

40% Of US Workers Now Earn Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage - Suraj-Sun
http://soundmoneyinstitute.org/40-of-us-workers-now-earn-less-than-1968-minimum-wage/

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VMG
FTA:

> That isn’t a lot of money, but according to the Social Security
> Administration, 40.28% of all workers make less than $20,000 a year in
> America today. So that means that more than 40 percent of all U.S. workers
> actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in
> 1968. That is how far we have fallen.

So the article compares _all wage earners_ today with _full-time_ workers in
1968.

~~~
coenhyde
Hours worked is irrelevant. The lifestyle afforded by $21,480 a year is
terrible. That's barely enough to support a single person let alone a
spouse/family. This means that 40% of the workforce are most likely dependent
on someone else. Either another individual or the government as evident in the
47.7 million Americans who receive food stamps.

The workforce has changed since 1968. Full time jobs are not as easy to come
by now as they were back then. There is indeed underemployment with people
working fewer hours but that doesn't change the fact that 40% of the
population is living off less than a 1968 minimum wage.

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adrianN
I don't know much about economy, but I always thought this was an expected
outcome of globalization. People in developing countries make more than before
(since they get to work at factories instead of farming) and people in
developed countries earn less, because of competition from cheap labor in
other countries.

Lastly, the people who employ cheap labor can increase their profit margins.

~~~
lgbr
I see it this way as well, but most of the people I know who bring up this
subject as a problem are either xenophobic or have some sort of cognitive
dissonance. These kinds of statistics fail to point out the billions of people
who have come out of poverty, and the millions who are now in the middle
class, particularly in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China). The
response to this point is either "We have to take care of our own first" as if
the well-being of an American person is somehow more important than that of 10
Chinese people, or that the progress made in the developing world is
insignificant.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Indeed, in point-of-fact:

[http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/half-a-billion-people-
escap...](http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/half-a-billion-people-escaped-
poverty-2005-2010/)

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gnur
The title is misleading. A more fitting title would be: 40% of US workers earn
less per year then the full time minimum wage inflation corrected for today.
Without numbers about how many hours worked are worthless, for all we know 40%
of US workers only work 1 hour per month and are doing really well.

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mcv
Fortunately this is more than compensated by the extreme rise in wages for
CEOs and other high management positions.

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tpainton
And it has NOTHING to do with the current administration. That's pure
coincidence. This is the sleeping in the bed part..

~~~
RyanMcGreal
The median US wage has been stagnant or falling since the 1970s.

~~~
peddamat
Is that because median world income has been ~rising since the 1970s?

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madaxe
And 0.0001% earn more than the planet's GDP in 1968, inflation adjusted.

At this point, the picture isn't going to change without a complete
collapse/overthrow of the plutarchy.

~~~
peddamat
Why? The Western 'elite' create an Eastern 'elite', which create a 'South
American' elite, which create an African 'elite', until there's no more cheap
labor.

The collective 'elite' replace human labor with automation.

Once all labor is automated, there is massive deflation, since no one can
afford the output of robot labor.

Then we're left with what, a post-scarcity utopia?

Can greed take us to this utopia, entirely by accident?

I can't think of any other possible outcome on 1000-year timescales.

~~~
speeder
What I am thinking will happen is lots of ugly wars as inflation and debts
cause several crisis, until there is not much trade left, plunging us back
into dark age again.

Debt, and inflation in the whole world is rising much faster than people
income. Yes, now people are richer than ever, I am sure that right now there
are more US people being able to buy crap than in 1968, the same in Brazil
with the famous "rise of the middle class".

But this won't last long.

US has crazy debts for example: [http://rt.com/usa/us-debt-study-hamilton-
economy-103/](http://rt.com/usa/us-debt-study-hamilton-economy-103/)

Or Brazil, as I fully expected in 2011 (where we had a crazy GDP growth) is
now with lots of inflation (6.7%) and anemic growth (0.9%)

And why I expected it? Because it was fueled by debts, and as soon people had
to PAY them back, and fail, things would derail. And they don't even fully de-
railed yet, the construction market is still misbehaving (house prices where I
live rose 200% in the last four years and are still rising, to me is obvious
the whole thing will come crashing down US 2008 style when foreclosures
start).

~~~
madaxe
When you keep borrowing from the future (which our economies have been doing
since Bretton Woods, pretty much), you eventually have to pay off the debt.

You can't keep pushing it back and back.

No economist or politician seems to understand this basic tenet. Or they do,
but they don't care, as the ones paying off the debt are the disenfranchised
underclasses, and the political classes profit from the debt, as they own it.

