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$27/hr is The Real Minimum Wage

Added 2022-07-10 22:01:01 +0000 UTC

Minimum wage is actually $27 an hour, and the only reason you don’t make $27 an hour is because the people who owe you that money spent it on propaganda and political lobbying to make you think that the extinction wages you’re being offered are an acceptable alternative to the living wage you’re actually owed.

Hey everyone, I’m Christian Pierce for Good Morning, Bad News, and let’s talk about the fact that you’ve been gaslit by an economic system that profits off of your exploitation into believing that the minimum wage is even remotely close to what it’s mathematically supposed to be.

$7.25 an hour is an extinction wage, $15 an hour is a starvation wage, and $27 dollars an hour is what you should be paid based on inflation, productivity gains, and cost of living increases over the last 50 years.

That’s not an exaggeration, we’re not making that number up. Fifty years ago the minimum wage was equivalent to $12.55 an hour, while productivity was less than half of what it is today. Meaning that your baby boomer parents worked half as hard for twice as much money, and yet somehow Millennials and Gen Z, which are statistically the best educated and hardest working generation in history are the lazy entitled ones?

But then the 80s happened, and your lead-poisoned baby boomer parents elected Ronald Reagan, who introduced trickle-down theory, which basically says that taking money from the middle class and giving to the the ultra-wealthy is actually really good for the middle class. Turns out that was a fucking lie, and it bankrupted the middle class and killed the working class.

Originally, minimum wage was established by Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a LIVING WAGE to prevent the exploitation of workers, AND to eliminate poverty caused by wealth inequality. The way it was designed was really simple: the amount that workers were supposed to be paid was based on how much money they generated based on their overall productivity - and minimum wage was set to make it mathematically impossible for the ultra-wealthy to hoard immense wealth, while providing every single eligible worker with the means for a comfortable and dignified life.

And it worked! Until 1979, as productivity increased, the minimum wage increased, and the standard of living for the middle class was so good that you could go to college, buy a car, buy a house, raise a family, send your KIDS to college and retire while working for minimum wage!

But in 1980, thanks to Reagan, wages stopped rising with productivity, income inequality skyrocketed, and in the meantime, worker productivity went up by 120%. That means that Boomers were half as productive, and made twice as much money, and when it was their turn to own companies, they cut your wages and pocketed every penny for themselves.

That’s why they could buy entire houses on minimum wage, and as of 2021, it is mathematically impossible to afford an average apartment in ANY state on minimum wage. If wages were held consistent to productivity, by 2024 the minimum wage would be $27 an hour, and that’s what you deserve!

When billionaire boot lickers tell you that increasing the minimum wage would cause unemployment or kill small businesses THEY ARE LYING. When you raise the minimum wage, the working class is able to spend that increase at small businesses, so their profits go up and they can pay their workers more, instead of that money being hoarded by the ultra-wealthy and spent on lobbying and stock buybacks, while paying zero in taxes.

Raising the minimum wage helps the economy and causes wages in all industries to go up, and the ONLY people who actually lose money are the ones who have been hoarding the excess.

ADDITIONAL SOURCES

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/issues/summary?cycle=2022&id=LBR

https://drexel.edu/~/media/Files/hunger-free-center/research-briefs/wage-brief-2021.ashx

https://files.epi.org/pdf/172974.pdf

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

https://livingwage.mit.edu/

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart

https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/02/14/millennial-life-how-young-adulthood-today-compares-with-prior-generations-2/

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/business/12scene.html

https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/2eb86c0ad3da1fcdb53140dafb3f345a.pdf

https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/11-28-11pov_0.pdf