, I wound up taking a part time job at Meijer in my off hours, as this was also a slow down period where I wasn't able to get overtime. Other than some high school kids, the work force was filled out by retirees, spouses who were making supplemental income, or college students trying to get spending cash while attending Purdue. There were two people that I knew of that worked there, who were not management, who were basically in their career setting there. The Target up the road, however, I knew at least 8 people who were in career mode there as non management.
The market improved at Cat, and my daughter got old enough that my wife could get back to work. So between those two events, Meijer because unnecessary. If I'd been able to, I would have easily worked another manufacturing job for 40 hours on top of what I did at Cat instead of Meijer, as I was only making $7.90 when I left. I'm lucky insofar that I make enough now that Joy doesn't have to work, which works out given all the complications and medical trips necessary due to my son's Mosaic Down Syndrome.
This is a bit long, but I guess what I'm getting at is that I am the kind of person that will do whatever it takes to support my family, but am not content to scrape by on the lowest amount I could possibly earn. I couldn't have fallen back on assistance programs as I already made too much without the side job, and truth be told, I wouldn't have tried anyway. Me personally, there's a drastic difference between existing and living. I've several friends and unfortunately a stepdaughter who are perfectly fine with the former. Maybe that's why, to answer your questions of "why", I dunno.
As far as why they pay so little? Because nobody wants a $10 Big Mac. I'm sure that the amount is exaggerated, but the principle behind it is sound: if you increase the cost of production for an item, whether in materials, procedure, or manpower cost, the cost of that item goes up.
lonestarr777 wrote:Because people like Just Tony need to look down their nose at other people to feel superior.
There is no argument for "These jobs are supposed to suck" beyond "They make me feel better about my job."
There is enough in the US to go around that no one should be struggling. But then the high and fething mighty wouldn't get to look down their nose at people and dismiss them. So they stand up and scream "No no no!" when someone suggests that minimum wage should get modernized.
We had a guy in our gaming group who posted constantly about how dare people at Mcdonalds thought they deserved a living wage. When we called him out on the fact he too would get a raise if minimum wage went up, to pay him what he was worth for his oh so arduous training, he was a part supplier in a warehouse in a job he lucked into, he proceeded to rationally block each and every one of us.
These people aren't looking for anything but a reason to be superior. They have to have more and be better. That's all there is to this and arguing otherwise is dishonest and shows you really are craven.
To be frank, lonestar, your pay scale doesn't affect my life in the slightest, nor do I give any sort of gak if there's some disparity where people make less than me OR more than me. I'm bewildered as to how you could even draw that conclusion. I am a machinist, as you are aware. There are machine shops that would pay me no more than $15 an hour for what I do, and there's a couple places with a little bit of a drive that pay more than what I make. It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, I choose to work at a pay scale that meets my needs. Looking down at you or anyone else isn't even part of my thought process. Bluntly, you aren't that important.
It all comes down to someone saying to themselves "I will work for $x, and no less. $x+7 would be nice, but $x is the bottom of the barrel." For some, that's $8. I don't understand why, but that's the way it is.
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Iron_Captain wrote: So.... Anyone feel like seizing the means of production?
So I my next question would be do you think that people should have to work multiple jobs to support their family? You did and many people do, and have been for hundreds if not thousands of years but we're at a point in history where it is not strictly required, we as a society could change that and make things just a bit easier for future generations.
Should we do that or is this a case of "I was a dirt farmer, so my kids should be also"?
Serious question. Is maybe not having kids an option if you work a job where no one values your time enough to pay for it? Like, maybe we need a cultural shift where having a family isn't the be all and end all of existence, or maybe it's too biologically engrained?
I imagine a single person on minimum wage has a decent chance of supporting themselves, especially if in shared accommodation or with a partner.
Kilkrazy wrote: Part of it is the fact that low end job wages aren't rising, and there are a lot more people in low end jobs now than 10 or 20 years ago.
People in better jobs, like your Caterpillar and Subaru people, are getting some rises.
