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You are here: Home / Economics / Austerity Bombing / “What Happened to the Other $14.75?”

“What Happened to the Other $14.75?”

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Yeah, this almost a week old, but not everyone reads the HuffPo, and besides I had to reload a bunch of tech-gibberish to get on the new server, so… testing...
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) made a case for increasing the minimum wage last week during a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing, in which she cited a study that suggested the federal minimum wage would have stood at nearly $22 an hour today if it had kept up with increased rates in worker productivity.

“If we started in 1960 and we said that as productivity goes up, that is as workers are producing more, then the minimum wage is going to go up the same. And if that were the case then the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour,” she said, speaking to Dr. Arindrajit Dube, a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor who has studied the economic impacts of minimum wage. “So my question is Mr. Dube, with a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, what happened to the other $14.75? It sure didn’t go to the worker.”

Dube went on to note that if minimum wage incomes had grown over that period at the same pace as it had for the top 1 percent of income earners, the minimum wage would actually be closer to $33 an hour than the current $7.25….

Also, the indignation in Mr. Rutigliano’s voice when Sen. Warren suggests that his fine dining emporium might share anything in common with a McDonald’s franchise: priceless.

Reader Interactions

90Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    the indignation in Mr. Rutigliano’s boice when Sen. Warren suggests that his fine dining emporium might share anyting in common with a McDonald’s franchise

    New server doesn’t come with spellchecker? ;-)

  2. 2.

    Chris

    Gonna test the new server with a shout out to Indiana basketball, which might be getting its shit together in time.

    Of course, as scholar athletes they see very little of their productivity gains, but you’re welcome CBS

  5. 5.

    Ben Franklin

    This is the way a negotiation works. Establish your case for numbers higher than you expect to get. Let the oppos chip away with the resulting higher-than-present number. If only our President understood you don’t negotiate with yourself.

  11. 11.

    RareSanity

    So my question is Mr. Dube, with a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, what happened to the other $14.75? It sure didn’t go to the worker.

    Mr. Dube?

    My brain thinks that it is pronounced like “doobie”, which is probably the catalyst for many a bad joke with some coeds at UMass.

  14. 14.

    Linnaeus

    “If we started in 1960 and we said that as productivity goes up, that is as workers are producing more, then the minimum wage is going to go up the same. And if that were the case then the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour,”

    Wow. I don’t make much more than that, and too many people make far, far less.

  15. 15.

    weaselone

    What Senator Warren seems unable to grasp is that all of those productivity gains are due to the superhuman efforts of the top 1% who have managed to drag this nation forward despite being covered from head to foot by the 99% leeches.

  20. 20.

    danielx

    @Chris:

    They did get their shit together in time, though they didn’t do my blood pressure any good. Now then….

    @weaselone:

    Finally, somebody around here gets the picture. It’s only due to to the efforts of our Galtian Overlords that the minimum wage doesn’t consist of bread crusts and gruel. When will liberals finally understand that the only things keeping them from creating jobs are an insufficient number of tongue baths and elimination of the capital gains tax?

  21. 21.

    Arclite

    Warren taking that whole “government of the people, by the people, for the people” thing pretty fucking seriously.

    Booyah!

  25. 25.

    JPL

    @JPL: btw, I have no idea what that means but I heard it on Fox or something.

    where did my edit go? It was working great earlier..

  27. 27.

    gene108

    Have you ever gotten a job from poor person? No.

    Take money from the rich and there’ll be no money for them to give us jobs, which only make our lives harder.

    Standard mindset of middle class right-wingers, when you talk about stimulus programs paid for by taxing the rich a bit more. They’be totally bought into the Brave Job Creators mythology. I don’t know how to convince them the problem is a lack of aggregate demand. It just doesn’t compute.

  28. 28.

    Hill Dweller

    @Ben Franklin:

    This is the way a negotiation works. Establish your case for numbers higher than you expect to get. Let the oppos chip away with the resulting higher-than-present number. If only our President understood you don’t negotiate with yourself.

    A minimum wage increase will never pass while Republicans have enough power to block it. Every House Republican just voted against it last week. There is no negotiation.

    Raising the minimum wage will be part of the Dems’ messaging in 2014, because that’s all they can do at this point.

  29. 29.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @RareSanity: Back in the Dark Ages, when I was in college; there was a plaque in the University Research Library honoring a former librarian, Hugh G. Dick.

  30. 30.

