Before Reagan, was a "living wage" a big concern?

[alp227]

I'm hearing all this talk in the news about the minimum wage and then hearing a lot of Americans online having drunken the Koch-Cola by rebutting pro-min wage arguments like "work your way up" or "you chose your lifestyle deal with it" or "find a better job". And then they believe all the right wing arguments such as raising the wage causes layoffs or inflation. Well I wonder. Today, Republicans can shamelessly go on record against the minimum wage, and a clueless "liberal media" (in ABC, CBS, etc.) and talk radio and Fox News is complicit.

I wonder if the minimum wage was a mainstream debate topic in the days before Reagan. Even Old Right icon Robert Taft supported the minimum wage. I don't know if he ever brought this up during the campaign, but Barry Goldwater criticized LBJ's efforts to raise the wage from $1.60 to $2.00/hr back in 1966. In 1973, President Richard Nixon vetoed a bill that would raise the min wage, writing in his veto message: "It would cause unemployment. It is inflationary. And it hurts those who can least afford it." (However, the wage had gone up in every one of Nixon's first three years.) Nixon even supported a guaranteed annual income!

What happened with mainstream America's attitudes towards low wage workers? The idea that working people can actually LIVE IN POVERTY must be a shocking idea to many, past or present, right?

Are we just a more cruel, greedy, heartless nation now than in the days of music on the AM radio?

Are middle class Americans too obedient to stand up for themselves in the workplace?

[JaneyVee]

1. Before Reagan, the minimum wage was a living wage.

[csziggy]

2. Not really - it was borderline

And there were more exceptions to requirements to pay minimum wage. Farm workers and government workers did not necessarily get paid even minimum wage.

In the mid-70s I worked as a Clerk II for the state of Florida. Clerk IIs made minimum wage; Clerk Is did not. Most of the Clerk Is were on food stamps in our office and some also were eligible for low income housing. Clerk Is made more than some of the other low end positions, but it was not an advantage since they had to dress for working in the office even though they were not in positions that interacted with the public.

A lot of the people who worked for the state did so because it was almost impossible to get fired * and the benefits used to be good - good health insurance was a big draw though vision and dental were not included. Some of the employees got insurance for their spouses who were self employed because finding insurance as an individual was impossible.

I made between $1.65 and $1.75 an hour - my take home was a little over $300 a month. I owned a house trailer but paying the lot rent, electricity, water, food, and buying clothes that fit the standards for the office kept me broke. If I'd had to pay actual rent, house and car payments, I would have been deep in a hole.

*The only person I knew that was fired from the state in those days was taking points off people's driver's license records. He wasn't fired immediately - they gave him 30 days to put all the points back on the records. He was fired when he made no effort to restore the points.

[hfojvt]

3. well in 1980 it was $8.35 in 2011 dollars

not that much different than it was in 2009 when it was $7.47 in 2011 dollars. It actually dropped quite a bit during Carter's term. It started out at $2.30 in 1976 which was $8.94 in 2011 dollars. It was not raised again until 1978 when it went to $2.65 then $2.90 in 1979, $3.10 in 1980 and $3.35 in 1981.

But by 1981 it had fallen to just $8.15 in 2011 dollars, losing almost 9% of its value from 1976 - years when Democrats controlled all three branches of government.

But under Reagan, and a Republican Senate it sat at $3.35 until 1990 where it lost another 24% of its value, dropping to just $5.98 (do I really have to say in 2011 dollars again?)

Then too, there was the Republican House and Bush, not raising it at all between 1997 and 2007 when Democrats re-took the House.

[bhikkhu]

4. Yup. I left home at 17 and worked minimum wage for years

usually 7-11's. It was no picnic, but it was a living, paid for rent and food and a night on the town now and then, and I never was on public assistance. A couple of times when I made larger moves I was able to scrape together enough to move up or down the coast on my own dime, and get another place and another job.

