FEB 18, 2016 @ 10:50 AM 1,291 VIEWS
If Harry Truman Could Double The Minimum Wage, So Can We But Let's Not
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So, 1.5 million saw their wages rise as a result of Harry’s doubling. The U.S. workforce at the time was some
60 million odd. Thus 2.5% of the workforce saw their wage change as a result of the change in the minimum. Today there’s some 4 million or so on minimum wage out of a workforce of 160 million, some 2.5% again. Thus in this method of measurement the minimum wage
after Harry’s doubling is having about the same effect as our
current minimum wage before a rise.
And there are those who say that up to 40 million people would see wage rises as a result of a $15 minimum. Changing the wages of 25% of the workforce is rather less modest than changing the wages of 2.5% of it.
We can also look at this the other way. Sadly, we don’t have really good wage data for 1950, things like medians, part-time and full-time medians and so on. But hourly “average” pay was
$1.25 in manufacturing. Other data says a bit higher,
$1.50 to $1.60 across more industries. Which means that after Harry’s rise that minimum was a little above the 50% of manufacturing average wage level, a tad below that higher number for other industries. That is, still in what we think of as modest levels for a minimum wage and thus with modest unemployment effects. As opposed to a $15 hourly wage which is nearly 90% of my preferred median wage of today.
In short Harry Truman did indeed near double the minimum wage. And thus yes it is an interesting question to ask, why can’t we do the same, double the minimum wage? The answer to this being that Harry doubled the minimum wage up to around and about what is our current minimum wage today.
At which point we’ve the obligatory policy advice: let’s not do it.
If Harry Truman Could Double The Minimum Wage, So Can We But Let's Not