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Comment by justrealist | Hacker News Reader

< 1% of the US is paid the federal minimum wage. Basically 0 once you discount income tax evasion and tipped employees. I don't think McDonalds starts under $12 anywhere, in practice $15 or more basically everywhere.

I mean have a conversation about the wage gap sure but know that these numbers are not meaningful as it regards the US.

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However, ~30% of all hourly, non-self-employed workers 18 and older in the U.S. are "near-minimum-wage" workers, who make more than the minimum wage in their state but less than $10.10 an hour. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/01/04/5-facts-a...

This article is from 2017.

The percentage doesn't change much in newer data. As https://waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Sh... (newer but Oklahoma specific) notes:

Relatively few workers actually earn minimum wage, but a substantial share of workers are classified as “near minimum wage” earners. These two groups (minimum wage workers and near-minimum wage workers) make up nearly 1 in 3 workers.

The main point is that just looking at "minimum wage" workers doesn't tell the story. I don't believe you're being intentionally disingenuous, but there are many U.S. states where the minimum wage is an unlivable $7.25/hr and hasn't changed for 10 years or more.

Ah yes, you must be referring to the economic miracle that minimum wage workers talk about all the time from around 2017 onwards. Things clearly only got much better from there and absolutely in no way went backwards.

> < 1% of the US is paid the federal minimum wage. Basically 0 once you discount income tax evasion and tipped employees.

When I was a teenager, I worked as a fast food cook and got paid $6.51/hr. The minimum wage where I was at the time: $6.50. This was probably so they could claim that they "paid above minimum wage" in their marketing to potential employees. Based on this experience hearing that "no one is paid the federal minimum wage" is not very convincing to me.

True, and yet there's strenuous political opposition ot any proposal to increase it. Why is that?

Because you can just increase minimum wage at the state level

So why not just recalculate the federal MW as a function of the states' - lowest, median, or average? I ask because lots of things like welfare payments and estimates of poverty level involve comparisons with the MW. It's sometimes advantageous for a politician to say 'we give $X in food stamps, that's equivalent to Y hours [of federal MW], therefore people are lazy freeloaders' or 'Median rent is equal to Z hours at federal MW, therefore rental is impossible'.

If we have an officially defined metric it should correlate with real conditions in some way, get updated to reflect inflation etc.

> I ask because lots of things like welfare payments and estimates of poverty level involve comparisons with the MW

Can you give an example of such a welfare program? I'm not aware of any that use the minimum wage as a baseline. Most use the federal poverty level, which is pegged to the cost of food (and is updated yearly for inflation).

> It's sometimes advantageous for a politician to say...

I don't really care what politicians say; I'd rather have policy be evidence-based rather than reaction-based

Not caring what politicians say is asinine, since its politicians who ultimately write the laws. The fact that their lines of reasoning may be bullshit doesn't alter this, because lots of policy is sold on bullshit arguments.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44667 references some federal metrics that incorporate the MW as an input.

> Not caring what politicians say is asinine, since its politicians who ultimately write the laws.

You missed my point. I'm saying we shouldn't write laws with the goal of changing what politicians say.

> references some federal metrics that incorporate the MW as an input

You are misunderstanding that report. It's discussing potential ways to index the federal minimum wage to inflation. All those metrics do not include the minimum wage as an input

I'm curious about your data behind your claims. Does it account for waitstaff paid below minimum wage? (but then bumped up by tips)

True, but a big problem with these jobs is not giving employees enough hours consistently. I wonder how many people are getting effectively minimum wage or less because they don't even get full-time hours consistently.

>< 1% of the US is paid the federal minimum wage

Where did you get this data?

And, out of curiosity, what percentage of people are within, say, $0.50/hr of minimum wage?

$12-15 today is effectively lower than the federal minimum was 4 years ago. It's a completely disingenuous argument to make that it's acceptable to pay people that little.

Inflation over the last 4 years has been about 20%, not 50-100% as your comment would imply.

Source: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=201911...

Maybe for people who already owned assets and had a stable living situation before 2020. If you're renting and had to buy anything expensive like a car in the last few years then your costs have more than doubled.

>If you're renting and had to buy anything expensive like a car in the last few years then your costs have more than doubled.

Source?

My rental has gone up about 18%.

Cars have gone up about 25%.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/buying-a-car/people-spe...

I guarantee you you put a $15/hr person in that site and you barely notice a difference compared to a billionaire.

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