One of the central achievements of the Republican and Democratic parties over the past fifty years has been flatlining the Federal minimum wage. Last updated at $7.25 per hour in 2009.
This flatlining was accompanied by many other significant changes in laws and regulations that fattened the pockets of the rich:
- Globalization
- Decreased enforcement of union rules and actively anti-union laws in many states
- The collapse of anti-trust enforcement (no actual changes in law here) that has produced a level of market concentration (monopolization) not seen since the Gilded Age
- Adminstrative legalization of stock buybacks in 1982 that has produced $trillions in corporate profits going directly to shareholders
- Tax breaks for the rich and corporations repeatedly, while we wait for positive trickle-down economics to take hold (that has never happened)
- Deregulation of the finance sector and a boom in extractive gambling
- The financialization of the real economy. Shift the focus and compensation of top management from the production of goods and services to extracting as much money as possible in the shortest time possible.
So, Mamdani’s call for a $30 minimum wage is a start in the right direction. Go to MIT’s Minimum Wage Calculator to look up a living wage in your county.
Keep in Mind
The growth in US GDP per capita (output of the economy per person) between 1975 and today is 144%. A more than doubling. Meanwhile, the median (middle) family income grew only 29% from 1975 to today. Only slightly more than one quarter.
And we are a very rich country.
BTW – at $7.25 per hour, the standard 2,000 hours of work per year (40 hours per week for 50 weeks) produces $14,500 annual income.
This is $1,150 less than the Federal poverty line for a single individual in the contiguous 48 states. Somehow, this has not bothered Republicans and Democrats very much?
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