[hfojvt]

5. I am not really old enough to remember pre-Reagan

I mean, I remember some of those years, but not as a working adult trying to make a living. I turned 18 in 1980.

But I am pretty sure there was plenty of poverty back in the day.

In 1968, for example, the bottom 20% only got 4.2% of the pie. In 2011, they only got 3.2%, but the pie was much bigger in 2011 than it was in 1968. In 1968 the per capita GDP (in 2005 dollars) was only $20,000. By 2005, it was $45,000.

In 1968, the second quintile (block of 20%) got 11.1% of the pie. By 2011 that had fallen to just 8.4%. A smaller share, but again, of a bigger pie.

Things seem to be fancier these days too. One thing I remember from my childhood in the 1970s was that dad was doing things himself. Our house, bought in 1964, had an unfinished basement. That meant a concrete floor and cement pillars. Dad put in a wall, put down tiles on the floor and probably put up ceiling tiles (both floor and ceiling were only tiled for half of the basement. In the upstairs, the rooms got carpet one at a time.

In the early 1970s a screen porch got added to the back, and later so did a 2nd garage and an angled driveway. In 1980, for some reason, a family room got added.

I think there is a tendency though for our generation to want things NOW that our parents (at least my parents) took decades to get. My siblings all have giant houses compared to the one we grew up in with much bigger families. Even I have a giant house for just one person (I wanted it that way, because of optimism. That is, I wanted a house big enough for my girlfriend to move in. A house big enough for me, my wife, my step-kid and my kid. I just never managed to find a woman desperate enough to marry me.)

So the house comes fully carpeted. Cheaper that way, in one sense, but also means the cost of all that carpet is added to the mortgage debt. Whereas if you waited five years you could get it on sale and at zero percent interest.

Anyway, I don't think the working class was rolling in money back in the 1950s and 1960s, or the 1970s.

[Recursion]

6. Not for white people

Minorities worked in the industries that were (and in many cases still are) exempted: agriculture, home health, tipped food service, etc. Living wage was very much a concern for them.

[el_bryanto]

11. Yes before Reagan there were no poor white people.

You can see why white republicans love him so much.

Bryant

[SheilaT]

7. My very first job in 1965 was a sub-minimum wage job.

It was one that was not then covered by minimum wage laws. I was a nurse's aide in a hospital and made $1.10/hour. I had just graduated from high school and still lived at home.

A year later I quite college and went to work full time, making minimum wage which was then $1.25/hour. A few months later it went up to $1.65/hour and I moved away from home into a tiny, shared apartment. I could support myself, but I couldn't save any money, and I can't begin to imagine how someone would have supported a family on that wage. Keep in mind I lived in Tucson, AZ, which was then a relatively low cost of living city.

A couple of years later I went to work for the telephone company, making a bit more, and it made a huge difference. Since then I have rarely made minimum wage, although I have never been anywhere near the 1% in income.

[YarnAddict]

8. It was a different culture

Good-paying (union) manufacturing jobs were plentiful, families mostly consisted of two parents, and minimum wage jobs were generally held by teenagers working fast food, or by moms "supplementing" a husband's income. Virtually no one was raising a family on minimum wage.

[LionsTigersRedWings]

9. wow, so much there is now gone!

Good paying Union job- gone
two parent families- not as common
minimum wage held by teenagers or mothers "supplementing" their husband- gone
virtually a lot of families living on minimum wage- everywhere

[The2ndWheel]

10. The rest of the world got in the money making game

Women and black people got into the money making game in America after long struggles. Women increasingly didn't need to marry men because they had their own job.

I find that you can equate the white male privilege that everyone loves talking about in America, with the privilege internationally that America used to enjoy. The same way white males get upset about losing jobs to whoever, Americans in general are protective about "American" jobs, even though no such job exists. A job is a job, it can be done by anyone, anywhere. White males must accept it, and Americans must accept it.