Comparing the value of labor over time is apparently not that straight forward. I was wondering about minimum wage. When I graduated high school in 1970 
(gasp… yes) the minimum wage was $1.60. I dropped out of college after a year, and I went to work in a factory for somewhat more than the minimum wage. After a few months I had raises that put me up to $2.60 an hour which was nearly 60% higher than minimum wage. Even at that astronomical wage, even without a car to support, even with living in basically a slum apartment, I was having a hard time making ends meet. I had to be careful with every penny. I had a crisis back then that wiped out very quickly what little savings I had. I had absolutely no benefits. A medical emergency would have been a financial disaster.
Using data as calculated on the website, Measuring Worth , I came up with the following data:
Current data is only available till 2012. In 2012, the relative worth of $1.60 from 1970 is:
| $9.46 | using the Consumer Price Index | |
| $7.36 | using the GDP deflator | |
| $11.10 | using the Production Worker Compensation | |
| $15.80 | using the nominal GDP per capita | |
| $24.20 | using the relative share of GDP |
If you need help determining which result is most appropriate for you, see Choosing the Best Indicator to Measure Relative Worth.
The $24.20 figure is most interesting to me as it is basically an indication of the wealth gap that has reached obscene proportions in this country. To have the same percentage of the pie in 2012 as folks did in 1970 if they were working for minimum, today’s minimum wage would need to approximately 3 ½ times higher than the $7.35 it is (minimum wages vary as some places it is higher than federal).
From a study by the University of California at Berkeley:
“The fast-food industry costs American taxpayers nearly $7 billion annually because its jobs pay so little that 52 percent of fast-food workers are forced to enroll their families in public assistance programs, according to a report released today (Tuesday, Oct. 15) by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley.
“More than two-thirds of core frontline fast-food workers across the country are over the age of 20, and 68 percent are the main wage earners in their families,” Doussard said. “And more than a quarter of Americans working in fast-food restaurants are parents, raising at least one child”
Bluntly, we are subsidizing cheap burgers and huge executive pay with our tax dollars. Given that I only eat at McDonald’s as a last resort, I find that doubly disquieting.
Here is a link to a wonderful article about the disparity between CEO pay and the average worker. It also details what the average worker looks like. Purely anecdotal on my part, but back in the $1.60 minimum wage days, I remember fast food jobs being jobs teenagers, or truly jobs you did while looking for something else. It seems currently, it is frequently the best someone can do. Most fast food restaurants I have been to in the last several years are staffed by adults.
McDonald’s $8.25 Man and $8.75 Million CEO Shows Pay Gap
To me it is an issue of fairness. Executive pay is out of hand, and maximizing corporate profit at the expense of society is not a worthy goal. I wish we were a better people than that.