Elizabeth Warren: Why isn't minimum wage $22 an hour like it used to be?

[Sherman A1]

48. I believe you may have missed the point

While $22.00 per hour for minimum wage sounds high, it really isn't when you consider the erosion of buying power that the working class has suffered while productivity has risen over these last 30 to 40 years. It is a matter of had the benefits of that productivity been shared more fairly rather than having been diverted to the top couple of percent. Had the money been shared more evenly $22.00 per hour would seem very reasonable. The matter that it does not, is testament to the propaganda that we have all suffered over these decades. How is a $22.00 per hour minimum wage not fair, but the CEO making hundreds of times the wages of the average worker somehow accepted as okay?

Your example of the grocery employee with multiple responsibilities already exists in many retailer outlets as the work force is moved from one department to another to stock various loads as they arrive. In the past you would have employees assigned to specific departments, but now they move from the dairy to frozen, to grocery to whatever and in the midst of that they are called to check out customers and bag their groceries or bring in carts when the front end is busy. Those employees are also being replaced by a form of outsourcing that moves the building of displays from the store level to supplier whole ship in prebuilt pallet size product assortments in order that the store might reduce the number of "touches". When these displays are empty or nearly empty they are simply rolled off the sales floor and replaced with the next one.