    Todd

    Greenwald managed to stroke off Chomsky without mentioning the Khmer Rouge. Hilarity results.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/23/noam-chomsky-guardian-personality

    Nobody has been subjected to these vapid discrediting techniques more than Noam Chomsky. The book on which I’m currently working explores how establishment media systems restrict the range of acceptable debate in US political discourse, and I’m using Chomsky’s treatment by (and ultimate exclusion from) establishment US media outlets as a window for understanding how that works. As a result, I’ve read a huge quantity of media discussions about Chomsky over the past year. And what is so striking is that virtually every mainstream discussion of him at some point inevitably recites the same set of personality and stylistic attacks designed to malign his advocacy without having to do the work of engaging the substance of his claims. Notably, these attacks come most frequently and viciously from establishment liberal venues, such as when the American Prospect’s 2005 foreign policy issue compared him to Dick Cheney on its cover (a cover he had framed and now proudly hangs on his office wall).

    http://www.samefacts.com/2013/03/wayward-press/greenwald-on-chomsky/

    Or, if you were really, totally, completely shameless, you could just pretend the whole thing never happened, passing it over entirely in silence.
    …
    Guess which strategy Glenn Greenwald chose? Twenty-six paragraphs, in which the word “Cambodia” does not appear.

  32. 32.

    Evolving Deep Southerner

    How much of those productivity gains could be laid at the feet of the cell phone?

  35. 35.

    Evolving Deep Southerner

    @gene108:

    Have you ever gotten a job from poor person? No.

    No rich person has ever given me a God damn thing. Any one of them who’s ever hired me figured I’d make them more money than I’d cost them. If they thought otherwise, I’d consider them insane and avoid becoming an employee of theirs.

    ETA: I know we’re on the same side and that you just offered the quoted statement rhetorically, etc.

  38. 38.

    Ben Franklin

    @Todd:

    Thanks. i was going to bring that up yesterday. i like this one……………

    This method is applied with particular aggression to those who engage in any meaningful dissent against the society’s most powerful factions and their institutions. Nixon White House officials sought to steal the files from Daniel Ellsberg’s psychoanalyst’s office precisely because they knew they could best discredit his disclosures with irrelevant attacks on his psyche. Identically, the New York Times and partisan Obama supporters have led the way in depicting both Bradley Manning and Julian Assange as mentally unstable outcasts with serious personality deficiencies. The lesson is clear: only someone plagued by mental afflictions would take such extreme steps to subvert the power of the US government.

  39. 39.

    JPL

    According to the Washington Post, immigration reform has hit a snag..

    The Chamber has pushed for the workers – who would include maids, waiters, child care workers, home nannies and meat packer — to be paid one step below the median hourly wage scale in their respective industries.

    link
    The Chamber of Commerce is why we can’t have nice things.

  40. 40.

    RareSanity

    @efgoldman:

    Do the kids even call them doobies anymore?

    I mean, I graduated college in 1997 so I’m not that much older than your daughter. But the only reason I knew about it was because I loved watching George Carlin…not common amongst my age group and younger.

  41. 41.

    Evolving Deep Southerner

    @raven: Had to Wikipedia it, but when I did, I laughed out loud.

    But, hey, now when a running back lowers his head, it’s gonna be a penalty. So what the football gods giveth, they can take away.

    And nobody – NOBODY – has ever underpaid their workers more than the NCAA.

  43. 43.

    raven

    @efgoldman: No dog in that hunt. What I am is cross eyed from the hoop and my fucking game doesn’t even start until 8 goddamn 45. I can remember being pissed when the Sunday west coast games would not be shown in the east. Duke-Creighton doesn’t start until almot 10 and they are playing in the est zone.

  44. 44.

    Anoniminous

    @Todd:

    Engaging in intellectual debate is Hard Work. Far better, and much easier, to trot out the ad hominem.

  45. 45.

    Chris

    @JPL:

    I love the fact that they want to bust every last union for blue collar people, but that the rich get to have Chambers of Commerce. Which have effectively turned into the political machines of our age, telling every elected official “obey or no reelection funds for you.”

    But yeah. The teachers’ union is what’s REALLY wrong with this country.

  47. 47.

    Nola78

    Hi John, Annie, erbody. When this post comes on, we see the opening written salve which is then covered by the Warren video. Is it real, memorex, safari or???

  51. 51.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    I was at the store today and came across a shelf with 7 grades of Himalayan Pink Salt. My wife wanted to know why I was snickering.
    “It’s a Balloon Juice thing…” It’s good to be back home for a few days.

