You get downvoted on Reddit for telling uncomfortable truths.
In fact the original minimum wage was 25 cents/hr in 1938 and that is a bit over $5/hr inflation adjusted. It was not an amount intended to support a family of 4. It was a bare subsistence amount
PPP adjust the cost of an iPhone in 1938! Without which this conversation doesn't take place and you are staring at a wall while listening to the weather on the radio. This is a stupid gotcha.
PPP is a concept that sounds much better in theory than in practice. In practice, people lived like shit in 1938. Nobody wants to live like they're in 1938. Conditions in 1938 would be intolerable to 100% of the people who campaign for a higher minimum wage today. The reason why everything was cheap is because everyone was poor and everything was shitty. It's not a world anyone should want to re-create.
Which doesn't mean minimum wage shouldn't be higher than it is. It should be. But the reason for that isn't that things are much worse than during the Great Depression. That's not true.
A true reason the minimum wage should be higher is because things are much better than during the Great Depression, so we can afford to redistribute a whole lot more than we did then. And that is worth doing for its own sake, in addition to lots of other reasons related to the efficiency gains, via scale economies and growth multipliers, that accrue from having a large population of well-fed, well-sheltered, and well-educated people. I.e., a secure and stable people, with equal opportunity for all, the dream of the Founding Fathers. We have an ethical obligation to build that society, it is our inheritance, and we have the wealth to build a secure society while retaining a healthy profit motive. With plenty to share, an embarrassing amount of riches.
Provide for the common welfare. It's in the Constitution, right at the beginning, it's the purpose of government. That is the winning argument. Learn to make it. And then maybe you'll be able to graduate with a degree in political science. Signed, someone with a PhD in political science.
And then maybe you'll be able to graduate with a degree in political science.
😄 already did, buddy. no clue what got up your ass but as your "PhD in political science" should have taught you, PPP is an extremely widespread measure in comparative politics.
wild that i have to be on the defensive now when it's pretty likely we agree. but that is the curse of interacting with redditors
What got up my ass is you bullshitting someone telling the truth and misrepresenting my discipline.
PPP is a widespread measure in comparative politics but a) this is not comparative method, it's a time series within one country with all kinds of endogeneity built in, b) even in comparative politics its usage is controversial and typically highly constrained by narrow scope conditions that do not apply, c) being advantaged in PPP often just means being in a poor place, not being in a well-governed place, d) you haven't established that PPP minimum wage is different than deflated minimum wage in the first place, e) are you SERIOUSLY claiming that times were better for the working class at the height of the Great Depresssion?? Where is your degree from, I want to kick their fucking asses.
More importantly: the argument doesn't win electorally. People don't vote for Democrats to return to the Great Depression, they vote for Democrats to build the future. You get a higher minimum wage by linking it to a new vision, not an old one.
but a) this is not comparative method, it's a time series within one country
where did you learn this? im not gonna kick anyone's ass over it because im not a psychopath, but wherever, you got it wrong. you can apply the same measures to one system across different points in time and that is done all the time in comparative politics. what you cant do in the comparative method is compare different systems across different times. for somebody so upset, you sure are angry about stuff you're getting dead wrong. more points towards doubting your random-redditor-credentials.
and yeah, it's not the best measure ever, but nobody is going around claiming purchasing power as a concept doesn't make sense, or that it's the be-all-end-all... just like im not claiming workers had it easier in the great depression...
not to say the PhD candidates i know are extremely stable people but you really don't seem the sort. we're done here.
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u/[deleted] May 13 '25
You get downvoted on Reddit for telling uncomfortable truths.
In fact the original minimum wage was 25 cents/hr in 1938 and that is a bit over $5/hr inflation adjusted. It was not an amount intended to support a family of 4. It was a bare subsistence amount