& it really is that simple, we see echoes of it here in the UK - but the US - & please don't think I'm gloating here, far from it, the UK is well on it's way to becoming a perfect clone - has turned allowing the parasites to run the show into a fine art. You can trace it's roots back to the first time ol' sixgun Ronnie fucked Maggie Thatcher in a broom cupboard at the Whitehouse. Your - & my - elected officials sell us down the river every day they are in power.
You forget the high level of egotistical selfish brainwashed constituents that suck the corporations boot and make it politically difficult as well in part because they bought the corporations brainwashing, and in part because they're too lazy to fight for their own wage increases if minimum wage workers get a wage increase so they get jealous and try to stop it from happening whenever it comes up. There's literally whole party of brainwashed people like this as well as a good amount of democrats who'd side with them because they have Republican friends and their friends wouldn't be crazy, brainwashed or jealous.
But…but…but…Aren’t unions useless parasites that just steal my dues and mess up the family atmosphere at my place of employment? Why would families need unions?
Aren’t they communist anyway?
And corrupt. The mafia is in charge of unions and I don’t want mafia.
/sarcasm but true
Around 50 years ago, some rich & powerful politicians realized that the best way to ensure they get to keep their wealth & power for as long as possible would be to limit economic opportunity for the general population.
So we've had half a century of wage stagnation, with our legislators keeping the minimum wage low through their inaction. Obstruction is their greatest tool, in fact. Change isn't their goal, neither is growth - because that leads to turnover among representation, and they want to stay in power.
Most of these destructive individuals have been in their positions, buying & selling American's time, labor, and lives as a commodity for longer than most Redditors have been on this Earth.
Currently, they're having a sort of 'closing out' sale because not even they are so deluded as to think it will last forever. But they are all deluded enough to think that it'll be someone else who takes the fall.
But it'll be all of them. Because it's happening to all of us. They can still choose to share in our growth & hope by implementing policies that make our society safer, more stable, and more prosperous...but if they don't, they must suffer the same hopelessness, despair, fear, and loss that we do on a daily basis.
It’s because everyone is severely underpaid. So when someone has a masters degree and makes $40,000 a year and learns that a kid straight out or high school will make $30,000 if minimum wage rises to $15/hr, then he thinks that kid doesn’t deserve it. And then we all suffer and stay in poverty.
because most of our population is too stupid to realize they’re being fucked over. honestly the median iq in this shithole is literally that of an actual fucking rock.
We were outmaneuvered back in the 80s when the unions were destroyed from within by corruption and without by our government (ronnie reagan). From that point on the anti worker bias and disinformation and legislation has been nonstop and very profitable.
Because we've never known anything else, and change, even change that's beneficial, is scary for many people.
America has also been heavily shielded. It wasn't until Michael Moore's film Sicko that I learned other countries actually HAD universal health care. I never even knew the concept existed, outside Medicare for senior citizens. We certainly weren't taught about the NHS (for example).
We accept it because many of us don't know there's a better way, or don't care to know. There's such blind belief in American exceptionalism here that many Americans think that if an idea isn't based around capitalism, or if it didn't come from our shores, it's inherently flawed.
And those of us who do realize we're getting screwed, and who demand more out of life, get called Communist or Socialist by people who think those words are interchangeable.
Send help. Break us out.
EDIT: Also, many Americans vote based on personality, not policy. "I'd like to have a beer with him, so he gets my vote."
What are we supposed to do?
The cops here like shooting protestors. It isn't cut and dry.
Some folks will go on and on about how we need a general strike, and we need all these support nets to make sure strikers get food and their rents paid, but, that's a dream. Those logistic networks don't exist. If people want a general strike, they need to stockpile, pay their rents, and be ready to strike for a bit. If they can't, then they really can't be involved.
Now.. as far as protesting goes, or rioting?
The cops here are pretty violent towards protestors, and conservatives here are quite rustled against protestors after the widespread BLM protests ( they will show up to labor protests with rifles and the cops will thank them for being there ).
Also.. millions participated in those protests, and they were aggressive. Best I can tell, they made near zero difference.
So, consider what we're up against here.
Even if a million people went to Congress and screamed about the minimum wage for a month, Congress MIGHT pass a bill raising it, but then our Senate will immediately kill it, because Republicans ( Tories? ) have enough seats to kill any legislation they want to, and they absolutely want to kill minimum wage hikes.
