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[–] 202 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (14 children)

The minimum wage was supposed to be enough for one person to take care of a family of four and keep them out of poverty.

Now, the minimum wage is inadequate to support a person, let alone a pet or family.

Henry Ford, the first CEO of Ford Motor Co. made 50x more than his baseline employee.

Now, a starting employee for Ford makes about $18.00 an hour, $38,000 a year. Not enough to support any family (but more than minimum wage by far)

Now the CEO of Ford made $27,000,000 a year, or about $37,000.00 an hour. That's over 700x more than a baseline employee.

(all approx. from duck duck go search)

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  • [–] 90 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    I met Americans telling me that these poor corporations can't survive if they have to pay a minimum salary and how it was meant for teenagers ... it was weird. I was like, you live in SF ... what's the minimum again? how much is rent again?

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  • [–] 64 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    It's just objectively false. The minimum wage was not "meant for teenagers".

    No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country... By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living.

    -Franklin D. Roosevelt

    You can hem and haw all day and what minimum wage should be, but what it was meant to be is unambiguously clear.

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  • [–] 25 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Ben and Jerry had it right. We need to take their policy and turn it into a federal law.

    A static multiplier that is the most that they can receive based on the lowest salary level.

    Let's find a way to work in some math so that they make everybody part-time to avoid the trouble, like Walmart. They suffer harder.

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  • [–] 26 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    What we need, desperately, is a restoration of the 91% top-tier tax rate, that nobody ever paid, and nobody ever will pay.

    The purpose of such a tax rate isn't revenue. The purpose is avoidance. What companies have to do to avoid that tax is exactly what the economy needs. The largest businesses need to reduce prices to lower revenue below the line. Alternatively, they need to Increase business spending, which reduces their taxable income by paying more to employees and outside workers for products and services.

    Capital Gains need to be taxed progressively, and higher than labor.

    The Social Security tax limit needs to be eliminated, and cap gains needs to be subject to this tax as well. Social security tax needs to be shifted from regressive to progressive. The social security benefit age needs to be incrementally decreased until Social Security is a UBI system instead of a retirement system.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    and this is why minimums should be pegged to some cost of living measure so they constantly adjust

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    If this were done, I wouldn't be surprised if every industry did everything in their power to manipulate the specific qualifying items used to generate the measure in order to keep wages as low as possible.

    Like if the price of a gallon container of milk were to be the measure, the industry would start selling milk by the liter and limit galon containers to special sales where it cost $0.05, but each store only had a stock of 5 units on January 1st.

    Some bullshit like that.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    this is done in australia, and sure… but… it’s pegged to CPI (among other things: they do a review and release a report every year) which is literally the cost of groceries (like not just 1), so… go ahead and manipulate the price of groceries down. i’ll wait

    https://www.fairwork.gov.au/about-us/workplace-laws/annual-wage-review/annual-wage-review-2026

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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago*

    I think I'm just in a mood recently. If it were possible and the leadership weren't incompetently failing upward, I feel like big corps would happily band together to subsidize the entire grocery industry if it could keep their own employees poor, dependent, and powerless.

    I'm not saying it couldn't work, even in the US. I'm just saying to make sure your measures are air-fucking-tight and not manipulated by industry when they are being decided.

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