Azuren said:
I feel mousy of those graphs don't also take into account that people in the US used to enjoy a higher average pay (adjusted for inflation). That's kind of the whole problem with this minimum wage business. |
Wages have remained stagnant (only declined pre and post recession, otherwise over the long term 1950-2010 they've slightly increased) in the U.S because they've already reached the saturation point and there is more global competition (most of Europe was incapacitated post-war, and half of Europe was stuck with bad economic models (centrally planned Soviet economics.)) It is unreasonable to expect real wages to increase forever without the rest of the world catching up first.
Nevertheless, global poverty has ever declined, and I don't know about you but I don't value American lives more or less than other people's lives. I am happy hundreds of millions in China are coming out of real poverty, and if that means Americans can't buy a third car because they don't have artificial market power in the manufacturing economy, so be it.
