 From January 1, 2023, the minimum wage rose in 23 states in the US, which is something of a record. This comes following a year when inflation hit new highs and working class people struggled across the country. However, the increase in the minimum wage did not come due to the generosity of employers or the government, but due to sustained struggles by workers, especially in the unorganized sector. What has been the trend in minimum wages over the decades, and how have workers fought for its increase? Why has the federal minimum wage remained so low? Eugene Poirier of Breakthrough News explains. When we look at what's happening with the minimum wage here in 2023 in the United States, we have to step back about 10 years. We're actually just past the 10-year anniversary of what is known as the Fight for 15 movement, which started with fast food workers, but really expanded to a whole wide range of low-wage workers, thousands upon thousands of workers in major cities and small towns all around the United States who started coming out and striking. Many of them did not really have legal union representation. It's very difficult in that sector to get it. In some cases, there are legal realities that make it difficult for them to actually form unions. So these were workers who had very minimal protections, but were just sick and tired of living in poverty wages, which almost all of these fast food employers and unfortunately many, many other employers in this country are paying. And in fact, in just about every single jurisdiction in America, the minimum wage is not a living wage. So these workers who started this massive movement that's been going on for 10 years have really swept the country. And it's created a reality that has turned around the situation as it concerns minimum wage increases. Almost very few of those took place in very far apart from about 1979 to about 10 years ago. And in the past 10 years, we've seen a significant push forward and including in 2023 where we're going to have a record 41 cities in 23 states waste the minimum wage. But it would never be happening if it wasn't for this huge movement that is still ongoing by the way of really tens of thousands of rank and file workers at low wage jobs who have been willing to take huge risks to their job, their family, all these different types of things by walking out, by protesting and by boycotting and doing everything they can to build solidarity with their struggle. You know, I think when we look at what's going on vis-a-vis the issue of the minimum wage in the United States and important to remember, there's federal minimum wages, there's the state minimum wage, and there are local minimum wages. Now, no minimum wage can be lower than the federal minimum wage, which actually is still $7.25 an hour. It's unchanged since 2009. And that's like in almost every major state in America, 10, if not 15, if not 20, if not $30 below what would be considered a living wage. In most major cities in America, a living wage is going to hover around 20, 21, sometimes a little bit more dollars per hour. If you are a single person, if you are a single parent, it will probably get up into 30, $31 an hour. So the living wages in America are, you know, well above what even the vast majority of people who are not vast majority, but a significant number of people who are not low wage workers actually make. So what we've seen in the minimum wage increases is that $15 an hour was 10 years ago, sort of the number that was pegged by the fight for 15 as not necessarily a living wage in all places, but at least the start of what a floor should be for the whole country. Now, Congress, because it is so right wing, whether the majority is Democratic or Republican, there's a conservative majority, has declined to raise the minimum wage for a range of regions, but by and large, because they buy the capitalist propaganda that raising minimum wages decreases jobs. So at the federal level, there's been almost nothing. Obama said he was going to try to do something. Didn't do it. When Democrats controlled, you know, both houses of Congress and their presidency, Biden, same thing, didn't do it. Both of them have done different things to get contractors to raise the minimum wage, but by and large at the federal level, it's been a debt issue because of the influence of conservative corporations on the politicians at the state and the local level. However, working class movements have been able to open up way, way more and everyone has more or less driven towards this point of $15 an hour. Again, not because it is necessarily a living wage, but to say that if there's going to be a floor, 15 should be the absolute floor. And nothing below 15 should be considered anything other than abject poverty and literally every single jurisdiction in the United States. So we're seeing a significant number of places increase below 15, but also a number, I think about 21 who are increasing up to $15 an hour and what we're seeing. And in this year, 2023, just what we saw in January 1, 2023, it's $5 billion cumulatively in wages for 8 million workers. So it's very significant, but it's still significantly below what a lot of these workers are going to need. But you can see that the struggle of working class people has at least raised the floor in many of the states and cities and other localities in the United States for what wages should be, although there is still a lot left to do. While minimum wages have slightly increased, the year 2022 also saw high levels of inequality with a rich earning more than the poorer sections. What explains this level of income