I hate to be that guy, mostly, but some of those low paying jobs are low paying for a reason, and competition doesn't drive the wages up like other jobs. It's a reverse domino effect with anything $15 an hour and above. One job decides to pay marginally to nominally better than the others, they bump their pay up a touch to keep competitive, dependent on benefits package as well. Lower paying jobs go into it with a churn and burn attitude. For every worker who gets dissatisfied and bails for better pay, even slightly better pay, there are two people just starting out in the work force that will take that job. Sucks, but that's the flow of the market. It only becomes an issue when you have someone who endeavors to be a career shelf stocker at Target. There's better to be had, and a job like that isn't meant to be a main household income job.
Why are people choosing to be employed in low-skill, low-pay, low-security gig economy jobs instead of choosing the kind of job that their parents and grand-parents chose?
Are people with the skillsets needed to do better paying jobs choosing to do lower paying jobs for which they are overqualified or are people choosing to work low skill low pay low security jobs because they lack the skillset required to apply for better jobs? There are all kinds of variables at play, the skills, education and experience that you have, the location you live in, the jobs available in your area, etc. There's never been a time, even when my parents and grand parents were my age (if that were true then the solution would just be to Make America Great Again, right?) where there was a good job that paid well and was a good fit for you just waiting for you to show up and take it.
Kilkrazy wrote: Part of it is the fact that low end job wages aren't rising, and there are a lot more people in low end jobs now than 10 or 20 years ago.
People in better jobs, like your Caterpillar and Subaru people, are getting some rises.
I hate to be that guy, mostly, but some of those low paying jobs are low paying for a reason, and competition doesn't drive the wages up like other jobs. It's a reverse domino effect with anything $15 an hour and above. One job decides to pay marginally to nominally better than the others, they bump their pay up a touch to keep competitive, dependent on benefits package as well. Lower paying jobs go into it with a churn and burn attitude. For every worker who gets dissatisfied and bails for better pay, even slightly better pay, there are two people just starting out in the work force that will take that job. Sucks, but that's the flow of the market. It only becomes an issue when you have someone who endeavors to be a career shelf stocker at Target. There's better to be had, and a job like that isn't meant to be a main household income job.
Why?
Different jobs bring different levels of value to a company and therefore have different salaries. You own a small business right? How do you determine what salary is paid for a given position in your company? Do you figure out what take home pay would be necessary to afford decent housing in your area along with the cost of utilities, food, clothing, commuting etc. for a household and make sure every position pays enough to cover that? Most likely you determine how much your company can afford to budget for labor then scale the salaries of the people you employ depending on the responsibilities of the jobs with some positions being paid more than others.
Personally, I think every job, even entry level retail jobs, should pay enough to keep the employee, as a single person, above the poverty line and with enough income to not be reliant on government assistance. Working should always be a better alternative to not working, employment should be incentivized for people by being the means to a better life. Nobody in the labor force should be better off as a government dependent than as an employed person. However, a job that pays well enough to support a single person is not going to pay well enough to support an entire family which would make such a job insufficient as a career and there's nothing wrong with that. Not every job is a career, not every job can support the whole family. Not every job within a company is equally important so there will always be a pay scale, a hierarchy of value, which is never going to change. The store manager has more responsibilities and more value to the company than the shelf stocker therefore the manager makes more money than the shelf stocker therefore the job of a store manager can be a career than supports a household whereas the job of a shelf stocker cannot.
Just Tony wrote:
As far as why they pay so little? Because nobody wants a $10 Big Mac. I'm sure that the amount is exaggerated, but the principle behind it is sound: if you increase the cost of production for an item, whether in materials, procedure, or manpower cost, the cost of that item goes up.
Can you explain to me then, why the cost of a Big Mac is cheaper in many countries outside of the US, despite those countries having much higher minimum wages? Australia is usually toted around as an example of this where the Min. wage is quite higher than the US, yet the consumer price of a Big Mac is the same, if not cheaper than here in the US.
AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I imagine a single person on minimum wage has a decent chance of supporting themselves, especially if in shared accommodation or with a partner.
