Quote:
Originally Posted by BlackCrayon
what i don't get is what makes minimum wage workers worth less now than they were 20-30 years ago? wages across the board have not kept up with the cost of living. people like yourself just say, make more money but the more money people make the more things are going to cost and then they'll need to make even more money and then things will cost even more still...and round and round we go so how do we get off this circle jerk?
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I actually think credit plays a fairly big role in this.
When I was a little kid (I'm 42 now) getting credit was not easy. My mom had to jump through a lot of hoops to buy the house we grew up in and she didn't make enough money to buy a new car, she always had to buy used cars. When the VCR came out they were $1,500 and the average person couldn't afford them so the average person didn't have them. The idea of financing something like a TV or a VCR or many things was just crazy.
Then things started to change. The lengths of mortgages increased. The lengths of car loans increased. Just about every major retailer out there started offering some kind of credit card or line or credit. Banks started offering lines of credit just for opening a checking account. Getting credit was easy.
With this came more purchasing power. The average person making the average wage could now afford a bigger house, a better car, a nice TV, a cool vacation etc. Of course it all came on credit and created debt. As companies started realizing that people would be willing to spend more if you gave them longer to pay they simply stopped making many of the lower priced and affordable things they did before. They stopped marketing things at their retail price, but instead at their monthly price.
As the years went on we found ourselves in a situation where people weren't demanding higher pay because they could still afford the things they wanted without getting raises.
Now workers can get all kinds of aid from the government to help subsidize their pay. So workers aren't worth less than they were 20-30 years ago, but a shift in policies, the emergence of various government programs and the easy ability to get credit has made it so that a person making very little has options and can still survive. Instead of demanding higher pay, they turn to other sources.
Just my 2 cents.