• Mulligrubs@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12 days

    The minimum wage was supposed to be enough for one person to take care of a family of four and keep them out of poverty.

    Now, the minimum wage is inadequate to support a person, let alone a pet or family.

    Henry Ford, the first CEO of Ford Motor Co. made 50x more than his baseline employee.

    Now, a starting employee for Ford makes about $18.00 an hour, $38,000 a year. Not enough to support any family (but more than minimum wage by far)

    Now the CEO of Ford made $27,000,000 a year, or about $37,000.00 an hour. That’s over 700x more than a baseline employee.

    (all approx. from duck duck go search)

    • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
      12 days

      and this is why minimums should be pegged to some cost of living measure so they constantly adjust

    • lobut@lemmy.ca
      12 days

      I met Americans telling me that these poor corporations can’t survive if they have to pay a minimum salary and how it was meant for teenagers … it was weird. I was like, you live in SF … what’s the minimum again? how much is rent again?

      • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
        12 days

        It’s just objectively false. The minimum wage was not “meant for teenagers”.

        No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country… By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living.

        -Franklin D. Roosevelt

        You can hem and haw all day and what minimum wage should be, but what it was meant to be is unambiguously clear.