If a single person is sharing an accommodation with another person, then they really aren't supporting themselves, are they? And that's kind of the crux of what many of us in support of higher minimum wage are saying: a single person cannot support themselves on a minimum wage.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Serious question. Is maybe not having kids an option if you work a job where no one values your time enough to pay for it? Like, maybe we need a cultural shift where having a family isn't the be all and end all of existence, or maybe it's too biologically engrained?
I imagine a single person on minimum wage has a decent chance of supporting themselves, especially if in shared accommodation or with a partner.
We should discourage the wrong types from breeding..?
It may not be that ingrained for everyone, but I know women with fertility issues, and it has brought them no end of suffering. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Proposing a society where quality of life is so bad that it incentivized voluntarily giving up a fundamental biological drive comes across as monstrous.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Serious question. Is maybe not having kids an option if you work a job where no one values your time enough to pay for it? Like, maybe we need a cultural shift where having a family isn't the be all and end all of existence, or maybe it's too biologically engrained?
I imagine a single person on minimum wage has a decent chance of supporting themselves, especially if in shared accommodation or with a partner.
For the most part it's people on higher incomes who decide against having children, puting career or leisure first. Or plainly recognising they wouldn't be good enough parents.
People on lower incomes and people on higher incomes tend to have more children than the middle classes. There's also a rural/urban split.
In Europe reduced fertility is a huge problem right now, and will only get worse with an aging population.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Serious question. Is maybe not having kids an option if you work a job where no one values your time enough to pay for it? Like, maybe we need a cultural shift where having a family isn't the be all and end all of existence, or maybe it's too biologically engrained?
I imagine a single person on minimum wage has a decent chance of supporting themselves, especially if in shared accommodation or with a partner.
For the most part it's people on higher incomes who decide against having children, puting career or leisure first. Or plainly recognising they wouldn't be good enough parents.
People on lower incomes and people on higher incomes tend to have more children than the middle classes. There's also a rural/urban split.
In Europe reduced fertility is a huge problem right now, and will only get worse with an aging population.
People not having children on such a scale would require upping immigration to meet labor demands. Its not a viable solution to how our current economy and society is configured.
Plus children become a privilige to those with wealth is probably not a road to go down on. Its up there with people not getting proper healthcare because of their job level.
As far as why they pay so little? Because nobody wants a $10 Big Mac. I'm sure that the amount is exaggerated, but the principle behind it is sound: if you increase the cost of production for an item, whether in materials, procedure, or manpower cost, the cost of that item goes up.
Yes but the difference is minimal. If you increase a fast food worker's minimum wage from $10 to $15, that's a $5 increase (± a few cents on other expenses) for one hour of work, and not one Big Mac. How many products do McD sell on average per hour? If anybody knows where we can find those numbers we can spread those $5 over all the sold product to see how much each would need to increase in price to keep the same profitability.
* McDonald's' daily customer traffic (62 million)
* McDonald's feeds 68 million people per day
* McDonald's sells more than 75 hamburgers every second
* McDonald's has 761,000 employees worldwide (and not all of them are minimum wage workers)
68 million people divided by the 761,000 (employees worldwide) = 89 = number of people each employee feeds per day (on average). Lets say each and every of these employee works 8 hours a day selling stuff to customers. That mean they feed a bit over 10 people per hour each. 10 people have to each spend less than 50 cents more for their whole order for McD to break even with a $5 wage increase. If you have a burger, fries, and a drink, that not even 20 cents on each item (and with a rather generous interpretation of the numbers.
While the point is technically correct, the average low level retail or service workers usually serves multiple customers per hour and doesn't spend two hours on one Big Mac. And yes, a price increase might lead to fewer people buying your product but you also might get good publicity for paying higher wages (like Costco does) and be able to better retain high performing individuals. Your workers end up less stressed and thus healthier and you end up needing less sick leave and so on.
Iron_Captain wrote: So.... Anyone feel like seizing the means of production?
That worked out well for you guys, didn't it?
Initially it did!
But then we forgot that seizing the means of production was just the first step of the plan, rather than the final goal. We forgot about step 2: Once you seize the means of production, make sure you keep control of them.
