You can look to Scandinavia to answer this question.
Basically labor becomes vested in being part of high value activities. You will order your big mac from a touch screen and pick it up from the window when called. The burger meal will still cost $20, but not $50.
You also need the generous unemployment policy with (actual) retraining options. There's a common refrain "who has time to learn how to code?". The person who's union will provide 70% of their salary while pursuing a free education does. But that's done by agreement with the union, if the person would be better off training as a plumber, that will probably happen instead. Basically you need to remove the incentive for clinging onto unproductive jobs for the sake of jobs.
It's not a utopia though, don't get me started about the Danish job center which is basically state funded harassment.
It's difficult to do apples to apples. Looks like $22/h with six weeks paid vacation was widely quoted in 2021. After social redistributions your probably in the ballpark of $40/h US equivalent.
For what is worth, looks like a big Mac meal is 99kr, ~$15
I don’t think you can count social redistributions because they aren’t job related. You can look at the employer payroll tax side and add that up though, both the USA and Denmark have that.
$22 is slightly more than what a McDonald’s worker earns here in Seattle, if we are comparing Aarhus (I’ve never visited any other cities in Denmark). And probably no vacation.
$22 in Seattle would give you plenty of cash for a visit to REI headquarters to buy a real nice ultralight tent and dry down sleeping bag that will fit into a small enough backpack that people might not figure out you're homeless.
Drug addicts are the visible homeless in Seattle, they aren’t going to make rent at any price, let alone hold a job (so why not drift to HCOL cities with more generous social services and less enforcement for shop lifting). Functional unhoused who are either crashing on couches, or sleeping in vans or cars. Most people holding jobs, even at $20/hour, actually have housing. It’s not impossible to get at that wage if you aren’t supporting a family at the same time.
I ended up under a tarp at that wage. Then I worked a rotation on a fishing boat and afterwords hitchiked to Eugene where I could actually rent a room from full time labor.
It really is difficult to compare apples to apple. But I think if the average person were to make an informed choice between a life with a job earning $22/h job in Denmark or the US, most would choose Denmark.
FWIW, I grew up in Australia, live in the Bay Area, and lived 4 years in Denmark. I have friends on both sides in that income bracket.
> But I think if the average person were to make an informed choice between a life with a job earning $22/h job in Denmark or the US, most would choose Denmark.
Sure, but the average person isn’t planning to make $22/hour for their entire life. This is also why we have a lot of Danes here in the Seattle area (working in tech making lots of money), they have the highest CS graduate degree rate per capita so it makes sense.
Maybe if upper-management gave up some of their massive profit gains instead of raising prices, we wouldn't have such crazy inflation to begin with, and this whole point would be moot.
"Price what the market can bear" is the cornerstone of real estate. And let's not forget about price as a function of supply and demand.
That is, wages will increase, and housing will gladly follow. $50 p/hr will get sucked up in no time - unless supply is increased significantly. $50 p/hr will increase what the market can bear; it's also increase demand (e.g., couple who couldn't afford to seperate will now do so).
And so on.
Time and again we see such manipulation go wrong (e.g., student loans and the cost of higher edu), and yet we keep dreaming that never time it'll be different. The naivete is embarrassing.
Stupid people don't understand it will make all costs rise and we won't end up in the same situation, but a worse situation because there will be higher markups as well (just about every business did this after the covid shutdowns)
People are stupid and I'm convinced these people want to destroy the country. When you raise wages, things like automation will happen much faster and people will have to do more work and there will be a ton of layoffs
Maybe that’s what they want? Yes, a $50 min wage isn’t viable for many jobs, but those jobs could be automated anyways, especially with the wage pressure of employing real people making the capital investments work out. It would have to be coupled with some UBI, though, since a lot of people aren’t going to be able to provide labor that passes that threshold.
Minimum wage was touted as a way to push out blacks, immigrants, and other undesirables with asymmetric access to education and capital when it was introduced in the US in the wake of the great depression. They wanted a floor high enough that only a nice white boy would earn and thus outlaw the lesser paid workers to the fringes where they can be further exploited.
Minimum wage still has this function today, a policy for smug elite to smash down the least fortunate while doing double speak to pretend like they are doing the poor a favor.
Is there any discussion on a variable minimum wage based on relative factors like company size, profit margins, etc.? Instead of a global minimum, just add factors that target whatever problem needs to be solved. Surely nobody wants to bankrupt small businesses that have good employee relationships and make little profit. No reason to slash those jobs. A global minimum seems like performing surgery with gardening scissors. Are these politicians that void of creativity or are they uninterested in actual solutions?
> Just do that math. Just do that math,” Rep. Lee said. “Of course we have national minimum wages that we need to raise to a living wage. You’re talking about 20, 25 dollars, fine. But I have got to be focused on what California needs and what the affordability factor is when we calculate this wage.”
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadI personally do not feel that it is reasonable to assume that minimum wage should support more than the basic needs of an individual.
If we raise the minimum to $104k a year, then what do we pay first responders and teachers?
Who is going to purchase the $50 mcdonalds big mac's and grande lattes?
Basically labor becomes vested in being part of high value activities. You will order your big mac from a touch screen and pick it up from the window when called. The burger meal will still cost $20, but not $50.
You also need the generous unemployment policy with (actual) retraining options. There's a common refrain "who has time to learn how to code?". The person who's union will provide 70% of their salary while pursuing a free education does. But that's done by agreement with the union, if the person would be better off training as a plumber, that will probably happen instead. Basically you need to remove the incentive for clinging onto unproductive jobs for the sake of jobs.
It's not a utopia though, don't get me started about the Danish job center which is basically state funded harassment.
For what is worth, looks like a big Mac meal is 99kr, ~$15
$22 is slightly more than what a McDonald’s worker earns here in Seattle, if we are comparing Aarhus (I’ve never visited any other cities in Denmark). And probably no vacation.
FWIW, I grew up in Australia, live in the Bay Area, and lived 4 years in Denmark. I have friends on both sides in that income bracket.
Sure, but the average person isn’t planning to make $22/hour for their entire life. This is also why we have a lot of Danes here in the Seattle area (working in tech making lots of money), they have the highest CS graduate degree rate per capita so it makes sense.
"Price what the market can bear" is the cornerstone of real estate. And let's not forget about price as a function of supply and demand.
That is, wages will increase, and housing will gladly follow. $50 p/hr will get sucked up in no time - unless supply is increased significantly. $50 p/hr will increase what the market can bear; it's also increase demand (e.g., couple who couldn't afford to seperate will now do so).
And so on.
Time and again we see such manipulation go wrong (e.g., student loans and the cost of higher edu), and yet we keep dreaming that never time it'll be different. The naivete is embarrassing.
People are stupid and I'm convinced these people want to destroy the country. When you raise wages, things like automation will happen much faster and people will have to do more work and there will be a ton of layoffs
Minimum wage still has this function today, a policy for smug elite to smash down the least fortunate while doing double speak to pretend like they are doing the poor a favor.
>mow lawns for a summer
>brand new Mustang
Can she do math?