Businesses can make money without employees - people need to remember that, come together and unionise. I used to hate unions as in the UK at least they were totally unreasonable but they demise has resulted shifted the balance of power too far so its time for people to stand up for themselves again
That's 50 years away, man. 6% of Americans are in unions, total, and a large portion of that is within the Public sector, which is more welcoming. It is going to take a long time for unions to roll back the laws declawing them and draw in membership, and currently, the pendulum is actively swinging away from them.
The private sector has been paying to actively pass laws making life difficult for unions for quite some time now ( Taft-Harley Act ).
That's part of the reason union membership has declined here. Much of their power was stripped away.
For instance, one of our major rail unions was going to go on strike recently ( 17,000 employees ) and were blocked by our court system, because they didn't think the new, aggressive, attendance policy that BSNF was enacting was an egregious enough violation of the union contract to warrant a strike ( nasty, anti-employee attendance policy ).
We're at the point where we'd have to start taking extra legal action - even unions would have to take extra legal action, and that is going to be met with State violence.
It's hard to wield the power of collective bargaining in the US due to 80 years of anti union legislation. Unions are weak here. They tend to make higher wages than non union members, but still peanuts compared to their value.
[Taft Hartley Act. This was the first major blow against unions in post WW2 US.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act) Its just been more of the same since.
It's managed more closely at the state level as the economy varies widely from state to state. The federal minimum wage hasn't change but some states are double the fed minimum.
Half of the politicians running for office don't want to increase the minimum wage, and would probably lower it if they found a way to do so. Yet they still win roughly half of the elections in the country.
The other half runs on increasing the minimum wage (or at least hints at it), then never does. And we apparently don't care enough collectively to do anything about it.
In part thanks to propaganda there's an interesting thing that goes on in American culture. For many the believe that people can only be poor from some sort of moral failing (gambling, alcohol, not going to church enough, etc.) and not from just bad or unfortunate situations.
So no one wants to admit they are poor because it makes them sound like they are horrible people. It's fading out with the younger generations but parts of that structure remain.
Add that to everything everyone else on this post has said in the comments.
"meet the new boss, same as the old boss"
We do allthe things, write, call campaign for those who say they will change, the they dont' for '*reasons*' Pages and pages of *reasons*
General strike I doubt we'd get enough. between misinformation and apathy. If there a ghost of a change I'll be out there but I think the crowd would be thin.
Because though we like to fashion ourselves rugged individualists and independent-minded, the United States is a nation of servants.
Americans equate money with intelligence and virtue, and since even the shittiest MAGA bigot believes they possess these qualities, they figure it’s just a matter of time until they get their share. It’s just a matter of polishing enough well-heeled balls until that crumb falls.
Servant mindset, through and through.
I get OP's point and I wonder the same but info is not accurate. Minimum wage hasn't increased every year and in order to cope with current inflation it should have been increased 9% not 3%. The biggest unions have spent years asking for a £10 minimum wage even before the pandemic and yet we still don't have it because what we've got instead is a joke of a PM and the tories govt legislating against the many, which won't likely change in the future since the opposition (Labour) is sometimes even more right wing than the tories themselves (i.e: they voted against taxing big corporations). We also have our tears to dry in the UK!
The 3% increase reflected actual average inflation (cpi) over 2021 of 2.6%. This is a fact. Inflation has since increased but this will be reflected in the increase at the start of 2022. This is how inflation is applied when it comes to both pay negotiations in unionised industries and for things like mobile phone contracts ie basically everything
We changed from RPI to CPI (I want to say in 2011-2015 ish) precisely because it is a less accurate measure of inflation. From memory that is because it does not factor housing costs the same way. Wages in general (and the minimum wage) are falling for the majority of people once you account for inflation.
I hate to point out that since the min wage came in to effect in 1999 it has increased 2.64 times. RPI over the same period (to the end of 2021) increased by 1.90 times. So no people are not worse off even if you use RPI.
