NPR article that wonders why, if we're at full employment, why aren't we celebrating? My response:
In spite of all the slicksters who've gone through the comment section with the 😆 icon, most commenters have an excellent and exact understanding of what is really going on with our economy -- an economy which favors Wall Street over Main Street, and an economy which reflects that the buying power of the minimum wage peaked in 1968, when I was 8 years old -- a little over FIFTY -- FIFTY! -- years ago.
I was forced to leave a union job in 2005. (That's 14 years ago, for the slicksters.) I was making $30 an hour, with 5 weeks vacation, another week of personal days, and sick days on top of that. Anything over 8 hours of work in a day was paid overtime -- none of this hoping to make 80 hours minimum in two weeks before being paid overtime. Competitors bid on our work several times, and with our pay and benefits, we were still cheaper than what the competitors wanted to charge the company to do our work. Since '05, I've had one job that almost paid about half of what I used to make -- but it breaks the slicksters' cold, dead libertarian hearts -- because the salaries must come directly from their small, selfish pockets! -- that people dare demand $15 an hour for a MINIMUM wage! Oh, the horror! 😱
If the minimum wage had kept up with productivity and other economic indicators, it would be anywhere from $18 to $23 an hour. If it had kept up with CEO pay, it would be around $30 an hour.
As a character in Richard Hooker's "M*A*S*H Goes To Maine" said, "Great bald-headed, unrevised, North American Protestant Jesus Christ!"
I was forced to leave a union job in 2005. (That's 14 years ago, for the slicksters.) I was making $30 an hour, with 5 weeks vacation, another week of personal days, and sick days on top of that. Anything over 8 hours of work in a day was paid overtime -- none of this hoping to make 80 hours minimum in two weeks before being paid overtime. Competitors bid on our work several times, and with our pay and benefits, we were still cheaper than what the competitors wanted to charge the company to do our work. Since '05, I've had one job that almost paid about half of what I used to make -- but it breaks the slicksters' cold, dead libertarian hearts -- because the salaries must come directly from their small, selfish pockets! -- that people dare demand $15 an hour for a MINIMUM wage! Oh, the horror! 😱
If the minimum wage had kept up with productivity and other economic indicators, it would be anywhere from $18 to $23 an hour. If it had kept up with CEO pay, it would be around $30 an hour.
As a character in Richard Hooker's "M*A*S*H Goes To Maine" said, "Great bald-headed, unrevised, North American Protestant Jesus Christ!"
