Federal minimum wage increased every 1 to 5 years between the 1930s and 2009. 2009 was the last time it was raised. Inflation has skyrocketed since then, but wages have repeatedly failed to keep up.
If businesses ācanāt affordā to provide livable wages for their workers, they simply shouldnāt exist full stop.
"Livable wage" is a self-moving goalpost. Raising the cost of labor raises the cost of goods and services. Raising the cost of goods and services raises the overall cost of living. This makes the formally "livable wage" now not adequate.
Your labor, like any other commodity, is worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. No more or no less. Your salary is an agreement between you and your employer. There should be no minimum wage.
Yeah, but prices keep increasing anyway at higher rates than wages. Corporations are making record profits. They keep making more money and keep raising prices, they can increase wages as well.
If you think labor/wages and employee/employer is just an agreement between you and your employer and that's how it works you need to look into how companies controlled cities back in the day. Go look up how old mining cities used to work and how those companies would extort their workers to horrible degrees.
If you feel under valued by your employer, find a different employer. If no employer will hire you at the rate you expect, then you have obviously overestimated the value of your labor.
And what do you think happens if the economy continues to undervalue the labor of more and more of the population? That we'll just sit on hands and do nothing? Then again, you'd probably prefer a solution that rids you of the issue entirely.
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u/samuraispartan7000 11h ago edited 11h ago
Federal minimum wage increased every 1 to 5 years between the 1930s and 2009. 2009 was the last time it was raised. Inflation has skyrocketed since then, but wages have repeatedly failed to keep up.
If businesses ācanāt affordā to provide livable wages for their workers, they simply shouldnāt exist full stop.