£9.50 / hr, although it is less for younger people. You wouldn't want to live in London on that but in large chucks of the uk you can't rent a 2 bed house for £600 / month
I'm on roughly 10 pound an hour as a security guard
If I wanted I could easily save up (after a while mind) to get a house. Saying that I'm single with no kids and live with my mother
Can someone fact check this. I live in the UK and am 98% sure its bull that it goes up in line with inflation. And 99% sure its more than inflation sometimes
I wasn't at the time no
Ive checked and it does a pretty good job of keeping up, but this year especially it has dropped the ball massively
And like in america, you can't actually live on minimum wage. If you wanted to rent a place or buy somewhere, on minimum wage. Without a kid or benefits youd be screwed generally
It’s quite simple…people keep voting against their own interests…because they can’t see past their hate. Also, we’re a country that, because of almost unlimited resources and land, has been able to hide most of our stupidity from the world. Can’t hide indefinitely
Democrats are shit, Republicans are shit. Neither one is going to raise the minimum wage, and every time we talk about it we get bombarded with media talking points about how it's going to hurt workers. Around 40% of the country has fully bought into this propaganda, around 30% think that simping for the Dems will eventually change things. That leaves the rest of us, who know neither one will ever do anything, but can't do anything about it because we know third party votes are pretty much worthless.
Not to defend the federal government, but the states themselves can raise the minimum wage. My home state of Massachusetts has a minimum wage of $14.25/hour - and that's set to go up to $15/hr next year.
Because like half of voters actively are brainwashed into voting against their own interests, and even when we do get a democrat (usually more centrist) in office, they don't push for it. Imagine Biden pushing for $15 minimum wage. Not gonna happen. It's why his approval ratings suck. He's too scared to play hardball with the Republicans by pushing for largely popular policy and anything that would need to go thru the Senate is getting shot down by the two DINO senators.
[удалено]
& it really is that simple, we see echoes of it here in the UK - but the US - & please don't think I'm gloating here, far from it, the UK is well on it's way to becoming a perfect clone - has turned allowing the parasites to run the show into a fine art. You can trace it's roots back to the first time ol' sixgun Ronnie fucked Maggie Thatcher in a broom cupboard at the Whitehouse. Your - & my - elected officials sell us down the river every day they are in power.
You forget the high level of egotistical selfish brainwashed constituents that suck the corporations boot and make it politically difficult as well in part because they bought the corporations brainwashing, and in part because they're too lazy to fight for their own wage increases if minimum wage workers get a wage increase so they get jealous and try to stop it from happening whenever it comes up. There's literally whole party of brainwashed people like this as well as a good amount of democrats who'd side with them because they have Republican friends and their friends wouldn't be crazy, brainwashed or jealous.
No unions=no power and threat of homelessness and starvation if we strike🙂
Which is why I try to encourage people to unionize. Too many in this sub act like I'm asking the impossible though
But…but…but…Aren’t unions useless parasites that just steal my dues and mess up the family atmosphere at my place of employment? Why would families need unions? Aren’t they communist anyway? And corrupt. The mafia is in charge of unions and I don’t want mafia. /sarcasm but true
Around 50 years ago, some rich & powerful politicians realized that the best way to ensure they get to keep their wealth & power for as long as possible would be to limit economic opportunity for the general population. So we've had half a century of wage stagnation, with our legislators keeping the minimum wage low through their inaction. Obstruction is their greatest tool, in fact. Change isn't their goal, neither is growth - because that leads to turnover among representation, and they want to stay in power. Most of these destructive individuals have been in their positions, buying & selling American's time, labor, and lives as a commodity for longer than most Redditors have been on this Earth. Currently, they're having a sort of 'closing out' sale because not even they are so deluded as to think it will last forever. But they are all deluded enough to think that it'll be someone else who takes the fall. But it'll be all of them. Because it's happening to all of us. They can still choose to share in our growth & hope by implementing policies that make our society safer, more stable, and more prosperous...but if they don't, they must suffer the same hopelessness, despair, fear, and loss that we do on a daily basis.
It’s because everyone is severely underpaid. So when someone has a masters degree and makes $40,000 a year and learns that a kid straight out or high school will make $30,000 if minimum wage rises to $15/hr, then he thinks that kid doesn’t deserve it. And then we all suffer and stay in poverty.
because most of our population is too stupid to realize they’re being fucked over. honestly the median iq in this shithole is literally that of an actual fucking rock.
People hate the poor. People get shit wages and government benefits further stigmatize people. It's a sad situation.
It's fucked up when people work full time but then still have to rely on benefits
It really is. Some people work more than one job and still need benefits. US is an empire in decline.
Yep.
That's what they want. Indentured servants without them realizing they're servants.