inequality? What are some of the policies that enable it? Yeah, 2021 was another year of wage stagnation in the United States. I mean, we say this every single year since 1979 wages have actually not risen in a real way. There's been almost total wage stagnation overall, but that's basically only been for working class people. The bottom 90% of people, in fact, so even some of the higher levels of the working class, almost all of the people who are above that, the 1%, the 0.1%, they've steadily seen their wages increase as the share of income produced in the economy has been shifted more and more to the richest individuals and further and further away from working class people. So when you think about the big issue that a lot of people were talking about this year for the working class around the world, inflation, inflation was primarily caused by profits about 54% out of every dollar increase in inflation in the United States was by profits. So again, the inflationary mechanism was another way by which profits or money income was being transferred from the working class to the ruling class. So in an era in an era where profits were record profits in 2021, from primarily the just ridiculous increases to prices from inflation, what we have seen then is that the top 1% of earners saw a 9.4% increase in their wages in 2021, while the bottom 90% saw a two tenths of a percent of a percent decrease. So basically for the average working class person, they were running in place in terms of how their wages were. But for the average person in the 1%, they got about a 10% wage increase. And for the top 0.1%, one tenth of a percent. So the richest of the richest of the rich, the billionaires, they saw an 18.5% increase in their wages. So not only in share of income, but in growth of wages, we're seeing the richest people continue to shift more and more income into their pockets and less and less out of the working class. So even when the economy is growing, even when the things are relatively good and unemployment is low, workers are still being shortchanged significantly by all of the various different capitalist mechanisms. In the case of 2021, using inflation as a cover for profiteering in order to shift the money and the wealth that they're creating to the richest 1% and really 0.1% of Americans. You know, when we look at the issue of the deep inequality of the deep poverty wages, none of this is an accident and no one should ever look at it as an accident. There are a range of different things that can be attributed to this. First and foremost, we should talk about the extreme expansion of anti-union laws in the United States. Something called right to work, which has been expanding over the past 10 years. There are state level laws that basically make it very, very difficult to form unions. Similar types of laws at the federal level. There's a kind of a complicated rule called the joint employer rule, which basically means that the big corporation of McDonald's, which franchises out a lot of their individual restaurants, that the big corporation that makes all the money has some responsibility for the wages of the workers, which is a huge issue because some of these smaller restaurants, their smaller businesses, the owners will say they can't pay, whether that's true or not, the ability to have the access for workers working at McDonald's to demand money from the big, you know, international behemoth corporation is something that would allow them to get more income. So you can see on multiple levels, preventing workers from joining unions, establishing regulations that basically play a lot of tricks in terms of who's really responsible for the wages of workers and a lot of these low wage establishments that are deliberately set up to get around existing workers' rights law. So right there, that policy framework of being against unions and weakening the regulatory frameworks around workers' rights have played a huge role. The other one has been the real role back, I guess you could say of the relatively, some would say higher tax rates that existed in the United States from the 50s, 60s, 70s. Were they too high? I think that's another question. But nevertheless, since the 1980s, we've seen the Reagan administration, the first Bush administration, the Clinton administration, the second Bush administration, the Obama administration, the Trump administration. We've seen a steady erosion in the tax base of the United States because the tax rates, the highest tax rates on the richest corporations and the richest individuals have been steadily decreased. The biggest one of course was the 2017 tax law that was brought in by Trump, the Trump tax law, which was basically a $1.7 trillion transfer of wealth to the wealthiest individuals. So you can see really those two things working heavily in tandem. The use of tax policy to do whatever you possibly could do in order to shift the amount of income into the pockets of the richest people and put the burden for running the government, primarily on those who have the least ability to pay and also limiting the ability of workers to fight back, to advocate on the job, to collectively bargain and to find ways to lift their wages and to a higher level in line with productivity, in line with inflation and all those different pieces. So there's more that goes into it than that, but I would say those are probably the two biggest shackles that have really driven a lot of these trends around income inequality and the inability of workers to really keep up with the growth of productivity, which has been skyrocketing since 1979 and also the growth of inflation.