Every retail job I've applied for in the last twenty years asked me, 'we'll start you out at a couple dollars an hour above minimum wage, how do you feel about that?' Like they were doing me a great favor.

Multiply $7.25 an hour by eight hours (they never want you working overtime)
then multiply that by five days, then multiple that by four weeks.

I'll tell you, $58 a day before taxes.
$290 a week.
$1160 a month

...and how much is rent? Utilities? Gas? Groceries?

“Not all jobs are meant to provide a living wage.”

FDR never said that. FDR believed the minimum wage should provide a "living wage".

My late brother-in-law hated JFK!

there would be way less need for SNAP if jobs paid a living wage?

No, they’re too busy assuming SNAP recipients sit on the couch smoking crack all day.

Texas.

Workers are more productive than ever before, yet median income has been stagnant for the past 45 years.



The absurdly low minimum wage, the busting of unions and weakening of their power, are part of the problem. As Piketty points out, capital has been growing at a faster rate than the larger economy. Without policy intervention, the inevitable result is what we see -- the evermore obscene concentration of wealth.

The horrible truth is that not only have we failed to implement policies that counter the movement of dollars from the hands of the many to the hands of the few, we have done THE OPPOSITE.

Minimum wage that reflects the increase in productivity, progressive income tax, wealth tax, inheritance tax are the bare minimum.

As we advocate for these things, we MUST do more than cite vague benefits, like strengthening safety nets, blah, blah. In addition to Universal Health Care, we need to be levying these taxes for something truly transformative -- something like Piketty-style "Inheritance for all"

And I think we need to be calling on our electeds to start advocating for Inheritance for All NOW.

We will never build the political will for such transformative change if no one is advocating for it.

Silence and surrendering in advance on anything the Democratic consultant class deems "unwinnable" helped bring us to this point.

I know many object to using AI summaries, but this one on inheritance for all does a better job of summarizing than I could:

As we advocate for a progressive tax on income, tax on wealth, and tax on inheritance, we need connect it with a concrete benefit for ALL. Inheritance for all is that concrete benefit. And it is absolutely necessary to reverse the inevitable, and increasingly obscene, concentration of wealth that is driven by the fact that capital grows at a faster rate than the overall economy (see Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century).

And please don't tell me to go altavista all your text....

I believe it's called 'Google'

Productivity Pay Gap (the chart I included is the same graphic but starting with 1979 as the index,
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

Re: Capital in the 21st Century (2014) (all graphics are available online)
http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/en/capital21c2

The Piketty equation is most famously known as (r>g), the "fundamental formula of inequality," which states that the rate of return on capital ((r)) is greater than the rate of economic growth ((g)). This inequality implies that wealth held by capital owners will accumulate faster than the overall economy grows, leading to increasing wealth concentration and inequality over time.  


Capital and Idealogy (2019)
The global inheritance notion is discussed in this book.

I haven't read his other books yet. You remind me that they've been on my list too long.

they've gotten tax cuts so WE can pay their taxes!
When there's no more tax cuts - they come for the SOCIAL SAFETY NET!

I answered erronis in Posts 10 and 13

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220768060#post10

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220768060#post13

I assumed the facts supporting my statements regarding weakening of unions and laws that facilitated, rather than countered concentration of wealth, were widely known, but if not, here you go

Laws that have weakened unions since the 1950s
Taft-Hartley Act of 1947
Landrum-LaGuardia Act of 1959
State-level "right-to-work" laws that diminish collective bargaining power.
Deregulation and lax enforcement of labor laws have indirectly weakened unions by empowering anti-union employer practices.

EPI
Explaining the erosion of private-sector unions
How corporate practices and legal changes have undercut the ability of workers to organize and bargain
https://www.epi.org/unequalpower/publications/private-sector-unions-corporate-legal-erosion/

Tax law facilitating concentration of wealth and wealth inequality

Reduction in Top Marginal Income Tax Rates:
Top marginal income tax rate was 70%. in 1980
Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 lowered this to 50%,
Tax Reform Act of 1986 further reduced it to 28%.
Subsequent acts adjusted this rate, but the general trajectory remained low, sitting around 37% by the end of the period.
These cuts provided massive annual tax reductions for the wealthiest individuals, allowing them to accumulate and invest more income, thus increasing their wealth.

Preferential Capital Gains Tax Rates:
From the 1980's through 2025, capital gains tax rates remained low compared to historical levels and ordinary income rates. This allowed the wealthy, whose income largely derives from capital gains, to grow their fortunes much faster than average wage earners, whose income is primarily from labor.

