“If the minimum wage had continued to go up in step with productivity, it would now be not $7.25 but about $25 an hour. A recent RAND study found that if the U.S. had remained as equitable as it was in 1975 for the next 43 years through 2018, the bottom 90 percent of Americans would have earned an extra $47 trillion. Instead that money flowed in a great flood to the top.”
The measure of “productivity” being used here is crap, and the assertion that wages should increase along with it, is too.
Let’s say you get a job operating a machine that makes hamburgers. You press the button, a hamburger comes out. It’s a living.
Now, an engineer at McBurgerMech develops a revolutionary new machine. This one makes TWO hamburgers every time you press the button. McBurgerMech sees the potential in this and invests millions of dollars into the production of these new revolutionary machines. The engineer gets a pretty good raise this year.
Should the guy who presses the button get a raise? He’s “twice as productive” now.
