[pessimizer]

You don't just adjust for inflation, you adjust for productivity growth. That being said, $15 is meant to be high. It's meant to give you the ability to pay for housing.

For amusement value: the median house price in Jan 1968 was $163K in 2020 dollars. The median house price in 2020 was $300K. So really, minimum wage should be $24 an hour to bring you into Property Purchasing Power Parity™ with 1968.

[almost_usual]

Housing costs for inflation isn’t the cost of home ownership, it’s rent (shelter). Buying a home is considered an investment not a consumable good.

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-an...

“Why doesn’t the CPI include the cost of buying and financing houses as well as property taxes and home maintenance and improvement?

Houses and other residential structures are not consumption items and, therefore, should not be CPI items. All buildings and structures are capital goods, which are items that provide a service. In the case of houses and other residential structures, that service is shelter.

Buildings and structures are also investment items, things that are bought and resold in organized markets with a potential for gain. House prices frequently appreciate; in this respect they differ from consumer durables such as vehicles.”

[edmundsauto]

Don’t houses depreciate while the land is what appreciates? IANE, but I thought some people in the states had a depreciation deduction on the building.

[pmorici]

Maybe we just need to increase the supply of houses to drive that cost down. Raising the minimum wage doesn’t help if everyone is competing for the same limited supply.

[almost_usual]

Housing inflation is based on rent prices not the price of home units. Purchasing a home unit is an investment and not a consumable good.

Edit:

Downvoted for stating facts. From above:

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-an...

“Why doesn’t the CPI include the cost of buying and financing houses as well as property taxes and home maintenance and improvement?

Houses and other residential structures are not consumption items and, therefore, should not be CPI items. All buildings and structures are capital goods, which are items that provide a service. In the case of houses and other residential structures, that service is shelter.

Buildings and structures are also investment items, things that are bought and resold in organized markets with a potential for gain. House prices frequently appreciate; in this respect they differ from consumer durables such as vehicles.”

[nitrogen]

Downvoted for stating facts.

This isn't so much a "fact" as it is a "position." In other words, the fact that the BLS uses this position in its definition does not make that definition the best possible definition, nor does it mean people have to accept that definition when they use the word "inflation" in a conversation.

There are loads of reasons why one might argue that house prices should be considered necessary expenses rather than investments. A particular area may have only houses for sale and very few rentals. Ownership provides things that cannot be achieved by renting. The appreciated value of a house is largely meaningless or even detrimental for people who just want to keep living where they live when their wages are not increasing. Etc.

Also, generally, quoting definitions unprompted isn't well received in most conversations :).

[pmorici]

Whether it is rented or purchased is irrelevant. Increasing the supply will drive the cost down. If you have more renters than rentals prices will go up and a minimum wage is just a handout to wealthy landlords because you have the same people competing for the same housing just with more money.

[bluedino]

Wouldn’t help now. Building supply costs are so high and labor is short as well

[coryrc]

Why? Because someone invents a more efficient process, we should increase the wages of ditch diggers?

I believe we should focus on relieving the burden of the massive regulatory state on the poor. I.e. relax zoning and lower regressive taxes.

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

People digging ditches is a requirement for a functional modern society. When a general strike happens the ditch diggers and their friends will be the ones wielding the power they forgot they had all along. I strongly recommend not looking down upon people who work with their hands. It's very bad decorum, and their shovels are sharp.

[coryrc]

If you think that's going to happen again in the USA, you haven't been paying attention.

Signed, child and grandchild of union workers from Michigan

[mythrwy]

The problem there is they can make cars in Korea.

But they can't dig ditches in Korea and export them to the U.S.

[rdtwo]

Sure they can who do you think is digging ditches in the USA? People with questionable immigration status or criminal record who have no other choices that’s who.

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

Citation needed. I make a show of getting to know various laborers in my union and what they worry about. Right now they care about class consciousness, wage/HR, healthcare, etc.

[oivey]

The ditch diggers dug the trenches to run internet to your home. Your internet connection has only went up in value/utility, yet the people who dig those trenches now don’t make any more than they did before.

The idea that employees are paid according to their value is entirely wrong. Employees are paid according to the labor market. The price of labor on the market is significantly controlled by supply, not the value to the employer of employing someone. Besides that, employers have much more power in the employment relationship. This is true even in tech. For example, the FAANGs got caught colluding with one another to suppress salaries via secret anti-poaching agreements a few years back.

[coryrc]

They learned to use modern power equipment and make more than minimum wage. We shouldn't be forced to pay more to people who won't switch from using a hand shovel or whatever the modern equivalent is - cash register attendant? When people were "clerks" it paid an okay amount, but should it be paying more than an "okay" amount? Why should their buying power increase? Why should it track the salaries of people who made computers orders of magnitude cheaper and better? The people whose technology made mRNA vaccines possible for everyone to have?