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just for funsies, i plugged the proposed minimum wage increase into my federal minimum wage chart
For the purple line, I've adjusted all values to 2021 dollars, and assumed a 3% cpi inflation rate for future years, so a 15/hr minimum wage in 2025 will have the buying power of a $13.20/hr wage today
So it's not quite as aggressive as it needs to be if you wanted to hit an actual value of $15 today, but notably this actually *raises the real value of the minimum wage* over what it was in 1968
in 1968, the federal minimum wage was *$12.27 an hour.* we've never come close to that before, forget about surpassing it
So in that sense: this is an honest to god fucking real-world raise for the millions of families working minimum wage jobs for the first time in FIFTY FIVE GODDAMN YEARS
BUT
in september 1963, the march on washington for jobs and freedom (the site of King's I Have a Dream Speech) called for a $2/hr minimum wage
If that wage had adopted in 1964, and been adjusted for inflation every year since…
…we'd be looking at a minimum wage of $16.86 per hour today, and a $19.16/hr wage in 2025, when the current proposal reaches $15/hr.
so this proposal is both fantastic in that it represents a repudiation of the post-civil rights dismantling of worker protections and still significantly short of embracing one of the concrete demands of the civil rights movement
this would, however, get us closer to that demand than at any point in the past half-century. Raising the minimum wage to the civil rights standard in 2006 would have meant raising it by 150%. Raising it in 2026 would be only a 28% increase
that 28% increase would be the fifth greatest jump in the wage since it was instituted in 1938
other fun fact: the minimum wage in 2006 was the lowest real wage since 1949. *1949!*
in terms of salary, a minimum wage worker in 1968 made the equivalent of $25,525 a year. a minimum wage worker today makes only $15,231.
meanwhile here in california the state minimum wage is already $13/hr, and hits $15/hr in 2023, so we'll see literally no benefit from this law. this change will benefit red states *substantially*
