And you paid an employee a sufficient percentage of the revenue that the employee's work got the company. There was also not a significant difference between executive pay and worker's pay.
And there were also a lot of jobs available that paid reasonable wages - when a casher or a service station attendant could afford to rent a small apartment and have regular meals, and occasionally go out for entertainment on their pay.
Minimum wage can't do that now. And you've got on average 100 people competing for every job, with people who are looking for work constantly putting out resumes that are rejected. It's an employer's "market", so there's no incentive to actually set wages high enough to attract good workers - far easier to pay low wages to people who are so desperate for work, they'll take anything relatively stable and pocket the profits. I've watched wages for even skilled labor and professionals plummet when compared to the cost of living over the past 20 years while corporate profits and productivity increased. It's not how good you work, or if you're settling for too little to start on, it's that employers can always get someone who will work for less if they wait long enough, so if you want a job, you take what you can get and hope you can get a raise as you move up the ladder.
Here's example from my city:
In 1996, a full time Cashier at Safeway (union) could make on average $10 an hour with benefits, Journeymen Welders started at $13 an hour, and a C++ certified IT tech started at $15 an hour. Certified Engineers started at around $80K a year, and would generally make $120K a year by the time they had 5 years of experience in the field. About half worked "independent contract/consulting", the rest were on staff with their companies. Full-time Public School Teachers started at $32K a year, and at least half the supplies could be provided by the school district.
Rent on a 1 bedroom apartment could be found for $500 a month, gas was $1.50 a gallon, and $20 of groceries could last the average person one week, and you could still hit the 7-11 for a cup of coffee and a doughnut every morning on your to work.
Average competition for these positions - 3 to 1. There were an average of three applications for each job.
Today, a full-time Cashier at Albertsons (union) makes on average $10.75 an hour with reduced benefits, Journeymen Welders start at $12 an hour, and C++ certified IT techs still start at $15 an hour. Certified Engineers start at around $60K a year, and generally make around $100K by the time they have 5 years experience, unless they get a patent approved or some other additional income. Staff positions for engineers are declining in numbers; most are now consultants or are working under some sort of contract; over the past 20 years, at least 25% of engineering staff positions have been replaced either by temps/consultants, H1Bs or technological advances, further squeezing the number of positions available to compete for. Full-Time Teachers start around $42K a year, but they now have to provide most of their own supplies for the entire year for their classes, costing them on average up to $1000 every class they teach.
Rent on a 1 bedroom apartment can be found for around $1000, gas is averaging $3.45 a gallon, and $50 of groceries could last the average person one week.
Average competition for these position - anywhere from 10 to 30 to 1. After HR gets through the applications, there are still between ten to thirty applicants for each job.
So it is getting more and more difficult to find and keep work if you don't already have money to fall back on or if you aren't so specialized that your industry can't do without you.
There's two things most laymen or internet "experts" who haven't studied macro-economics don't seem to take into account when they talk about:
Less workers needed = lower wages for new employees.
Higher income gap between worker and employer indicates that there's a lot of money that isn't being circulated enough and the system economy is seriously out of balance. Capitalism can't be sustained in this type of system, economy will crash and the actors in that economy revert to a more feudal/strongman system until a mercantile class can be resurrected and a balance of trade between capital functions (wealth production and compensation of labor) can be restored.
Look, as for the argument that "a good employee will get recognized and promoted" - in retail, the only way to get a raise is to go into management or to belong to a union that will put in a contract when an employee is eligible for a raise, what they have to do to become eligible and protect the right for to ask for a raise. I've known too many young retail workers get fired soon after just asking when they came up for their review.
As my father always said, there's only so many management jobs and executive jobs around; everyone else has to work and depend on how many beans the bean-counters are willing to dispense.
My father also supported a family of four and put himself through a full schedule at U.C. Berkley working as a gas station attendant and part-time mechanic's helper on weekends and evenings in the 1960's, while my mom worked as a part-time minimum wage help at a library. I think between them, they made around $6000 to $7000 back in 1965. and from what I remember, we didn't notice it at all - still were able keep a decent late model car, go down to LA once a year on a holiday "Grandparents" visit, go camping in Yosemite for two weeks in the summer, and we never worried about food or clothes, still went out and saw movies and concerts, and ate out once in a while. When I broke my arm badly (a finger also nearly got torn off) that summer, it didn't cost an arm and a leg to fix me up as my Mom occasionally reminds me when we bitch about medical costs now-days.
Granted, there was subsidized student family housing (an old Korean-era army barracks facility that were turned into apartments) available until my parents re-grouped the financial resources spent moving to Berkley from L.A., my broken arm and my brother's birth. After Mom got a promotion to full-time (after my brother was born), we could move into a nice rental house with a backyard, and we did live frugally - shopping at bargain and thrift stores, and doing home crafting (like sewing, basic carpentry, or canning) to fix up furnishing; but we were not "poor".
My parents worked hard and one thing I remember about the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's -
1) there always seemed to be jobs that paid at least a living wage available if needed, and my parents always seemed to be able to afford to move to find better jobs (no thanks to then-Gov. Reagan, who slashed the state education budget...) to get to the position they could eventually buy a nice house, and
2) my parents were always compensated according to how much value they gave their employers; they often got raises and promotions that allowed us to move into better housing and better neighborhoods. We did pretty well through the whole time I was growing up.
I don't see that happening now-a-days, and if you do, where is it so that most of us can move there?
Haele
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