No, I don\u2019t mean a \u201cthought for the day\u201d that\u2019s worth being paid the minimum wage.\u00a0 In fact, this though is probably worth less than the minimum wage as it\u2019s more of a question than a thought.<\/p>\n
The supporters of an increase in the minimum wage are always complaining that it\u2019s not possible to support a family on minimum wage \u2014 and point to a more idyllic past when\u00a0it was possible, the proverbial leaving high school and getting a job in the factory the next day.<\/p>\n
So my little project is to answer the question of:\u00a0 \u201cdid that past really exist?\u201d\u00a0\u2014 or did it exist for more than a brief and historically exceptional period in time?<\/p>\n
The Middle Ages:\u00a0 among the peasantry, you couldn\u2019t support a family until you had a farm of your own.\u00a0 Until then, you were a hired hand or stayed on at the family\u2019s plot of land, but you couldn\u2019t marry.\u00a0 A medieval farmer did not marry exceptionally young for this reason \u2014 they had to wait until mom & dad died, or \u201cretired\u201d \u2014 that is, passed the farm on to the next generation and went to live in the hayloft.\u00a0 And if you were a younger child, then, if you\u2019re lucky, you would marry a girl who stood to inherit, or you\u2019d run off to the city \u2014 where you had no greater chance of being able to support a family on the income of an unskilled laborer; the whole concept of apprenticeship \u2013 journeyman \u2013 master tradesman was invented in the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n
Fast forward to the Industrial Revolution.\u00a0 Could a factory worker support his family on his factory wages?\u00a0 Uh, no \u2014 ever heard of child labor?\u00a0 And, beyond that, the idea of a 40-hour workweek was unimaginable.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
What about the 20th-century United States?\u00a0 \u2014 say, the period of the great steel factories and the like, up to the end of the US industrial dominance in the 70s?\u00a0 This is where I\u2019m asking myself:\u00a0 was the \u201cget a well-paying job in the factory\u201d true (and even if so, in the post-war period it was a matter of Europe and Asia in rubble) or just a myth?\u00a0 Were the jobs really of the sort that meant you could support a family with no specialized skills and a 40-hour week, or\u00a0did many of these jobs\u00a0have the same build-your-skills expectation, with the only difference that the factory trained you?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0(Come to think of it:\u00a0 Henry Ford\u2019s assembly line is often characterized as \u201ceach person was now responsible for just screwing in a single screw rather than building the whole car\u201d but I wonder how near or far from reality this is, and how skilled the workers had to be.)<\/p>\n
Of course, the other difference is that many of these jobs were physically arduous in ways that virtually no jobs are today.\u00a0 Working at McDonald\u2019s requires constant activity, but not the\u00a0constant heavy lifting and sheer strength of, say, a lumberjack.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No, I don\u2019t mean a \u201cthought for the day\u201d that\u2019s worth being paid the minimum wage.\u00a0 In fact, this though is probably worth less than the minimum wage as it\u2019s more of a question than a thought. The supporters of an increase in the minimum wage are always complaining that it\u2019s not possible to support […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n