Quotes:
On Saturday, June 25, 1938, to avoid pocket vetoes 9 days after Congress had adjourned, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed 121 bills. Among these bills was a landmark law in the Nation’s social and economic development — Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA). Against a history of judicial opposition, the depression-born FLSA had survived, not unscathed, more than a year of Congressional altercation. In its final form, the act applied to industries whose combined employment represented only about one-fifth of the labor force. In these industries, it banned oppressive child labor and set the minimum hourly wage at 25 cents, and the maximum workweek at 44 hours.
President Roosevelt....: “Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, ...tell you...that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.”
As an early step of the NRA, Roosevelt promulgated a President’s Reemployment Agreement “to raise wages, create employment, and thus restore business.” Employers signed more than 2.3 million agreements, covering 16.3 million employees. Signers agreed to a workweek between 35 and 40 hours and a minimum wage of $12 to $15 a week and undertook, with some exceptions, not to employ youths under 16 years of age. Employers who signed the agreement displayed a “badge of honor,” a blue eagle over the motto “We do our part.” Patriotic Americans were expected to buy only from “Blue Eagle” business concerns.
In the meantime, various industries developed more complete codes. The Cotton Textile Code was the first of these and one of the most important. It provided for a 40-hour workweek, set a minimum weekly wage of $13 in the North and $12 in the South, and abolished child labor. The President said this code made him “happier than any other one thing...since I have come to Washington, for the code abolished child labor in the textile industry.” He added: “After years of fruitless effort and discussion, this ancient atrocity went out in a day.”
the Supreme Court, in a series of decisions, invalidated both State and Federal labor laws. Most notorious was the 1936 case of Joseph Tipaldo. The manager of a Brooklyn, N.Y., laundry, Tipaldo had been paying nine laundry women only $10 a week, in violation of the New York State minimum wage law. When forced to pay his workers $14.88, Tipaldo coerced them to kick back the difference. When Tipaldo was jailed on charges of violating the State law, forgery, and conspiracy, his lawyers sought a writ of habeas corpus on grounds the New York law was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court, by a 5-to-4 majority voided the law as a violation of liberty of contract.
Roosevelt further voiced his disappointment with the Court at the victory dinner for his second inauguration, saying if the “three-horse team [of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches] pulls as one, the field will be ploughed,” but that the field will not be ploughed if one horse lies down in the traces or plunges off in another direction.”
However, Roosevelt’s metaphorical maverick fell in step. On “White Monday,” March 29, 1937, the Court reversed its course when it decided the case of West Coast Hotel Company v. Parrish. Elsie Parrish, a former chambermaid at the Cascadian Hotel in Wenatchee, Wash., sued for $216.19 in back wages, charging that the hotel had paid her less than the State minimum wage. In an unexpected turn-around, Justice Owen Roberts voted with the four-man liberal minority to uphold the Washington minimum wage law.
As other close decisions continued to validate social and economic legislation, support for Roosevelt’s Court “reorganization” faded. Meanwhile, Justice Roberts felt called upon to deny that he had switched sides to ward off Roosevelt’s court-packing plan. He claimed valid legal distinctions between the Tipaldo case and the Parrish case. Nevertheless, many historians subscribe to the contemporary view of Robert’s vote, that “a switch in time saved nine.”
https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/flsa1938
Lots of that money goes to pay corrupt politicians, and get handed back to the taxpayers in the form of property taxes, payments to inspectors, high salaries for police and firemen, schools which cost three times per square foot than business buildings, etc. Teachers which get saleries over 100k with benefits and their administrators (kickbacks to Democrats).
All the stupid Green, LGBTQ+ programs, homeless programs, more special welfare programs, etc, etc.
We could ask,why do we apparently expect someone earning minimum wage, to be able to afford to have their own apartment in these major expensive cities?
Why is that a key criterion to evaluate the financial situation with someone at minimum wage?
And then that begs the question of what the authors of this article expect to be done about this situation. It begs a possible solution as being government intervention in the housing market.
It would be interesting to see historical data on this subject as well. Was there ever a time , decades ago when rent and housing was far cheaper in nominal dollars, when someone on minimum wage could easily have afforded their own apartment?
There was usually some funky, low rent district in big cities that young people could afford to live in. Then the artists moved in, and after them, the rich people who wanted to live in an artsy neighborhood. The remaining poorer districts are usually unsafe until enough young, employed people start moving in — and that starts the same cycle all over again.
Hardly anyone can live happily on that little.
In Sweden, income tax returns are public information.
Workers and employers know what wages and salaries are being paid.
If single Simp guys would stop ‘dating’ every young city woman he sees who’ll ‘date’ him for dinner, etc. he’ll save a lot of money. That’s what these dinner gold diggers do....saves them a bunch on food costs.
I thought minimum wage jobs were for teenagers and college students trying to make and extra buck or two while gaining job experiences.
The Left, and the political class, have been brainwashing citizens for years to believe minimum wage was to support a person for everything, which it has never been.
Los Angeles: $26.81 -
After taxes that’s about 15 bucks an hour.
This is a joke...
$174,000.
5.56mm
The “good news” is that many of these minimum wage jobs are being filled by our “new Americans”...the ones who crossed the border yesterday. They have no desire to live alone, in fact they are more likely to live 5 families to what used to be a “single family” dwelling, pooling their money and driving up rents for any actual “single family” trying to rent. Just another blow to the American middle class.
Read later.