$6.75 an hour is $13,500 a year.

That's within $480/yr of the federal poverty level of a single parent with one child. It's $1700 less than the federal poverty threshold for a family of two adults with one child.

Britain's Tony Blair defined those jobs paying below Britain's minimum wage of $7.26/hr as "poverty pay." How much more poverty pay does the United States need to succeed as a first-world country?

greg

In 1980, average CEO compensation was 45 times that of the average worker. In recent years, it got as high as 400 times, although it may currently be only at 300+ times.

It seems that the libertarian utopian standard of economic success will only be reached when CEO's average around 10,000 as much as the average worker. Of course, by that time, all sense of Christian community would have been destroyed, but the new world order is to view Christianity through the lens of capitalism. To hell with those greedy Wal-mart workers who want more than $7 or $8 an hour.

It seems that the libertarian utopian standard of economic success will only be reached when CEO's average around 10,000 as much as the average worker.

As a libertarian, I have to disagree with this quite strongly. CEOs make the money that they do for reasons (some good, some bad) that go beyond mere avarice.

First the good reasons: There are few positions in a company that can make or break it quite like the CEO. Whoever it is had damn well better know their stuff--and the competition for people like these is the strongest of all.

Now the bad reasons: The value of a CEO is not just that he can run a company well in isolation. It's also that he knows how to lobby the government for favorable regulations and subsidies. To the extent that CEOs are valued for this skill, they are being paid for something that would not exist in a more libertarian society.

$6.75 an hour is $13,500 a year.

That's within $480/yr of the federal poverty level of a single parent with one child. It's $1700 less than the federal poverty threshold for a family of two adults with one child.

It's also $4000 *above* the poverty level for a single individual.

And I don't see why the minimum wage should be based on anything bigger than the single individual. We're talking about setting a mandatory nationwide minimum here, so while it may help the 1) sole income-earner 2) supporting a spouse 3) and child, it also creates a windfall to the single and childless teenager.

Does anyone think that the 16-year-old burger jockey deserves $8-10 an hour? Not suprisingly, that's not the hypothetical put forward, even though it's a situation a lot more common than the minimum wage earner supporting a family. Using a hypothetical family works better, but it's basically an emotional argument.

Speaking as a single and childless individual, I see no reason why if I got a minimum wage job, I should be entitled to more money just because other people are supporting more than me.

$6.75 an hour is $13,500 a year.

Assuming 2 weeks of vacation and no overtime, yes. But no one ever said it's a good idea to raise a family of 3 on the starting salary for unskilled labor.

Does anyone think that the 16-year-old burger jockey deserves $8-10 an hour?

Point of historic and international context. The US minimum wage in the late 1960s was $8.50 an hour (in today's dollars). I.e. 16-year-old burger jockeys made $8.50 an hour, minimum, when our nation was, supposedly, less affluent than it is today. If 16 year olds, as well as everyone else, shared in our national income at that level thirty-five years ago, why shouldn't they share at that level today?

The minimum wage in virtually every other first-world western industrialized democracy is double ours. Ireland's minimum wage is $9.30 an hour, for example. 16-year-old burger jockeys in Dublin "deserve" $8-10 an hour. Why don't our 16-year olds deserve at least as much?

greg

And I don't see why the minimum wage should be based on anything bigger than the single individual.

Because human beings made a decision, millennia ago, that the nuclear family structure should be encouraged and nutured and we codified that in a social and economic structure that allowed for the (typically) male head of household to earn sufficient wage compensation that the female and the offspring need not be driven into the factories and fast-food joints too, just so that the family might survive.

I thought the right was supposed to be all over "family values."

greg

The US minimum wage in the late 1960s was $8.50 an hour (in today's dollars).

That's also the time in US history that the minimum wage reached its absolute highest peak. It's the anomaly, enacted (appropriately) during LBJ's War on Poverty. It hasn't crossed an adjusted $7 since I've been alive, and the last two hikes have put it at about $6.

Personally, I think we're about due for a raise in the minimum wage. But only up to the $6 range.

The minimum wage in virtually every other first-world western industrialized democracy is double ours.

Glancing at some EU stats, the minimum wage is higher in Ireland, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. But our minimum wage is notably higher than the ones in Spain, Portugal, and Greece. In Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy and Sweden, there does not appear to be a national minimum wage at all, but rather minimums are set per sector through collective agreements. Australia's is higher, and I can't find any numbers at all on Japan.

In Canada, the minimum wage is set by province, and ranges from $4.86US to $7US. And Ontario and Alberta set a lower minimum wage for minors. In fact, that seems to be common among countries with higher minimum wages.

I'm not seeing a convincing pattern of "double."

Ireland's minimum wage is $9.30 an hour, for example. 16-year-old burger jockeys in Dublin "deserve" $8-10 an hour.

Actually, they don't. Ireland's Minimum Wage Act sets that rate only for employees over the age of 18 who have been employed in some kind of work for at least two years. The 16-year-old burger jockey only earns about $7/hour.

