On this day, January 5, back in 1914, Ford Motor Company owner and CEO Henry Ford introduced a minimum wage of $5 per day for his workers. And yet, things have not improved all that much for workers since then. as Bill Moyers explained to a December 12 gathering in New York sponsored by The Nation magazine:
"Everywhere you turn you'll find people who believe they have been written out of the story. Everywhere you turn there's a sense of insecurity grounded in a gnawing fear that freedom in America has come to mean the freedom of the rich to get richer even as millions of Americans are dumped from the Dream."
It doesn't take much to inspire this feeling, especially when Home Depot executive Robert Nardelli refused to take a pay cut, a solution that he would gladly impose on the employees of the troubled company he led into dire economic straits. They couldn't refuse such a cut!
On another front, one which only nominally represents the interests of We, the People of the United States, judges who already make more than 99% of the rest of America think they are being sorely treated with wages that "only" reach $165,200 a year for a sitting federal trial judge. This amount happens to equal what our Congressional representatives "earn" each year, so if the judges get a raise, expect the Congress to generously give themselves one as well.
And how much of a raise do they seek? Let's first put this into a perspective familiar to most of us. I will myself will get a 3% raise this year. But, in order for judges to keep up with the national average for all wages, which have only risen by 17.8% (inflation adjusted) since 1969, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. (R-SCOTUS) whimpers that "judges have fallen well behind the American labor force as a whole in keeping up with inflation" and recommends an increase of 30%.
That's a '3', followed by a '0'. That's ten times what I'm going to get for a raise this year. Judges have seen their wages go up by 400% since 1969, even though the American people don't want to pay the taxes necessary for more of a raise.
In 1969, district court judges were paid $40,000 a year. But this should have been enough, as Joseph F. Quinn found in Wage Differentials among Older Workers in the Public and Private Sectors [The Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Winter, 1979), pp. 41-62]:
"Wages in the public sector are often set on the basis of comparisons with compensation in the private sector. There are reasons to suspect that this approach may result in government pay schedules that exceed those in the private sector. ... Fringe benefits, job stability, and the attractiveness of the job environment also appear to be greater in the public sector."
I happen to have a labor agreement for my local from 1969. The bargaining unit members who did my job back then were earning $3.05 an hour, which put them among the highest-paid workers in our land. Applying the typical man-year of 2000 man hours per year, that equates to an annual income of $6100.
Article comments
1 - PeterJ
Forget it Realist, Right now Judges and CEO's from across the land have just covered their ears with both hands and are screaming loud animal noises to block out your drivel.
How could you even think about blocking pay raises for poor souls earning only $165,000. a year? How do you expect them to exist? You must have no heart. Hasn't anyone told you that the minimum wage has soared to a whopping $7.15 an hour? Why that's $286. a week, almost $15,000. a year.
CEO's from across the land are whining, "how are we supposed to justify voting ourselves a $15,000. raise this year if we have to give it to those greedy bastards? They're going to ruin all of my vacations this year, not to mention I won't be able to buy a new Hummer until they're already released to the public. What are my golf buddies going to think?"
Do you believe that incomes across the board will ever be brought into line? I'm not talking about a redistribution of wealth here, I'm talking a redistribution of income.
It's a tired old story, how putting more money into the bottom will rise back to the top, putting more people back to work to accomodate a rapidly growing demand and an increase in white collar positions such as banking, book-keeping,
investment managers and the like, inevitably more money rising to the top so that those poor CEO's will make even more money.
Of course, this will mean that the CEO's and upper management may have to work a bit more, maybe as much as 40 hours more a week, but jeesh, whaddya want? What they want is how it is now. Put in maybe 32 hrs, long expensive lunches, vacations as they please and fantastic pay plans and benefit packages they write themselves. Wouldn't we all.
Now will come the naysayer, defender of Corporate Executives, "What, why? It's uncalled for. If people can't live on $15,000. a year then somethings wrong. They'll just have to cut back on luxuries, like rent, food, drop those expensive insurance policies, for krist sake people, have some heart here."
How to fix this problem? First you have to get past those infamous words; "What problem?"
That's the hard part. The people who make the most money are the ones who decide how much they're going to make. It seems like a conflict with no resolve. Maybe it is.
2 - STM
Can anyone tell me what the actual minimum wage is in the US? I am seeing $15,000 a year here, which can't be right.
There must be another component built into that, surely?
3 - Bliffle
It's all about the privilege and power that proceeds from monopoly. The lawyers unions assure that they have a monopoly on judgeships and the rest follows. A power they always deny to other unions, incidentally.
4 - troll
it's about a system of production with a designed flaw - the (basic and synthetic) principle of maximizing profit consistently applied leads to pockets of concentrated wealth and restrictions on the value of labor...and periodic economic collapse
capitalism like nuclear war is a game that cannot be won...
how about a friendly game of hold'em - ?
5 - Dave Nalle
I have to point out that back in 1969 that $40,000 a year which judges were being paid was comparable to what top-level civil servants in the federal or state government were getting and comparable to other degreed professionals like doctors and lawyers. Today their salary at 4 times that it is substantially lower than many other degreed professionals.
There are two reasons why salaries for judges are high. First, the idea is to reduce their incentive to take bribes. Second, you have to be able to retain the good judges so they don't go back into private practice. A successul attorney of the type likely to be made a judge is easily going to earn more than $500K a year, so paying him a third of that is a hell of a pay cut.
Trying to equate the salaries of judges who get their jobs through additional education and years of practice in law with the jobs of the average worker is ridiculous.
Dave
6 - troll
Dave - the high salary is the bribe...paying judges to protect private property is just another 'cost of production'
7 - Dave Nalle
But the point, troll, is that it is NOT a high salary. The salary Realist (good lord what a misnomer) is complaining about is extraordinarily low for the type of people who become judges.
Dave
8 - IgnatiusReilly
"A successul attorney of the type likely to be made a judge is easily going to earn more than $500K a year, so paying him a third of that is a hell of a pay cut."
If you compare the hours and workload a lawyer and judge have, the pay cut is not as extreme as you make it.
Plus, a person's character and not their pay scale is what affects bribes.
9 - Dave Nalle
From what I've seen judges have a pretty heavy workload, but I'm sure there's a lot less pressure on them than on lawyers who have actual clients. Nonetheless the argument about salaries being too high remains ridiculous.
I'm with you on bribes in general. It's certainly mostly a character issue. but putting financial pressure on them to test their character doesn't seem like a great idea.
Dave