  52. 52.

    different-church-lady

    @Ben Franklin: And if only people understood that negotiating in Congress is not exactly the same as negotiating the price of a used car…

  56. 56.

    PIGL

    @Todd: what about Cambodia specifically was he supposed to bring up? The old “apologist for the Khmer Rouge” canard?

    Can you dig any deeper in your attempt to discredit a major figure? Produce, perhaps, some evidence, rather than trading in third or fourth hand code words?

  57. 57.

    different-church-lady

    @efgoldman:

    Except it is the same: the House always wins.

    No, that’s Vegas. And weirdly, people seem to love to give their money to Vegas…

  60. 60.

    Mike G

    @Chris:

    I love the fact that they want to bust every last union for blue collar people, but that the rich get to have Chambers of Commerce.

    That’s before you get started on the massive slant in the legal system favoring corporations. Which Repukes worship as akin to American Jesus even though it was never mentioned by the Founding Fathers.

  62. 62.

    different-church-lady

    @Ben Franklin: You’d have an analogy if there were, maybe, 14 cars, three aircraft, a flock of sheep, some wheat futures and a couple of second round draft picks involved, and the whole deal was contingent on whether the secretary of labor passed the physical. Oh, and like, 600+ people have a say in the thing.

    Other than that, it’s pretty much exactly the same.

  64. 64.

    Elizabelle

    Help! Get BJ on the iPhone but cannot access on Mac laptop. Cache-clearing instructions haven’t worked so far.

  66. 66.

    gene108

    @Todd:

    When I think technology improving productivity, I think of the automation in many factories. Fewer people to do the same amount of output. The upfront cost of machines is more, but the per unit cost diminishes as more units are churned out.

    I’m not exactly sure how the cell phone, e-mail, etc. fit into increased productivity. They’ve had an impact, but I don’t know if anyone’s tried measuring it.

    @Evolving Deep Southerner:

    It’s an actual argument, I’ve gotten into on another forum, where I used to post regularly.

    The right-wingers really can’t grasp that there’s a point of time, when you have so much money you really can’t plow enough back into the economy in any productive way; they just assume that the ultra-rich will do something more productive with their money than government could do by taxing them and investing it in things like infrastructure.

  68. 68.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ben Franklin:
    Well, no. The fundamentals are utterly different. There are very few situations in which the ‘ask for a lot, settle in the middle’ strategy works, and they involve both parties really wanting to make a deal. A car salesman really, really wants to sell you that car, because every sale is a lot of money and his sale volume is low compared to other types of merchants. Congress is not a situation like this. No matter what you’re negotiating, a large number of them will never agree. The ones in the ‘might agree, might not agree’ are entirely happy with shutting off negotiations if they don’t like your terms. They have no reason to haggle. Instead of ‘deciding on the exact level of an already-agreed sale’, negotiation with congress is a matter of persuading the unwilling. A huge starting demand is the reverse of persuasive, especially since both branches of Congress are full of self-important blowhards.

  70. 70.

    different-church-lady

    @Southern Beale: Progressive ADD is certainly nothing new. IMO, the problem keeping the (stereotypical?) “progressive personality” from being effective is the lack of focus combined with the tendency to want to present the entire laundry list as one big unit. They get really invested in the idea that everything is fucked up and rigged, and use the specific problems only as arguments to support the worldview.

    Now, I’m not saying the entire world isn’t fucked up, and I’m not saying every item on the list isn’t legit. What I’m getting at is that change can’t come if the mass isn’t broken down into individual pieces. By meandering from point to point, progressives put people off because the audience feels like they’re being sold a bill of goods rather than being asked to acknowledge specific problems.

    Granted, it’s hard to expect someone who recognizes seven different injustices to pick just one. But that’s kinda how it has to be.

  73. 73.

    different-church-lady

    @Southern Beale: Oh now here’s a fun fact: when you put the “at” sign into your word, WP treats it like an e-mail address. So, I can send a reply to a person named Ci, at the domain Lis if I want.

  74. 74.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @gene108:

    I’ve been in a lot of factories in the last 8 months. I see reduced labor as a byproduct. Robots/automation have been developed at tremendous expense to do things that are impossible by manual processes. The motivation is not to get rid of workers, but to get different results. Fewer workers may be a benefit to the corporation but not an independent goal.
    This also means that skills are shifting. You lose 12 machinists and gain one automation specialist and a robot repair guy.
    Plus management. So far that’s perpetual.

