[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

Y'all really really REALLY need to stop spreading this urban legend. I get that any of you who are old enough to remember what the original point of minimum wage is, are too old to remember. I get that the rest of you wouldn't have known, unless you were actually paying attention in school and maybe you have forgotten your lessons then too. It probably wasn't all that important at the time. I get that.

But I don't get why people would make these claims that are EASILY debunked, that have never been true, have never had any truth to them at all.

The National minimum wage was created in 1938 by Congress under the Fair Labor Act. It was implemented to protect workers in the labor force and provide a LIVING WAGE. That is *exactly* what was intended by it when it was created. That was its #1 purpose.

That continued to be the purpose for a couple of decades, until it ceased to keep up with inflation, and minimum wage workers became unable to live on their minimum wage. This country stopped even bothering to try and catch up for a very long time, and now we're in the situation we're in.

Sources:

Minimum Wage | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage | U.S. Department of Labor
Can a Family Survive on the U.S. Minimum Wage?
Minimum Wage: Definition, History, Pros, Cons, Purpose

There are dozens of other sources, and Forbes Magazine, that financial bastion of capitalistic goodness, has figured that if you account for general inflation and the general rise in wages over time, minimum wage, compared to the 25-cents/hour it was in 1938, would be $8.86/hour, not the $7.25/hour it is currently.

Around 1975 increasing inflation started to prevent REAL wages from increasing until today we have the socially unstable (possibly dangerous and a nod to totalitarian) situation where the US has the greatest Wealth Disparity in the free world. Sad and dangerous.