Should be more like $90 or more starting wage.
Salaries for CEOs and upper management have more than kept up with inflation while the average employee is left out.
Percentage pay increases have caused part of this problem.
This should change to flat dollar increases.
If you look at inflation since 1890, when a laborer could own a nice house and afford to have the wife stay home and have a servant, $74 an hour is cheap.
No common laborer had a nice home and wife home and servants in 1890s. Common laborers worked 60+ hour weeks. Their wives charred or took in laundry while the middle class ones sewed or made hats...
The help in the home came from the fact that without welfare there was a class of people who were in some way unable to pair up and make it on their own. Often family members but some times single men or women who had no place to go and would help out for food and shelter and perhaps a small wage.
Drunks/disabled who kept the wood chopped or the coal furnaces going lawns mowed in return for a cot in the basement is one example.
THE AVERAGE EMPLOYEE is NOT qualified to sign the FRONT of the PAYCHECK-—
IF they are-—they can start their own company.