    ETA: factories in Mexico still have far more workers than their American and Euro counterparts doing the same output. But south of the border the wages are 1/4 of the US. No exaggeration.

  76. 76.

    Jennifer

    …what happened to the other $14.75?

    Oh, I’m so sorry about your other $14.75 per hour, but you see we needed it to buy a private jet in every color.

  77. 77.

    Ben Franklin

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    they involve both parties really wanting to make a deal

    The human dynamics are the same. OK. take your car salesman vs Mr and Mrs Lunchbucket.

    He wants the car, she doesn’t. The salesman has an obstacle. Has he enumerated the features and benefits? What is the real objection? (there’s always the putative objection which is usually hidden) How does the salesman and husband overcome the objection?

    They discover the genuine objection and carefully form an alliance to overcome the objection.

    It’s not that complicated and Warren has begun the Wedge issue, garnering public support for the effort, and using her platform to that end.

  78. 78.

    different-church-lady

    @efgoldman: It’s just gonna be some rain and maybe some snow too. TV weather guy is probably just… um… (something vulgar involving being horny, I’m having a “failure of imagination” right now.)

  79. 79.

    Yutsano

    @Jennifer: Buffy also needs her third yacht for her Sweet Sixteen and we just CAN’T show out face in the Hamptons without it. Why it would be just ghastly!

  80. 80.

    JPL

    @Frankensteinbeck: Boston.com has an article about former Senator Dole appealing to friends to sign the treaty that would encourage countries to enact standards for people with disabilities. Long story short, the current Senate cannot act because of the wackos. Moderate republicans are afraid of losing their seat to a tea party member so they’d rather vote like a tea party member. link

  81. 81.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ben Franklin:
    You are arguing a different case. There are some similarities with alliance persuasion situations, not haggling. The situation you are describing is one in which asking for a large sum at the beginning is likely to cement the wife’s opposition so that she cannot be persuaded at all. Again, your ‘ask for more, get more’ does not translate to congress. The dynamics make it a bad strategy, not a basic strategy.

    EDIT – @JPL:
    Which if anything reinforces my point. Congress has very little incentive to give Obama what he wants. An aggressively demanding strategy is bad negotiating in a situation where it’s damned hard to get anything passed at all.

  83. 83.

    Ben Franklin

    @JPL:

    Minimum wage is a bread-and-butter issue for the 47% I trust those Tea-Party districts have quite a few within that stat. They still listen to polls, and Dole’s baby didn’t make the numbers grade.

  85. 85.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    I was reading some nut blogs last week regarding Warren’s comments. Lots of insults on whether or not they actually teach business classes at Harvard. Also, too, why wasn’t she arguing that the minimum wage just be raised to $100 dollars if she’s so smart. Fucking lunatics.

  86. 86.

    Ruckus

    @Ultraviolet Thunder:
    The change in productivity is due to computers and how much more powerful they have become.
    And I think it is a mistake to believe that mfg companies especially don’t want to get rid of their labor force. On a per time basis workers are more expensive than machines. They don’t have as high an up time, they require breaks and lunch and will not generally work multiple shifts. It is a bonus that the machines will do repetitive tasks much better and usually faster. Yes it takes a higher skilled worker to program and set up properly, but the output is still better. Of course not everything is able to be done with machines, but many parts are. I have worked with computer aided manufacturing since the early 70’s and this has been the direction all along. Like it or not jobs are a world wide thing these days. Maybe they shouldn’t be or we should be trying to raise the level of the world instead of looking for the cheapest price but that’s not the direction business has taken. And governments have not helped with this at all, they have even made it easier to send jobs away and to have everything at the lowest common denominator. It’s a horrible long term way to approach the issue but then most business people and governments only think the next quarter or the next election so that’s what we get.

  87. 87.

    Maude

    @Baud:
    #18
    Late back to the thread.
    I just don’t wan this blog’s comment sections to morph into the Atrios ones. It would be unpleasant.
    And I will email Cole about Sooner as soon as I have the energy. In 2014, maybe.

  88. 88.

    Ben Franklin

    @Ruckus:

    most business people and governments only think the next quarter or the next election so that’s what we get.

    This, is a big problem. The Japanese have 100 year game plans. The short-sell has become the MO.

  90. 90.

    Bettencourt

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    “Back in the Dark Ages, when I was in college; there was a plaque in the University Research Library honoring a former librarian, Hugh G. Dick. ”

    Ah, another UCLA alum. Bruins unite!

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