Pic Of The Moment: While Arguing Against Minimum Wage Hike, Thune Makes Case For Minimum Wage Hike

[EarlG]

Sen. John Thune, Opposing $15 Min Wage, Says He Earned $6 As a Kid--That's $24 With Inflation

Average line cook salary nationwide

A story of slow, uneven, and unequal wage growth over the last 40 years

Follow @demunderground

[LakeArenal]

1. Eff him. Line cooks generally work long hours, Holidays, and have no benefits. I know.

I’d spit in his dinner and call it special sauce.

[Dream Girl]

16. Now, now 😉

[samplegirl]

2. Ok Grandpa

And try living on that now and even having any money to date on! Jackass! What does Thune think young people are driving brand new free cars?? Does he think car insurance costs the same as back then? Or a sandwich and shake?
Where could you even take a date on today’s wages?
These assholes forget how different things were when they were young!

[Oldem]

3. It's just like a repug to give an example form fifty years ago, and

then get the implications wrong.

[samplegirl]

5. My daughter is 38

And working her ass off and her husband as well and they have decent jobs.... but put up with all sorts of shit.
Politics are big in both their jobs as they are both in corrections.He’s been at his job for over 18 years!
And takes a lot of heat from judges ect.
They both work a lot of mandatory overtime... my daughter especially as a hearing officer in a private prison.
You do the overtime or lose your job!
Workers have very little rights!
I can’t imagine a minimum wage job. Like I said just car insurance and maintenance on a car. He most likely got a ride to and from his job!

[Grins]

8. It gets worse...

The GQP wants to rewrite labor law so that instead of paying time-and-half or more for it, employers can substitute time off. For which you not only do not have regulations for, but if terminated - you get nothing. And if they do give time off, the employer can dictate the dates the employee must take it.

[Major Nikon]

6. It wasn't even a real example

The minimum wage wasn't $1 in the 70's. It was twice that.

[mopinko]

7. yup. i was a waitress in those yrs. tipped wage was $1.48 irrc.

[louis-t]

26. Minimum wage was $1.05 an hour or very close to that in 1972.

That, I do remember. I was making $1.10 flipping burgers. I got all the way up to $1.25 and my father offered me $1.50 to come and work for him. I don't know when the minimum wage went to $2.

[Major Nikon]

27. For restaurant workers it was $1.60 in 1971

Thune was born in 1961 and would have been 10 at the time. By 1975 when he would have been 14 it was $2.
https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/legacy/files/chart.pdf

[louis-t]

28. That can't be right. I think I still have some of the paystubs.

I'll do some searching for the numbers.

[Major Nikon]

29. Depends on who you worked for

The FLSA only covered certain segments of employees in the 60's and 70's, but it did apply to restaurant workers in 1966 and beyond.

[ffr]

4. Most people may not pick up on that fact. Whoopsie!

[BarbD]

9. In 1955 I got 85 cents an hour clerking in a store.

There was a big hullabaloo when Wisconsin wanted to raise the minimum to $1/hour. Everyone said it would ruin business.

[Grins]

10. I wrote about this a while ago.

Back in the late 90’s.
On NPR.
I think the host was Ben Wattenberg.
His guest was some Wall St. wonder. (John Bogle...?)
In his 80’s!!!
Minimum wage comes up....

Yammers on and in about minimum wage and how - before WWII - as a teen he made $.80 an hour and how it taught him “Hard work!...A good work ethic!...Taught me life-long lessons!,” etc.

Well I got pissed at this and powered up my powerful 386 computer and looked at what his $.80 was in today’s dollars. Answer: About $15.

In 1914 Henry Ford paid his employees a whopping $5 - A DAY?
Assuming an 8-hour day, that is $16.50/hour in today’s dollars.

God, I hate these people.

[pandr32]

14. +1

[LetMyPeopleVote]

11. K&R

[greatauntoftriplets]

12. Did he get a percentage of tips?

[pandr32]

13. I made the dollar equivalency argument to a millennial

He said that Baby Boomers wrecked the economy. In the late sixties and early seventies it only cost $9,000 to get a four year college degree and rent for a decent place was $200 a month.