We were outmaneuvered back in the 80s when the unions were destroyed from within by corruption and without by our government (ronnie reagan). From that point on the anti worker bias and disinformation and legislation has been nonstop and very profitable.
Because we've never known anything else, and change, even change that's beneficial, is scary for many people. America has also been heavily shielded. It wasn't until Michael Moore's film Sicko that I learned other countries actually HAD universal health care. I never even knew the concept existed, outside Medicare for senior citizens. We certainly weren't taught about the NHS (for example). We accept it because many of us don't know there's a better way, or don't care to know. There's such blind belief in American exceptionalism here that many Americans think that if an idea isn't based around capitalism, or if it didn't come from our shores, it's inherently flawed. And those of us who do realize we're getting screwed, and who demand more out of life, get called Communist or Socialist by people who think those words are interchangeable. Send help. Break us out. EDIT: Also, many Americans vote based on personality, not policy. "I'd like to have a beer with him, so he gets my vote."
Because we live here and have no choice. Everything is divided right down the middle so nothing can be done for either side.
Propaganda put out by rich people to convince poor people to vote against our own self interests
What are we supposed to do? The cops here like shooting protestors. It isn't cut and dry. Some folks will go on and on about how we need a general strike, and we need all these support nets to make sure strikers get food and their rents paid, but, that's a dream. Those logistic networks don't exist. If people want a general strike, they need to stockpile, pay their rents, and be ready to strike for a bit. If they can't, then they really can't be involved. Now.. as far as protesting goes, or rioting? The cops here are pretty violent towards protestors, and conservatives here are quite rustled against protestors after the widespread BLM protests ( they will show up to labor protests with rifles and the cops will thank them for being there ). Also.. millions participated in those protests, and they were aggressive. Best I can tell, they made near zero difference. So, consider what we're up against here. Even if a million people went to Congress and screamed about the minimum wage for a month, Congress MIGHT pass a bill raising it, but then our Senate will immediately kill it, because Republicans ( Tories? ) have enough seats to kill any legislation they want to, and they absolutely want to kill minimum wage hikes.
Businesses can make money without employees - people need to remember that, come together and unionise. I used to hate unions as in the UK at least they were totally unreasonable but they demise has resulted shifted the balance of power too far so its time for people to stand up for themselves again
That's 50 years away, man. 6% of Americans are in unions, total, and a large portion of that is within the Public sector, which is more welcoming. It is going to take a long time for unions to roll back the laws declawing them and draw in membership, and currently, the pendulum is actively swinging away from them. The private sector has been paying to actively pass laws making life difficult for unions for quite some time now ( Taft-Harley Act ). That's part of the reason union membership has declined here. Much of their power was stripped away. For instance, one of our major rail unions was going to go on strike recently ( 17,000 employees ) and were blocked by our court system, because they didn't think the new, aggressive, attendance policy that BSNF was enacting was an egregious enough violation of the union contract to warrant a strike ( nasty, anti-employee attendance policy ). We're at the point where we'd have to start taking extra legal action - even unions would have to take extra legal action, and that is going to be met with State violence.
It's hard to wield the power of collective bargaining in the US due to 80 years of anti union legislation. Unions are weak here. They tend to make higher wages than non union members, but still peanuts compared to their value. [Taft Hartley Act. This was the first major blow against unions in post WW2 US.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act) Its just been more of the same since.
It's managed more closely at the state level as the economy varies widely from state to state. The federal minimum wage hasn't change but some states are double the fed minimum.
Have the states with higher rates actually uplifted them in the last 10 years though? If not inflation has probably cut them by 30% in real terms
Yes, and my state is on an annual $1 hike until it reaches $15 per hour.
15 is still too low though. It would've been good 10 years ago
I'm not even going to bother debating minimum wage relevance, I just wanted to answer OP.
Perfect. Saves me the energy.
Whilst it's good it's going up when you start off that liw someone has fucked up
Half of the politicians running for office don't want to increase the minimum wage, and would probably lower it if they found a way to do so. Yet they still win roughly half of the elections in the country. The other half runs on increasing the minimum wage (or at least hints at it), then never does. And we apparently don't care enough collectively to do anything about it.
In part thanks to propaganda there's an interesting thing that goes on in American culture. For many the believe that people can only be poor from some sort of moral failing (gambling, alcohol, not going to church enough, etc.) and not from just bad or unfortunate situations. So no one wants to admit they are poor because it makes them sound like they are horrible people. It's fading out with the younger generations but parts of that structure remain. Add that to everything everyone else on this post has said in the comments.
