Posted on 01/18/2021 4:44:37 AM PST by EyesOfTX
My first real job (raking leaves on neighbor’s lawns doesn’t count) required that I have a drivers license to get to it and was at a drive-in movie concession stand paying at the current minimum wage of 1967. The next summer I moved up to working in a chain (now defunct) hamburger stand for minimum wage. These type of jobs are very helpful for kids to develop work ethic. Certainly did it for me.
Arent many union contracts tied to the minimum wage?
A recipe for inflation as well as job losses. May even cause stagflation like we had with Jimmy Carter.
As Thomas Sowell has said for lo these many years, the true minimum wage is zero.
The automation industry will do very well with the increased min wage. Investment opportunity?
I paid my way through my first year of college on $1 an hour at McDonald’s. Worked full time the entire time I went to college and neve took on a penny of student loans.
More bag your own groceries, serve yourself the salad, do your own work sort of thing.
Sounds very familiar ‘cept I was just a few years ahead of this but not much. My first year’s FUTA / SUTA was $154.00, I was 15 at the time.
I never worked fast food, never needed to but always had work in something else like a marina, farm work, carpentry, flooring, construction and my job through the last three years of high school at a pharmacy where you can learn a lot about a lot of people in town. Interesting things.
Through college I also worked, mostly full time all the time surveying, teaching assistant, farm and summer construction or deckhand on a towboat. One year I got all the overtime I could stand on a union scale gooberment contract. I was making more than my upper grade gooberment employee Dad and really hated to go back to school. Paid for my truck that summer and made enough to finish my last year in summer semester before reporting for work. I still dream that I didn’t actually have enough credits to get my diploma and they call me back and require me to refund all I have earned since my unearned graduation.
The work was mostly minimum wage, somewhere around $2 an hour and up to $5 or so when I was welding. It kept me in school, fed and sheltered and I learned a lot.
Entry level jobs are not meant to make a living. They are a bridge to somewhere else and of course they are generally low skill jobs. They pay little because they can, not very nice but the way things are with capitalism. My construction jobs were what grown men earned a living at. You could not make it that way today since those wages have not kept up with inflation. I don’t think that is right but it is what you get when you have plenty of cheap labor. Our downfall has come when the people who make the cars and stuff can’t afford to buy what they make. Where does that money they once lived on go now? Things were relatively less expensive than they are now. Were we just digging the hole we live in?
According to the CPI, my $2.10 minimum wage in 1975 should now be $10.16. That sounds about right to me. My starting pay as an oilfield engineer was $18,500 which would be about $74,000 today, a little lower than what it was in the boom times of these days. In that profession wages have pretty much considerably exceeded inflation for a lot of us.
Why is it that CPI is so well known but so much ignored by the gooberment in adjusting things like minimum wage, tax brackets, their own spending and the cost of health care?
I went to buy a few things at the corner store yesterday and was shocked how certain items rose in price so drastically since new minimum wages increased I guess as of Jan. 1. The checker told me everything has gone up to help pay for the new minimum wage for workers.
Here comes inflation.
The economy is already on life support, this won’t bode well for the average citizen living from paycheck to paycheck.
I’m no longer going to give tips to waiters, ect. They can take it out of the increased charges.
We have come full circle back to “Tipping is un-American”
A nice comparison and well considered. The only thing I would take issue with is the “upcoming” debt crisis. Aren’t we already there with all the money printing going on?
I note with interest that 1976 when I was making minimum wage was a good year and 1968 even better.
I made a longer posting just before this one that may be interesting to you.
You give some sheeple way too much credit but it is a good explanation to many. Not simple enough for politicians though.
Increase the minimum wage and look at prices when they go from the people that make the corm flakes, package the corn flakes, ship the corn flakes, stock the shelves and run the cash register. So add at least 5 times the wage to the product. Still the same 2 cents worth of corn in the package.
Jobs were hard to come by as a teen so I did the entrepreneur thing. In addition to mowing lawns and washing cars I created a boat tending service.
We lived on a lake and nearly every neighbor had a boat of some sort moored at their dock. For a modest monthly fee I would tend to their mooring lines and pump the bilges as necessary.
I gathered quite a few customers so the money was good for most of the year but I ran my ass off during the winter storm months when everyone needed immediate service.
AND-—Tests show that those kiosks are MORE CONTAMINATED than your household toilet seats..... I won't touch them.
The local McDonalds here has been pushing their "contactless" ordering system. You place your order on your smartphone using the McDonald app, so you never have to deal with those touch screens. Or a human.
Have you bought lumber or built a house in the last 6 months? The plywood I paid $26 a sheet for in December of 2019 is $46 a sheet now. Housing is generally up by 10%. How about that for inflation?
Yup, all boats rise on the tide. It is only a short term benefit for some and a long term disruption for all.
Sales tax collections in all counties in my area are up quite a lot from the same time last year but you’re right about other taxes. The state is looking for all they can find and turning people over to shake the money out of their pockets. The latest is a threatening letter and canvas for personal property taxes which includes anything that isn’t dirt or attached to it in their mind.
Buckle up.
That was before the candy store opened to giverment backed student loans. Just like medicine, the illusion of free drives up prices and gives money to special groups.
Nobody plays rational or fair in response to an increasing cost. They almost always take advantage of the opportunity to increase their margin. They seldom know what their true costs are or even care when raising prices. Wages go up 15%, all prices go up the same and the margin goes up massively.
I’m working on the interior of my new sheet metal building. I paid $8 a sheet for 4x8 OSB. Now it’s $25. 2x4’s went from $3 to $8 but have come down.
But the thing is, much of it is price gouging. I’ve actually read some articles and watched some Youtube videos that get into the lumber market drivers that explain it. I’ve put a hold on most construction until the gouging ends. And it will.
Comical note: I had my Menards page left up from yesterday on 2x4x10’s. The price was $7.98. I refreshed the page today and the price is $8.53. Lowes stayed at $7.98, though.
I have done the same. My shop that I want so much to finish now sets undone.
Can’t be price gouging. That is against the law. /s
Yes, it is price gouging. I have yet to understand the relationship between daVid and toilet paper or lumber.
How long will it take for his crap to end? I have things to do and am running out of time but will not fold to this kind of gouging.
I have to say that I DID discover some cool wood products in the meantime. For my garage walls I switched from 7/16 OSB to 5mm MDF plywood. $24 vs $14. And the plywood is absolutely beautiful and stainable.
And I put it up with 18 gauge “nails” from an air gun. Super fast installation.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/RevolutionPly-5mm-Poplar-Plywood-Application-as-4-x-8/50121135
It’s called “revolutionply”.
I insist on 3/4” Advantech or something like it. I see that LP has a competing product now I may look at. I’ve framed the shop out with 14 ga C-purlin and screw the material to it with self-tapping screws. You can hang anything you want on the walls.
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