So when a certain guy named Stalin figured out that instead of the workers, it could just be he and his friends in control of the means of production, this kinda ruined the whole plan.
Which means we just need to try again!
As far as why they pay so little? Because nobody wants a $10 Big Mac. I'm sure that the amount is exaggerated, but the principle behind it is sound: if you increase the cost of production for an item, whether in materials, procedure, or manpower cost, the cost of that item goes up.
Yes but the difference is minimal. If you increase a fast food worker's minimum wage from $10 to $15, that's a $5 increase (± a few cents on other expenses) for one hour of work, and not one Big Mac. How many products do McD sell on average per hour? If anybody knows where we can find those numbers we can spread those $5 over all the sold product to see how much each would need to increase in price to keep the same profitability.
* McDonald's' daily customer traffic (62 million)
* McDonald's feeds 68 million people per day
* McDonald's sells more than 75 hamburgers every second
* McDonald's has 761,000 employees worldwide (and not all of them are minimum wage workers)
68 million people divided by the 761,000 (employees worldwide) = 89 = number of people each employee feeds per day (on average). Lets say each and every of these employee works 8 hours a day selling stuff to customers. That mean they feed a bit over 10 people per hour each. 10 people have to each spend less than 50 cents more for their whole order for McD to break even with a $5 wage increase. If you have a burger, fries, and a drink, that not even 20 cents on each item (and with a rather generous interpretation of the numbers.
While the point is technically correct, the average low level retail or service workers usually serves multiple customers per hour and doesn't spend two hours on one Big Mac. And yes, a price increase might lead to fewer people buying your product but you also might get good publicity for paying higher wages (like Costco does) and be able to better retain high performing individuals. Your workers end up less stressed and thus healthier and you end up needing less sick leave and so on.
Actually it's not even that much, because wages are only a part of total expenses and the majority of wages are paid out to management. Increasing minimum wage by 50% works out to a single-digit percentage increase in expenses.
Iron_Captain wrote: So.... Anyone feel like seizing the means of production?
No, every socialist country has had a lower standard of living and worse economy than capitalist democracies so why would anyone consider that a good idea? There's been dozens of attempts (some working a little better than others), but on average socialism stinks so just give it up
already it's not going to work out. Part of the reason is Socialsim by it's nature deemphasizes competition, so you get lower quality products (see Russian cars) because there isn't that competitive marketplace that capitalism has where everyone is trying to get a good selling product so they
look for ways to reduce costs, find something that they do better than the competitors, use higher quality materials, etc it's innovation and quality control due to adversity. I'm not saying capitalism is perfect because when unrestrained it can be very exploitative, but it's still better than
socialism. Social democracy on the other hand, now there's a future in that where your country isn't hard capitalist or socialist (like in Scandinavia) it's a little of both, those countries have some of the highest standards of living in the world and seem to do well economically.
Iron_Captain wrote: So.... Anyone feel like seizing the means of production?
No, every socialist country has had a lower standard of living and worse economy than capitalist democracies so why would anyone consider that a good idea? There's been dozens of attempts (some working a little better than others), but on average socialism stinks so just give it up
Scandinavian countries regularly come at the top of quality of life rankings, and they're pretty socialist.
Iron_Captain wrote: So.... Anyone feel like seizing the means of production?
No, every socialist country has had a lower standard of living and worse economy than capitalist democracies so why would anyone consider that a good idea? There's been dozens of attempts (some working a little better than others), but on average socialism stinks so just give it up
Scandinavian countries regularly come at the top of quality of life rankings, and they're pretty socialist.
You didn't read my full post, did you. Also social democracy is not the same thing as socialism.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Hard socialism leads to a bad place a bit faster than hard capitalism.
You're going to have to define bad here. I can list off genocides, revolutions and all kinds of general destruction from hard capitalism from before socialism was a coherent thought.
