2008/08/03: Buying power is perpetually declining - Peggy Wireman

Your Views: Minimum Wage Increase
Wisconsin State Journal :: FORUM :: B1
Sunday, August 3, 2008

Buying power is perpetually declining

Forum columnist Richard Berman's prediction that the increase in the minimum wage will hurt workers is inaccurate. He implies that most minimum wage workers are teenagers, high school dropouts and young black adults.

As a certified planner who consults in community and economic development, I know over half the minimum wage workers are adults aged 25 or more, many the sole supports of their families. Many of those under 25 live apart from parents and are possibly paying college tuition and fees.

Business paid a minimum wage of almost $10 in terms of purchasing power in 1968 when gas was 34 cents a gallon and you could buy a house for $14,950. Since the 1970s, worker productivity has risen, but manufacturing and non-management employees' wages have effectively increased just 35 cents an hour.

Unlike the 1940s and 1950s when both worker productivity and the median wage doubled, increases in productivity since the 1970s have gone to high salaries for CEOs and dividends to stockholders.

Although about half of Americans own stock, most own stocks worth less than $5,000.

For information on the real shifts in our economy and worker benefits and in the jobs most likely to increase before 2016, see www.connectingdots.us.

- Peggy Wireman, Monona