[JohnnyRingo]

15. When discussing minimum wage I relate a story

When I started working at GM in 1972 a brand new Camaro cost $2,500. I was hired at $6.00 an hour. People remind me that was a lot of money back then, and it was. I started a family on that wage. The problem is republicans think it's still a lot of money 50 years later.

To continue, when I retired 30 years later I was earning $24 an hour, an increase of 4X my starting wage. Still, those republicans thought that was much more than I deserved, but the cost of that new Camaro increased 10X over that time.

Republicans are horrible at math, that's why they think struggling millionaires pay too much in taxes.

[heckles65]

17. I love it when people like Thune mention their restaurant jobs,

on the idea they worked their way up in a continuous progression. The thing is (and I was aware this when I was in Thune's shoes about the same time) there is quite a difference between a person working a getting-money-for-college job, and those that have to work at such jobs year in and year out, often for family obligations. They know you're going to move on and up in a short while - maybe become a Congresscritter vetoing a life improvement for your onetime co-workers - even use them as rhetorical props while doing so.

[calimary]

18. Perhaps there should be a rule in which, for the first month of any Congressional or Senate service,

they should ALL have to be paid minimum wage. No perks. No side benefits or gifts from friendly donors or other goodies. Minimum wage. PERIOD.

So they can say they’ve walked in their constituents’ shoes and they FULLY and PERSONALLY know how hard it is to get by on minimum wage. Maybe it will soften some of the hearts of the hard-hearted.

[AllaN01Bear]

19. it was ok to cut the taxes of the most wealthiest , but its too expensive to have the $15 minimum

wage .
or how about a fighter aircraft that cant fly worth beans .

[rickyhall]

20. In 1982 I was making $5.50 an hour as an assistant manager at an auto parts chain store.

And paying $165 a month with electricity for a 1 bedroom apartment.

[BobTheSubgenius]

21. Sometimes, I'll demonstrate the "showing your age" thing with people I'm thrown together with.

While I'm shopping - pointing out that $75 for a roast of tenderloin seems kind of ridiculous, for example.

When I tell them that, during my college years, my weekly food budget was $10 and my share of the rent in a NICE house on the W side of Vancouver was $70/month, they are sometimes either semi-incredulous or envious.

Then I tell them that min wage was $1.25 and my student loan budgeted out at $170 a month, and they see the parallel. Kind of a teaching moment for the young, or especially people who resist raising the minimum wage.

Resistance, even though Victoria, where I now live, is nowhere near as expensive as the Kerrisdale neighbourhood where I grew up and also where the place I mentioned was located. Average rent for a 1BR here is $1500-1800. I would love to see the math where that works with current minimum wage.

[Justice matters.]

22. It's theiR 'trickle-down' theory...

that doesn't actually trickle down: In reality, it only trickles UP.

Or, theiR 'trickle-down' theory means down from $24/hr to $12-$18??

[DFW]

23. If John Tune will show us where, in South Dakota, houses and food can be bought for 1970s prices

THEN he can go make his ridiculous argument. Until he produces address of such a place, he can stick his argument where only his proctologist dares to go.

[yuiyoshida]

24. Here's my question...

Here’s my question…How stupid are Republican representatives? On a scale of 1 to 10?

[Fritz Walter]

25. Here's a thought

Maybe he should stick to his prior work skills. Because he’s in WAY over his head now.

[orangecrush]

30. Kick

[Aussie105]

31. Trickle down? No, let's try trickle up!

Give the top end of town tax cuts and they just hoard the extra profits.

Give workers a better wage, and they will spend it on essentials, food, pay bills, pay the rent, pay their utilities.

With more money to spend in millions of pockets, local small and large businesses will benefit. Hire more staff, pay more in taxes.

The money given to the lowest paid workers will 'Trickle Up' into the wider economy.

Not rocket science. You put the fertilizer on the lowest part of a plant, not on the tallest branch.