Just US history alone we have dozens of groups of people eliminated in the name of profit, half of Mexico quite literally stolen and then a war waged on behalf of said theft, that small labor dispute known as the civil war, when some folks decided black folks were people and others decided they'd rather enjoy the economic comfort of owning people, the invasion and suppression of the indigenous people of Hawaii, the labor disputes of the industrial revolution and the literal murder and skirmishes with private security forces leaving piles of dead.
The only thing socialism has on capitalism on body count is that there were more people to kill when it got hold, we'd been learning to reign in capitalism for a century or so at that point. And even then I can dispute what you're saying with the needless death and suffering caused by private healthcare.
Capitalism, restrained, is not the worst thing in the world. But we've had some impressive destruction in it's name that a lot of folks seem to ignore, and I'm just pulling from one nation's history here. If we want to include the east india company in this one I can feth up half the planet.
Iron_Captain wrote: So.... Anyone feel like seizing the means of production?
No, every socialist country has had a lower standard of living and worse economy than capitalist democracies so why would anyone consider that a good idea? There's been dozens of attempts (some working a little better than others), but on average socialism stinks so just give it up
Scandinavian countries regularly come at the top of quality of life rankings, and they're pretty socialist.
You didn't read my full post, did you. Also social democracy is not the same thing as socialism.
I did read it all, and you didn't explain what you meant by "socialism" very well.
I mean, it did end tsar rule, industrialise a peasant nation, teach everyone to read and smashed one of the most powerful war machines on the planet that would otherwise have exterminated millions more than it already did. I would say it worked out better than the alternative.
I mean, it did end tsar rule, industrialise a peasant nation, teach everyone to read and smashed one of the most powerful war machines on the planet that would otherwise have exterminated millions more than it already did. I would say it worked out better than the alternative.
To be fair, they might have also achieved that without murdering millions. A lot of the brutality was quite senseless in the bigger picture.
Same for capitalism though. US backed regimes in Central America racked up body counts in the same percentage of their populations as some of the worst communist excesses, it just tends to get glossed over more easily because the absolute number is smaller.
But as those ideologies in the 20th century sense are dead and burried they won't really help us make society better today. There is a happy middle that Western governments for the most part are trending away from to serve business interests.
I mean, it did end tsar rule, industrialise a peasant nation, teach everyone to read and smashed one of the most powerful war machines on the planet that would otherwise have exterminated millions more than it already did. I would say it worked out better than the alternative.
Yet created a whole NEW ruling class that was only mildly better as far as worker abuses, and TONS worse as far as human rights issues. I wouldn't call it a win.
Iron_Captain wrote: So.... Anyone feel like seizing the means of production?
No, every socialist country has had a lower standard of living and worse economy than capitalist democracies so why would anyone consider that a good idea? There's been dozens of attempts (some working a little better than others), but on average socialism stinks so just give it up
already it's not going to work out. Part of the reason is Socialsim by it's nature deemphasizes competition, so you get lower quality products (see Russian cars) because there isn't that competitive marketplace that capitalism has where everyone is trying to get a good selling product so they
look for ways to reduce costs, find something that they do better than the competitors, use higher quality materials, etc it's innovation and quality control due to adversity. I'm not saying capitalism is perfect because when unrestrained it can be very exploitative, but it's still better than
socialism. Social democracy on the other hand, now there's a future in that where your country isn't hard capitalist or socialist (like in Scandinavia) it's a little of both, those countries have some of the highest standards of living in the world and seem to do well economically.
The low quality of Russian cars has nothing to do with a lack of competition. There was in fact plenty of competition in the Soviet Union between different factories and design bureaus, as the state would only select and reward the best design. The low quality of Russian cars was entirely due to the fact that the Soviets couldn't care less about consumer goods like cars. All attention was on heavy industry and military. This caused designers and factories to spend most of their time and resources there, meaning cars had to be designed quickly and without using a lot of resources. Compare for example Soviet cars with Soviet trucks made in the same factories. The cars are shoddy, but the trucks are the best trucks in the entire world. Of course, when you are trying to build a socialist society this isn't very good. But the Soviet Union wasn't really a socialist society in fact. Sure, they talked about socialism a lot (a huge lot), but actual socialist principles mostly never got off the ground. It was more of a form of state capitalism, with the bourgeois having been replaced by the apparatchiks. Workers still did not have much actual power, and wage slavery was not abolished. It was basically the same system as capitalism, but controlled by different faces. It bears note that the Soviets never actually claimed to have achieved socialism. They viewed themselves as being in the process of building a socialist state, rather than already being one. To my knowledge, there has never been an actual socialist state.
