BrainWorms

Shawn Fain argued that workers should get the same 40% raise CEOs have received

https://apnews.com/article/uwa-strike-gm-ford-stellantis-pay-dacdfe9ec0736f4fbf3ce7ee38b4bcf4

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Yet there's another revealing figure that underscores how the minimum wage — created by Congress after the Great Depression as a way to ensure that Americans were fairly paid for their labor — has failed to keep up with the times.

"That may sound pretty crazy, but that's roughly what the minimum wage would be today if it had kept pace with productivity growth since its value peaked in 1968," wrote Dean Baker, senior economist at the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research, in a recent blog post.

Inequality also widened during the pandemic, with the wealth of the richest Americans surging as stocks soared, while those at the bottom were more likely to get laid off than white-collar workers and also more likely to work in jobs where they faced a great chance of catching COVID-19.

For one, more than tripling the federal baseline wage would result in a host of undesirable economic effects, from a spike in unemployment (as employers would need to cut jobs in order to pay the workers they could afford to keep on) to higher inflation.

Although businesses and institutions like schools must reopen — and stay open — for the labor market to continue healing from the impact of COVID-19, the Delta variant's rapid spread argues in favor of shutting down to safeguard public health.

"The fact that we saw some wage increases at the bottom and the middle in recent months is a positive sign for workers, but it doesn't represent a long-run shift in the power balance in the workplace."

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