If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wage would be $24 an hour

Re:If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wag... by PaulDavisThe1st on Friday October 09, 2020 @01:38PM (#24732357)

"Average" anything in populations with large ranges is a terrible, terrible measure. As the joke goes, Bill Gates walks into a bar, and on average everyone in the bar is a millionaire.

Median is the appropriate statistic for such cases.

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Re:If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wag... by dcolkitt on Friday October 09, 2020 @03:41PM (#24733632)

Yeah, I actually agree. But the article is directly citing productivity, which by definition is the average economic output per hour worked.

It's fine if you want to focus on median wages, but at the same time you need to compare against the median worker's economic output- not aggregate productivity. Otherwise you're just comparing apples to oranges.

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Re:If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wag... by bleepblorp on Friday October 09, 2020 @02:07PM (#24732655)

Along these lines, here's a graph from the Federal Reserve's data service which plots median household income in contrast to GDP per household over time.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=bOfK

Note the increasing spread between GDP/household and median income. That's the US's entire socioeconomic problem--from rising consumer debt levels, rising deaths of despair, and the rise of reactionary politics--shown in one chart. The median person is falling behind.

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