Also, there is plenty of capitalist countries, even democracies, that have lower standards of living than 'socialist' countries. There have only ever been 19 countries in the world that tried to build a socialist system (only 5 currently), so that should not be a surprise, despite the difficulties a socialist society faces in what is a capitalist global system. What is more, the Soviet-style planned economy does not necessarily lead to lower standards of living or a slow economy, as the early Soviet Union shows . It had a faster economic growth than any capitalist country at that time, so much that Russia was transformed from a technologically backwards feudal empire centered entirely on agriculture to an industrialised superpower and the world's first spacefaring nation in the span of a few decades. Again, they decided to focus all of their effort on the military and heavy industry, to increase state power. Had they spent all of their effort on making consumer goods and making people's lives awesome, the Soviet Union would without a doubt have had much better standards of living. But they chose to have a massive military ruling over a massive empire instead. The problem with Soviet socialism was political, not economical. It was too repressive, too focused on the power of the state, rather than the power of the worker.
Social democracy is a bad system, it is unsustainable. Not to mention that there is nothing equal or social about it, since it simply continues to propagate wage slavery. It is simply a tool for the bourgeois to keep the workers from power by lulling them into complacency through improving their standard of living. Of course, over time the costs of that become larger and larger, meaning the system is not sustainable. At some point it will have to revert back to a more oppressive form of capitalism.
I mean, it did end tsar rule, industrialise a peasant nation, teach everyone to read and smashed one of the most powerful war machines on the planet that would otherwise have exterminated millions more than it already did. I would say it worked out better than the alternative.
Yet created a whole NEW ruling class that was only mildly better as far as worker abuses, and TONS worse as far as human rights issues. I wouldn't call it a win.
The Soviets overall were actually an improvement over the Tsars in terms of human rights. Stalin being the exception of course. Overall, it was definitely a win. If it was up to the Tsar, Russia most likely would still be full of poor, illiterate peasants today. That is how feudal landlords like to see their people after all. The Tsars never cared about the people, just about the nobility. The Soviets at least pretended to care about the people, and initially, they actually did.
Iron_Captain wrote: So.... Anyone feel like seizing the means of production?
No, every socialist country has had a lower standard of living and worse economy than capitalist democracies so why would anyone consider that a good idea? There's been dozens of attempts (some working a little better than others), but on average socialism stinks so just give it up
already it's not going to work out. Part of the reason is Socialsim by it's nature deemphasizes competition, so you get lower quality products (see Russian cars) because there isn't that competitive marketplace that capitalism has where everyone is trying to get a good selling product so they
look for ways to reduce costs, find something that they do better than the competitors, use higher quality materials, etc it's innovation and quality control due to adversity. I'm not saying capitalism is perfect because when unrestrained it can be very exploitative, but it's still better than
socialism. Social democracy on the other hand, now there's a future in that where your country isn't hard capitalist or socialist (like in Scandinavia) it's a little of both, those countries have some of the highest standards of living in the world and seem to do well economically.
You are aware that, by American standards, there's only ONE capitalist democracy in the world - America. And given recent political trends, it's rapidly ceasing to be a functional democracy.
Literally EVERY other developed nation in the word is more socialist than America. Every. Single. One.
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NinthMusketeer wrote: Hard socialism leads to a bad place a bit faster than hard capitalism.
Now THIS has been demonstrated to be true everywhere it's tried. But there's a huge gap between hard socialism a la Venezuela, Cuba, and the Soviet Union, and Democratic Socialism a la... well, most of the developed world.
Iron_Captain wrote: So.... Anyone feel like seizing the means of production?
