[sarcher]

When Henry Ford set minimum salaries, he wasn't impacting the wages of the engineers who designed the cars - he was impacting the wages of those who made less than $5 at the time the change was made. A minimum wage was being set, not an 'average' wage. So comparing a $5 minimum wage to the 'average wage today including white collar workers like line engineers' fails to be a convincing comparison. It's even less convincing now that I realize, after reviewing your comment, that you're including overtime wages for "Tier 2 union employees" when MrGilbert's data specifically doesn't include overtime wages. If you need to work overtime today to have the same relative affordability as that available a century ago - that's not progress!

And when it comes to 'automotive household income' the numbers work out even worse than MrGilbert's example. The average American household owner more than one car per driving adult. https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/passenger_travel/ch...

Yes, yes - perhaps the autoworkers we are talking about are not 'average' and own fewer cars per household. And yes, yes - moving the minimum wage probably resulted in wage increases for higher paid workers as well. If you want to move the goalposts again do some legwork and show some work, otherwise you're just promoting a paper-thin narrative on the basis of "but what if".

[bumby]

I think the 'more than one car per household' is a fair point but I think it gets watered down by the >1 car per driving adult...this may be just that we consume more, not need more. If that's the case, it implies vehicles are more accessible today, not less.

But I stand by the assertion that claiming a $40k average wage is way off. The base salary of most Tier 1 non-skilled employees was still in the $70k-$80k range, and this was years ago. The skilled trades made much more. This is without overtime. It seems like MrGilbert was cherry picking the data. And I hope you also realize that there is a difference between the manufacturing engineers and design engineers. Manufacturing engineers probably should be included in my opinion, and they are some of the highest paid, but I'd even be willing to concede that and still stand by the general point.

I included overtime because it is a such a large part of the manufacturing experience. And yes, some people game overtime as a way to inflate their wages. And the overtime pay increases didn't come about until the Fair Labor Standards Act. If you look at the history, the $5 per day wage actually does include overtime (if you define overtime by today's standards). We could debate whether or not this is progress (many of those I personally knew would call it progress because they wouldn't have the opportunity to make that wage elsewhere, which is why there is little turnover even today). I actually don't think it's unfair to include overtime to get the total compensation comparison, but even without overtime the $40k number seems pretty far off.

The larger point being, it's not as simple of a comparison as 'don't include overtime' and select the lower end of the overall automotive salaries (including lower paid suppliers). We can further complicate things by factoring in the preferred employee pricing etc. It's complicated, even if we want it to be a simple narrative.

The loss of manufacturing jobs is a big part of the reduction in size of the middle class United States, especially in the Rust Belt. This is largely due to automation reducing the number of available well-paying jobs not because the car companies are systematically mistreating workers. People still vie heavily for those jobs because they are some of the highest paying jobs available.

[sarcher]

Introduction of the $5 daily wage also included a reduction in labor hours to 8 hours per day. So no, the $5 wage did not include overtime.

"To run the factory continuously instead of only eighteen hours a day, giving employment to several thousand more men by employing three shifts of eight hours each, instead of only two nine-hour shifts, as at present." https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general...

[bumby]

Fair enough on the hours. But it's not wholly accurate to count the $5/day as a wage. About half of it was a 'bonus' if you met the "socialization" criteria like abstaining from drinking. They would literally perform home inspections. Men would have to give up the bonus if their wives worked. I think people look at this with some revisionist history; it wasn't as altruistic and I (personally) don't think it's an improvement over today.

Not to belabor the point, but it's not a simple one-to-one comparison like the OP was trying to demonstrate. I don't think the wages are nearly as bad as they made it out to be.

[MrGilbert]

> It seems like MrGilbert was cherry picking the data.

I was not - I had to work with what I had, and I clearly stated at the beginning, that you have to take it with a grain of salt. However, I did not cherry pick any data. That‘s a false accusation.

[bumby]

Sorry, from my perspective it seemed like you took the lower end of that $34k-144k because it fit your point. At the very least, I would have thought the average would have been a fairer assumption. Chalk my mistake up to the limited information communicated in a forum format