Quote:
Originally Posted by Hersbird
They start at $15/hr and end there as well. 20 years ago rent was an easy $600 here and burger flippers got $7/hr. Now rent is over $2000 and you get $15. 20 years ago the Post Office started at $17/hr and the house I bought was just over $100,000. Now the PO starts at $18.50/hr and the house I live in would cost $400,000 even in the condition it was back then (we have done a bunch of work so it's even more than that now). I would much rather be starting out 20 years ago compared to today. Very few are better off.
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Everyone's better off, as nobody would just transport themselves to an earlier epoc at the age they're at.
Entry level jobs were never meant to be a "living wage", but an introduction to the workforce.
I get what you're saying, because my dad worked for Safeway for basically his whole working life. Pay was good when he started, and stagnated to the point of being poor for a single-income family of 4. He could have advanced but had no ambition to do so, and I'm a chip off the old block because I don't want to be responsible for anyone beyond myself (and my family). Making decisions for idiots sounds like hell to me, and being responsible to higher up idiots even moreso.
Naturally, technology affects the lowest ends of the workforce first, because those are the easiest jobs to automate and eliminate. That's an intractable problem that will increasingly affect higher skilled jobs. I've already mentioned how the expertise of doctors is threatened by big data in other threads. That's not to say their jobs can be eliminated immediately, but their value is diminishing.
Big picture is that technology and globalization is to blame for the comparatively slow advancement of the bottom sectors of the labor economy, and it will continue forever to eat into that labor economy, producing abundance in its wake.
We can endlessly argue "fairness" till the cows come home, but the advancement of technology has made everyone better off.