No, every socialist country has had a lower standard of living and worse economy than capitalist democracies so why would anyone consider that a good idea? There's been dozens of attempts (some working a little better than others), but on average socialism stinks so just give it up
Scandinavian countries regularly come at the top of quality of life rankings, and they're pretty socialist.
You didn't read my full post, did you. Also social democracy is not the same thing as socialism.
And yet American (and to a lesser extent English) conservatives treat them as synonymous.
I mean, it did end tsar rule, industrialise a peasant nation, teach everyone to read and smashed one of the most powerful war machines on the planet that would otherwise have exterminated millions more than it already did. I would say it worked out better than the alternative.
Yet created a whole NEW ruling class
Yeah irony of millions dying to free themselves from an oppressive ruling class, only to be immediately oppressed by a whole new ruling class...
that was only mildly better as far as worker abuses, and TONS worse as far as human rights issues. I wouldn't call it a win.
I mean, we are talking about degrees of horror here, but the Soviets were objectively better than the Tsars, as far as the average citizen was concerned. The Soviets killed tens of millions of their own through purges and deliberate policy, the Tsars killed 100s of millions through ignorance and neglect.
I mean, we are talking about degrees of horror here, but the Soviets were objectively better than the Tsars, as far as the average citizen was concerned. The Soviets killed tens of millions of their own through purges and deliberate policy, the Tsars killed 100s of millions through ignorance and neglect.
Which also explains Russian tepid reaction to democracy. It hasn't yet proven it works better than an authoritarian regime for the average Ivan.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Serious question. Is maybe not having kids an option if you work a job where no one values your time enough to pay for it? Like, maybe we need a cultural shift where having a family isn't the be all and end all of existence, or maybe it's too biologically engrained?
I imagine a single person on minimum wage has a decent chance of supporting themselves, especially if in shared accommodation or with a partner.
For the most part it's people on higher incomes who decide against having children, puting career or leisure first. Or plainly recognising they wouldn't be good enough parents.
People on lower incomes and people on higher incomes tend to have more children than the middle classes. There's also a rural/urban split.
In Europe reduced fertility is a huge problem right now, and will only get worse with an aging population.
People not having children on such a scale would require upping immigration to meet labor demands. Its not a viable solution to how our current economy and society is configured.
Plus children become a privilige to those with wealth is probably not a road to go down on. Its up there with people not getting proper healthcare because of their job level.
This is exactly what's happening in most of Europe. If it wasn't for immigration population would have started decreasing in the 00s
Replacement fertility rate is approx 2,1 children per woman, and some countries barely get above 1. Only France is close to the replacement figure.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Hard socialism leads to a bad place a bit faster than hard capitalism.
Now THIS has been demonstrated to be true everywhere it's tried. But there's a huge gap between hard socialism a la Venezuela, Cuba, and the Soviet Union, and Democratic Socialism a la... well, most of the developed world.
Has it? If we look at both GDP and HDI rankings both those "hard socialist" countries end up slightly above the middle of the pack. So there are a lot of capitalist countries that are doing way worse then them.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Serious question. Is maybe not having kids an option if you work a job where no one values your time enough to pay for it? Like, maybe we need a cultural shift where having a family isn't the be all and end all of existence, or maybe it's too biologically engrained?
I imagine a single person on minimum wage has a decent chance of supporting themselves, especially if in shared accommodation or with a partner.
For the most part it's people on higher incomes who decide against having children, puting career or leisure first. Or plainly recognising they wouldn't be good enough parents.
People on lower incomes and people on higher incomes tend to have more children than the middle classes. There's also a rural/urban split.
In Europe reduced fertility is a huge problem right now, and will only get worse with an aging population.
People not having children on such a scale would require upping immigration to meet labor demands. Its not a viable solution to how our current economy and society is configured.
Plus children become a privilige to those with wealth is probably not a road to go down on. Its up there with people not getting proper healthcare because of their job level.
This is exactly what's happening in most of Europe. If it wasn't for immigration population would have started decreasing in the 00s
Replacement fertility rate is approx 2,1 children per woman, and some countries barely get above 1. Only France is close to the replacement figure.
