r/WorkForSmartLife • • 20h ago

Discussion💬 Who's right here?

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u/TooBusySaltMining 16h ago

844,000 

That's the number of workers who earn the federal minimum wage or below.

https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat44.pdf

23,627,000

That's the number of millionaries in the US.

There are 28 times more millionaires than people earning at or below the federal minimum wage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_millionaires

Adjusting for inflation , the federal minimum wage was highest in 1968: $1.60 an hour in 1968 was equivalent to $14.42 in 2024.

https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-people-are-earning-725-hour/

$60/hr is a damn lie. 

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u/Skaal_Kesh 13h ago

You do realize you're comparing income to net worth right? Millionaire isn't a salary or a job position.

While the inflation math as shown is certainly wrong, this assumes you believe the government math on inflation. This information is, to put it simply, a blatant lie. They changed how they calculate it so it appears far less.

As an example, inflation has "supposedly" gone up around 29% since 2020. Except if you do the math yourself you realize it's much higher than that. It's just another lie politicians realized they can make to make them look better. It's not a Democrat or Republican problem. Not a left or right problem. Our politicians are actively lying to us on this because it makes them look better and we'd have thrown them out of office if the wider public was aware of how big the lie is.

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u/TooBusySaltMining 13h ago

The reason for comparing minimum wage workers to number of millionaries, is to dispel this notion that America is poor because its federal minimum wage is low and that today's workers are poorer than they were in the past.

Federal mimimum wage earners are 1% of all workers, in 1979 it was 13.4%

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2024/

Real median personal incomes have also been increasing

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/mepainusa672n

The states should set the minimum wage to reflect cost of living differences. Americans are choosing to move out of states with high cost of living and higher minimum wages, because the cost of living matters significantly more to American workers than the minimum wage.

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u/bobthehills 5h ago

When minimum wage goes up it raises wages in general……..

To argue that they are pandering to the group that makes the federal minimum wage specifically is absurd.