The Minimum Wage is at a 66-Year Low
While corporate profits reach record levels, the poor continue to bear the brunt of the economic hardship and get the blame
There are a litany of pernicious economic myths that we’ve internalized as citizens of the modern neoliberal world. For example, we’re led to believe if the mythical number GDP is going up, then everything is going smoothly, the economy is growing, and that means we’re all benefitting, so nothing should be changed.
We’ve also been propagandized to have an inverted view of the economy, where anything that helps workers or the people is said to somehow be negative while things that only benefit the top earners and corporations are inherently good.
That is why the minimum wage hasn’t moved in over a decade while corporate profits are at all-time highs. That is why child poverty is rising while we’re minting more billionaires than ever. And that is why we’ve recreated feudal levels of inequality, and even the current inflation crisis is routinely being blamed on the peasants having too much money sloshing around in their bank accounts.
It’s also one of the reasons America is so damn unstable. People are poor, desperate, and looking for answers.
There’s no real reason the country needs to be in this spot. It is not a force of nature; it’s greed. It’s been decades of decisions that turned the middle class into the working poor while a select few built emperor-levels of personal wealth.
So, right after turning the corner of a once-in-a-century pandemic, Americans are facing a once-in-a-century economic crisis.
All while the minimum wage is at a sixty-six-year low.
It is not a force of nature; it’s greed. It’s been decades of decisions that turned the middle class into the working poor while a select few built emperor-levels of personal wealth.
The minimum wage hasn’t moved since 2009. It was bumped up to a whopping $7.25, which, according to the Economic Policy Institue, in inflation-adjusted dollars is 27.4% less than it is today. Then, with the recent inflation spike, the minimum wage officially became the lowest it’s been since 1956 when it was seventy-five cents an hour.
We’re living through the most prolonged period without a raise in the history of the minimum wage. With housing, debt, and child poverty crises, added to more people than ever visiting food banks, how is that possible?
The GDP in America back in 2009 was around $14 trillion. In 2021, it was $23 trillion. The economy grew by some sixty percent, the price of just about everything went up, and the minimum wage didn’t move.
Many of the problems and anger in America can be directly traced to fifty years of stagnant wages and increasing costs.
Walmart did over $400 billion in sales with an operating income of $22 billion in 2009 and those figures lept to $572 billion and almost $26 billion in 2021. And yet, thousands of Walmart employees’ wages are so low that they’re on Medicaid and get SNAP benefits.
The largest employer in the country, run by the richest family in the country, that earns ~$5,000,000,000 in profits every three freaking months isn’t paying its employees enough to afford food, housing, and medical care.
That’s the economic dystopia we live in.
And pundits and economists continue to act baffled or mislead the public as to what the problem is.
Many of the problems and anger in America can be directly traced to fifty years of stagnant wages and increasing costs.
Everybody now knows the famous stats regarding wages keeping pace with productivity. If they had been linked, the minimum would be around $24 an hour. If the minimum wage had increased at the same rate as Wall Street bonuses since 1985, we’d be looking at $60 an hour.
One section of the population continues to get richer and richer, siphon more and more of the economic gains, buying their fifth, sixth, or seventh mansion, putting million-dollar specialty trees on their verandas, and destroying the planet by taking twenty-minute private flights because they can’t be asked to sit in the car, and that’s all well and good.
That’s wonderful free-market economic growth that has little impact on the nation or inflation.
Workers getting measly checks and slight pay bumps for the first time in decades inevitably turned into a bullshit five-alarm-fire about how greedy employees are causing inflation and how nobody wants to work anymore — I just saw this awesome Twitter thread on the century-long history of that ridiculous scapegoat wealthy business owners trot out anytime employees won’t immediately hurl themselves into horrific jobs for minuscule wages.
Inflation is high for a variety of reasons, but of course, much of the focus is on COVID relief checks and tiny increases in wages.
Workers do not influence the price of a barrel of oil — talk to freaking OPEC. Nobody got a thousand-dollar check two years ago and decided to buy a few properties or increase their own rent.
Commodity prices aren’t moved by McDonald’s workers earning an extra few dollars a day. There are brokers buying, selling, and speculating on futures, there are geopolitical factors, wars break out, ports are backed up, fires burn valuable resources, and supply chains are disrupted.
Inflation is measured by a weighted average change in the prices of a basket of consumer goods. An extra hundred dollars a month for employees do not move those oceans, especially when those employees are buried in debt and one flat tire away from bankruptcy.
Corporations price gouging up and down the economy directly affects the inflation figures, and we’re seeing profit margins at forty-year highs, meaning they’re charging more because they can, not because they have to.
It’s not overly complicated but the blame is easily and always placed on the bottom.
We’ve also been propagandized to have an inverted view of the economy, where anything that helps workers or the people is said to somehow be negative while things that only benefit the top earners and corporations are inherently good.
The way the media talks about inflation adds to the problem. Obviously, Republicans are going to blame the poor for everything, and unfortunately, many Democrats fall into that trap as well.
It is in the Democrats' power to relieve a bit of the pressure. At a minimum, they could be speaking intelligently on the issue and accurately placing the blame while truly fighting for working families. With campaign finance and lobbying, everyone knows that’s not going to happen.
It’s the era of political theatre. The era of fake handcuffs. The era of continually promising to reduce medication prices on the campaign trail — which Biden could do by executive order — but then continuing to serve corporate donors and ignoring constituents then being mad at those very suffering voters for not coming out again and again and again to keep you in office.
It all adds to the apathy, anger, and desperation.
A lot of that anger is being channeled in frightening directions.
As always, Democrats come across as hypocritical when screaming about preserving democracy during the January 6th hearings when they’re actively ignoring the cries of millions of Americans who need help and are looking for answers.
Many have said we were lucky Trump was such a buffoon because, rather than channel the most popular Democratic president in history and going against the wealthy, Dems are choosing to set up a scenario where a more clever version of the Orange Don could take the wheel and close the doors of democracy behind them forever.
We know Mitch McConnel and Charles Koch would have no objection.
“Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership…Finally, in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat.” — FDR
