Most jobs will give you a performance review and a raise every year to account for inflation and any increased duties you’ve taken on. We increase minimum wage by massive amounts after far too many years which causes all sorts of economic concerns, business complaints, and just a bunch of arguments everywhere. Shouldn’t they just increase minimum wage 3.5% or whatever, every single year?
It depends on the goal. Are you trying to ensure a sustainable working class that can afford to support themselves and earn the wages of decent living? Or are you trying to create an exploitable poverty class that can be sapped for profit by oligarchs without admitting it?
https://highlanderjuan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/William-Cooper-Behold-a-Pale-Horse.pdf
I believe the first two chapters of that book may answer that question.
Yeah, but then how would capitalists exploit you?
See, if it doesn’t increase with inflation then there is a good chance they can delay giving you an adequate raise for a long time. And, when they do give you a raise, you’ll probably just need to accept less than if you had been receiving them all along.
I hope you’ll consider the capitalist here. He does need to create endless revenue growth, even if that means squeezing his employees until they can’t afford to live.
They already lie about inflation to make it look like the economy isn’t in dire straits. Indexing minimum wage to inflation would make them lie even more.
Economists think that directly tying wages or prices to inflation can cause inflationary spirals. CPI is based on prices, and raising wages will eventually raise prices and CPI, so if you raise wages based on CPI, it can enter a positive feedback loop.
It might be ok if the feedback is slow enough or if the minimum wage influences a macroeconomically insignificant proportion of wages.
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Belgium is probably also macroeconomically insignificant in the euro zone
We definitely don’t want that, since that hurts everyone, sapping value from wages and savings. I’m definitely not an economist. I was just thinking about how long we go in-between minimum wage increases and how it impacts prices every time it goes up. I was wondering if it would have less of an impact if it was raised incrementally instead of sudden big increases.
The quick answer is cola should be built into the system. Neither party has taken minimum wage laws seriously. States have taken it more seriously than the feds. All jobs should be required to give a cola increase every year.
I’d be okay with that, but only if it is diet.
Let’s tie it to company revenue
Yup
But what is profits don’t go up that same 3.5%?
If the company isn’t growing at the rate of inflation and they have to pay the workers more, they have to cut something to grant that pay increase.
So, I’d ask do you want layoffs for some and the cost of living increase for the rest or no raise?
To paraphrase FDR: “If any business requires it’s employees to subsist on less than a thriving wage, they deserve to not exist in the US.”
I would have put the period after the word exist, but that’s just me.
If the business cannot afford to operate, then they shouldn’t. Full stop.
So, yes. Gimme those sweet, sweet layoffs. Let’s watch the whole business implode while we’re at it.
Neither. There is absolutely no excuse for the obscene compensation that CEOs and other executives receive. Quit letting the most sociopathic members of society (who, in all honesty, do not benefit society as a whole - they have a unquestionably negative effect on the lives of those around them) exploit the very people their company relies on to even exist. Give the bloody profit to those that, you know, ACTUALLY EARNED IT. And while we’re at it, the function of CEOs have actually been rendered irrelevant due to utterly corrupt rulings by our Supreme Court, so get rid of them. Since they are now required to only ever choose profit, their entire role can very easily be automated.
In short, your entire argument is specious.