Because human beings made a decision, millennia ago, that the nuclear family structure should be encouraged and nutured and we codified that in a social and economic structure that allowed for the (typically) male head of household to earn sufficient wage compensation that the female and the offspring need not be driven into the factories and fast-food joints too, just so that the family might survive.

Strange, then, that if this decision was made millennia ago, that the concept of a 'minimum wage' didn't arise until about a century back, and the US didn't adopt one until my granddad was 9.

One might be inspired by the other, or there might be a philosophical connection, but since humanity held to the concept of the nuclear family for millenia without a minimum wage, I can hardly see how the two are inherently joined.

I find it amusing to hear someone call $4000 a windfall. And lets be clear what this "windfall" represents - $4000 above what the government says is the absolute floor for what someone must make to survive in this society. In other words, this "windfall" is the difference between living your life paycheck-to-paycheck and being able to save a little something for the future (and maybe even enjoy your life once in a while, rather than just toil away and die in squalor).

I find it amusing to hear someone call $4000 a windfall.

Actually, I didn't call $4000 a windfall. The $4K figure came from Greg's $6.75/hour calcuation, which he would seem to suggest is still too low for the minimum wage.

Plus, I said it's a windfall to the "single and childless teenager." Teenagers, by and large, live in households where somebody else makes an income. Typically a larger income than the teenager makes. The teenager's income isn't what pays the bills.

And judging by the number of countries with higher minimum wages that set lower standards for minors, they would seem to agree that the state doesn't need to mandate unnecessarily high pay for teenage kids.

(and maybe even enjoy your life once in a while, rather than just toil away and die in squalor)

How many adults never move beyond earning the minimum wage? I don't have a figure on that, but I can't imagine it's many.

Loren says "How many adults never move beyond earning the minimum wage? I don't have a figure on that, but I can't imagine it's many.". It's not just a question of how many move past minimum wage. It's how many can move above the poverty line and preferably far enough to make a difference in their lives. Every business needs a large layer of people at the bottom. Only some of them get to move up. That's the reality of the organizational structure of most businesses. In this reality where is all that room for so many people to move up? Every job on that lower level has a ceiling beyond which pay won't increase. That's another reality of our system. So if someone starts at $6.75 an hour and doesn't make the promotion list does it make them someone who deserves the life that being on the bottom of our system means for them?

The system is shaped like a variation on a brilliant cut diamond turned upside down, not a real pyramid. There's enough give in it to where the majority don't stay on the bottom but some do and others don't move that far above it. In my opinion this makes the question that faces our society one of what level of poverty are we willing to leave people living in?

"Point of historic and international context. The US minimum wage in the late 1960s was $8.50 an hour (in today's dollars)."

Which would have meant that back then, he was still not making much money and surely not enough to support a family. After all, if a burger jockey made the equivalent of $8.50 today, then the cost of such things as rent and food would, measured in today's dollars, be equivalent to the costs today. Essentially, Gregory, your argument is illogical.

Now one can argue those expenses if measured in today's dollars, would be slightly less because of the increased amounts of regulation (auto safety rules, for one). But in any case, a burger jockey in the 1960s was still an unskilled laborer who couldn't support his family on his wages.

How many adults never move beyond earning the minimum wage? I don't have a figure on that, but I can't imagine it's many."

The data isn't conclusive, but in general, most people move out of minimum wage jobs. The 1979 Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which the BLS used in its 2001 report on minimum wage careers (http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/05/art2full.pdf) shows that just 7.3 percent of workers who started out in minimum wage jobs made within 25 cents of that by their tenth year in their career, while another study (by Bradley Schiller in 1980)showed that only 15 percent of employees remained in minimum wage jobs after three years. On the other hand, one can look at the summer unemployment data and see that it's at its highest rate for teens in years; some believe those jobs are being taken by adults, many of them with children.

That's a group that usually consists of high school dropouts; these days they are unlikely to move above the minimum wage. But the problem isn't an employer issue, but the matter that dropouts tend to have little in the way of skills (or education) and often aren't able to master any skills because most employers demand a high school diploma as a minimum qualification for employment. That they also never learned the social skills that high school teaches -- arrive at school on time translates into arriving to work on time -- means they're almost unemployable.

The sad news is that there's little that can be done for that part of the population; a GED won't actually do much in the way of either boosting income (at least to the level of those who have either a high school diploma, some college or a degree). The best solution lies with improving educational opportunities for their children, first with intensive pre-kindergarten programs, then with good schools (which unless you're either middle class or learn enough about school choice to get into a public charter school, doing so is a difficult proposition). So improving educational opportunities for their children is the best thing to do.

That won't satisfy Jim or Gregory, but that's reality. Demanding a minimum wage increase for unskilled, uneducated labor is like asking a customer at a Best Buy to pick a Betamax over a DVD player with progressive scan.

shows that just 7.3 percent of workers who started out in minimum wage jobs made within 25 cents of that by their tenth year in their career,

Since there hasn't been a ten-year period in history where the Federal Minimum wage hasn't risen by at least 25 cents, the question is who are those 7.3% of the workers who fell into jobs paying less than the Federal minimum wage?

greg

Well, ok, it didn't rise by more than 25 cents from 1945 to 1950 but other than that

greg