Weakening of the Estate Tax:
The estate tax, designed to prevent the formation of dynastic wealth, was significantly weakened through changes in exemption levels and rates over the decades. This has allowed larger fortunes to be passed down through generations without being subject to substantial taxation, entrenching wealth concentration over time.

Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA):
The 2017 tax bill included deep cuts to personal, corporate, and estate taxes that were heavily skewed toward the wealthy and corporations. Key provisions like the 20% deduction for pass-through business income largely benefited the richest business owners. These changes further eroded the tax burden on the top income brackets, contributing to the ongoing rise in wealth inequality.

This chart shows that the wealth has already been redistributed by the time the worker gets their check.

... for decades. And Democrats have done very very little to counter it. Some small adjustments around the margins, but nothing that would actually address the fundamentally destabilizing force of capital growing at a faster rate than the the broader economy, and the resultant ever increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.

And they have built an incredibly fragile economy in the process. More on that in post #18
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220768060#post18

Is also out dated.

Starting a business with the premise of paying your workers 1990 minimum wage is straight out of the repukes handbook

Protecting workers: FDR's principal goal was to prevent employers from abusing workers by paying extremely low wages. He famously stated, “no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country”.

Defining a "living wage": He clarified that a living wage was "more than a bare subsistence level—I mean the wages of decent living". He intended for the wage to support fully employed adult men and women, not just part-time or teenage workers.

Boosting the economy: The minimum wage was also seen as a tool for economic recovery. By increasing workers' purchasing power, they would spend more, which in turn would stimulate the economy and encourage businesses to hire more workers.

Legislation: The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was the landmark legislation that established the first federal minimum wage, though initial attempts to pass similar laws were struck down by the Supreme Court.

The top 10% account for 50% of our spending. If the market goes down and they get nervous, they can easily cut their spending 30%, 50%, or more.

For the rest of us, an overwhelming portion of our spending is on essentials. We aren't able to cut back anywhere near that much.

As our economy becomes more and more and more dependent on the wealthiest spending a lot of money, it becomes ever more fragile. Something happens that prompts them to cut way back, and we go straight into recession.

In addition, with America going ALL IN on AI, the market has become incredibly fragile.

More facts and figures with references in Prof G's recent article "How Does the End Begin"
https://www.profgalloway.com/how-does-the-end-begin/

Republicans have been intentionally building this incredibly fragile economy by steadily shoveling money at the wealthy, to make them wealthier, and keep them spending. There is NO "trickle down," only "trickle up." And now they are propping up AI with vast expenditures of our treasury dollars and by allowing a host of circular, incestuous deals that are massively and artificially inflating values.

This is a VERY bad thing for economic and political stability. We have been heading toward a breaking point of some kind for a long, long time.. I firmly believe the trump insanity is the last gasp before things seriously falls apart.

We may yet save ourselves by implementing truly transformative reforms in time, but even with that, there will be a scary time of adjustment from our current obscenely immoral and fragile economy to a more moral and robust economy.

He planted the seeds for this bullshit.

So Raygun got the ball rolling to keep workers poor while promising the rich would trickle down so much
money to keep us happy and living in the lap of luxury.

When we get all 3 Houses back in 2028 we need to raise the minimum wage a nickel or dime every week
or a quarter a month until it gets to $21 an hour. Slowing raising it would be less shock on small businesses
which we need.

Hell we should campaign on it, "Help us pull everybody out of poverty"

progressive income tax, and use the money to finance basic income or inheritance for all. Or perhaps "adjustment grants" to small businesses (but its harder to envision how to do that in a way that wouldn't be abused by law firms and other businesses that manage to be counted as "small" even though they are enormous money mills).

Just because something seems out of reach today doesn't mean you have to keep quiet about it.

You can only build political will by advocating, loud and proud for the type of transformation changes we need to address critical moral failings in how things work.

Our candidates and electeds can help us build a vision of what we want/need -- something that actually inspires others to get on board to make the dream a reality. But I think more of them need pushes from us to break the habit of "can't win, won't fight."

The thing is, as you are building political will for the big stuff, you change the boundaries of the possible. And you have a better shot at actually accomplishing changes, now, that move the big goal closer.

Raise it $1 per month.

A couple working full time would make over $100k a year

That would be equivalent today (with inflation), of $5.76 per hour.

Using the same sort of inflation calculator you seem to be using, that would make him worth, in current dollars, $46.2 billion.

He was the richest man in the world at the time.

Now?

A relative failure.

Aren't numbers fun?

Thank you.

Outsourced everything.
The only people making bank anymore are those involved with AI shit, because the push is to eliminate even more jobs.