Sunday, August 10, 2008

4% direct inflation by doubling the minimum wage to 15/hr

Jumping to a federal minimum wage from $7.25/hr to $15/hr would add less than 4% direct inflation.

$3.87/hr (average raise) X 2000 hours (full work year) = $7740 annual raise for 70 million workers (half the workforce -- $15/hr is the median wage) = $541.8 billion.  I'll ignore 3.5 million at the minimum wage (getting a full raise) to keep the eighth-grade math simple.  Divide 2012 GDP of $15.8 trillion by $541.8 billion and we get 3.4%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States 

"Since 1973, productivity has grown roughly 80 percent while median hourly compensation improved by roughly 11 percent."
http://stateofworkingamerica.org/fact-sheets/wages/ 

Income Share

Dean Baker (in 18th reply on his blog post -- the only reason I know the most vital "Great Wage Depression" stat) reproduced what he called "a slightly altered table" from Gordon's paper, showing income shares in 1972 and 2001" -- my percentage changes on the right. 

% _________1972_____2001
0-20 ______ 2.6%, ___  2.0%____
0.6
20-50 ____ 16.0%, ___ 11.7%____
4.3
50-80 ____ 33.7%, ___ 27.2%____
6.5
80-90 ____ 17.0%, ___ 16.1%____
0.9
**********************************
90-95____ 10.8%, ___ 11.3%____+ 0.5%
95-99.0___12.2%, ___ 14.8%____+ 2.6%
99.0-99.9__ 5.7%, ____ 9.6%____+ 3.9%
99.9 -100__ 1.9%, ____ 7.3%____+ 5.4%
(see p. 84 of Gordon for similar breakdown of wage income)

THE ABOVE INCOME SHARE CHART IS GETTING LONG IN THE TOOTH.
This Wall Street Journal article (see part 4) says the share of income going to the top 1% alone increased from 10% to 22.9% between 1979 and 2006: "Five False Promises of Recovery."

WEALTH (not income) SHARE: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/04/08/wealth_inequality_the_99_percent_are_getting_poorer.html?wpisrc=burger_bar


NEW ADDITION (haven't worked on it yet):
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/04/17/by-one-measure-wages-for-most-u-s-workers-peaked-in-1972/?mod=WSJBlog&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wsj%2Feconomics%2Ffeed+%28WSJ.com%3A+Real+Time+Economics+Blog%29