Yup, we have quite a few case studies of why depressing the birth rate is a bad thing when the economy wants at least a stable population. We get to see what that kind of social engineering leads to in China the next few decades.
Without immigration the population decline would have been massive, with some European countries losing perhaps as much as 1/3rd of their population by 2050. This shouldn't be promoted to please the employment of wage slavery.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Hard socialism leads to a bad place a bit faster than hard capitalism.
Now THIS has been demonstrated to be true everywhere it's tried. But there's a huge gap between hard socialism a la Venezuela, Cuba, and the Soviet Union, and Democratic Socialism a la... well, most of the developed world.
Has it? If we look at both GDP and HDI rankings both those "hard socialist" countries end up slightly above the middle of the pack. So there are a lot of capitalist countries that are doing way worse then them.
Historically its pretty misleading to look at just living/economic standards and go, see capitalism is better. Many of the most succesful capitalist countries i.e. the West had a massive headstart over the frequently poor countries that turned to communism.
Internally capitalism was less brutal than communism, but it quite made up for that outside of their own countries. Its been toned down somewhat, but you can argue about to what extent the capitalist economic system is still responsible for a great cost in lives due to it driving a relatively cutthroat supply and demand system.
So, this is all intersting but it does not address the question of why wages are not rising now.
Recent data showed that wages growth actually declined month-to-month!
All the signs are there for higher pay, but the 'mystery of missing wage growth' continues
Multiple job market indicators, including the 3.9 unemployment rate, are flashing signs that wages should be increasing.
Job openings are at a record high 6.6 million, about even with the amount of potential workers officially counted as unemployed.
Average hourly earnings, however, rose just 2.6 percent in April, a slight decline from the pace in March.
The last time the unemployment rate was 3.9 percent, wages grew 4.2 percent, a level the economy hasn't come close to replicating since the recovery began in mid-2009.
Occam's razor; the wealthy are not raising wages because they do not have to. The profits of this economy are there, and they are getting them, but there is little to no incentive to pass that down. The why is another matter.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Hard socialism leads to a bad place a bit faster than hard capitalism.
You're going to have to define bad here. I can list off genocides, revolutions and all kinds of general destruction from hard capitalism from before socialism was a coherent thought.
Just US history alone we have dozens of groups of people eliminated in the name of profit, half of Mexico quite literally stolen and then a war waged on behalf of said theft, that small labor dispute known as the civil war, when some folks decided black folks were people and others decided they'd rather enjoy the economic comfort of owning people, the invasion and suppression of the indigenous people of Hawaii, the labor disputes of the industrial revolution and the literal murder and skirmishes with private security forces leaving piles of dead.
The only thing socialism has on capitalism on body count is that there were more people to kill when it got hold, we'd been learning to reign in capitalism for a century or so at that point. And even then I can dispute what you're saying with the needless death and suffering caused by private healthcare.
Capitalism, restrained, is not the worst thing in the world. But we've had some impressive destruction in it's name that a lot of folks seem to ignore, and I'm just pulling from one nation's history here. If we want to include the east india company in this one I can feth up half the planet.
I should clarify: socialism/capitalism installed and enforced by a foreign power is not included in my statement because they are a different beast. And by bad place I mean bad for the country itself. Imperialism is another factor entirely, one I was not including. You make valid points.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Hard socialism leads to a bad place a bit faster than hard capitalism.
Now THIS has been demonstrated to be true everywhere it's tried. But there's a huge gap between hard socialism a la Venezuela, Cuba, and the Soviet Union, and Democratic Socialism a la... well, most of the developed world.
The bolded part is not really true as the CIA like to "intervene" occasionally.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Hard socialism leads to a bad place a bit faster than hard capitalism.
Now THIS has been demonstrated to be true everywhere it's tried. But there's a huge gap between hard socialism a la Venezuela, Cuba, and the Soviet Union, and Democratic Socialism a la... well, most of the developed world.
The bolded part is not really true as the CIA like to "intervene" occasionally.
).