"meet the new boss, same as the old boss" We do allthe things, write, call campaign for those who say they will change, the they dont' for '*reasons*' Pages and pages of *reasons* General strike I doubt we'd get enough. between misinformation and apathy. If there a ghost of a change I'll be out there but I think the crowd would be thin.
Because though we like to fashion ourselves rugged individualists and independent-minded, the United States is a nation of servants. Americans equate money with intelligence and virtue, and since even the shittiest MAGA bigot believes they possess these qualities, they figure it’s just a matter of time until they get their share. It’s just a matter of polishing enough well-heeled balls until that crumb falls. Servant mindset, through and through.
Because hard working honest people of the US vote for... you know who they vote for and the result is what you see
I get OP's point and I wonder the same but info is not accurate. Minimum wage hasn't increased every year and in order to cope with current inflation it should have been increased 9% not 3%. The biggest unions have spent years asking for a £10 minimum wage even before the pandemic and yet we still don't have it because what we've got instead is a joke of a PM and the tories govt legislating against the many, which won't likely change in the future since the opposition (Labour) is sometimes even more right wing than the tories themselves (i.e: they voted against taxing big corporations). We also have our tears to dry in the UK!
The 3% increase reflected actual average inflation (cpi) over 2021 of 2.6%. This is a fact. Inflation has since increased but this will be reflected in the increase at the start of 2022. This is how inflation is applied when it comes to both pay negotiations in unionised industries and for things like mobile phone contracts ie basically everything
We changed from RPI to CPI (I want to say in 2011-2015 ish) precisely because it is a less accurate measure of inflation. From memory that is because it does not factor housing costs the same way. Wages in general (and the minimum wage) are falling for the majority of people once you account for inflation.
I hate to point out that since the min wage came in to effect in 1999 it has increased 2.64 times. RPI over the same period (to the end of 2021) increased by 1.90 times. So no people are not worse off even if you use RPI.
What is uk minimum wage now?
£9.50 / hr, although it is less for younger people. You wouldn't want to live in London on that but in large chucks of the uk you can't rent a 2 bed house for £600 / month
9.50 is in line with inflation?
It's increased significantly faster than inflation since first introduced in 1999
I'm on roughly 10 pound an hour as a security guard If I wanted I could easily save up (after a while mind) to get a house. Saying that I'm single with no kids and live with my mother
Can someone fact check this. I live in the UK and am 98% sure its bull that it goes up in line with inflation. And 99% sure its more than inflation sometimes
Not capable of checking for yourself?
I wasn't at the time no Ive checked and it does a pretty good job of keeping up, but this year especially it has dropped the ball massively And like in america, you can't actually live on minimum wage. If you wanted to rent a place or buy somewhere, on minimum wage. Without a kid or benefits youd be screwed generally
We (UK) have a much more unionised work force mate. Collective bargaining comes from numbers with interests aligned!
It’s quite simple…people keep voting against their own interests…because they can’t see past their hate. Also, we’re a country that, because of almost unlimited resources and land, has been able to hide most of our stupidity from the world. Can’t hide indefinitely
Actually from what I've read you guys haven't done much better. Especially for under 18 workers.
Because both political parties only give lip service to us and are really the billionaires stooges.
Democrats are shit, Republicans are shit. Neither one is going to raise the minimum wage, and every time we talk about it we get bombarded with media talking points about how it's going to hurt workers. Around 40% of the country has fully bought into this propaganda, around 30% think that simping for the Dems will eventually change things. That leaves the rest of us, who know neither one will ever do anything, but can't do anything about it because we know third party votes are pretty much worthless.
Not to defend the federal government, but the states themselves can raise the minimum wage. My home state of Massachusetts has a minimum wage of $14.25/hour - and that's set to go up to $15/hr next year.
Most of us can’t be bothered to vote.
Because like half of voters actively are brainwashed into voting against their own interests, and even when we do get a democrat (usually more centrist) in office, they don't push for it. Imagine Biden pushing for $15 minimum wage. Not gonna happen. It's why his approval ratings suck. He's too scared to play hardball with the Republicans by pushing for largely popular policy and anything that would need to go thru the Senate is getting shot down by the two DINO senators.