▪️The average wage for a car manufacturing worker is $32.80/hr according to the BLS. While it’s possible some auto workers make $16/hr, UAW workers start at $18/hr and quickly grow. If workers somewhere are making $16, it’s likely not for long.
https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iagauto.htm
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/07/gm-offers-wage-increases-hefty-bonuses-uaw.html
▪️$32.80/hr comes to $262/day, a 72% increase over 1914. Not including all the benefits which didn’t exist back then, although most workers in 1914 didn’t pay any federal taxes so they could at least keep the money they earned.
▪️Auto workers would be wise to remember the reason why Ford could increase pay to $5/day. His innovations dramatically increased efficiency, reducing the time it took to make a Model T from 12.5 hrs to 93 min. It was this change in productivity which enabled the massive raises.
▪️Also, the $5/day initiative was actually a profit sharing plan. Workers who made $2.30/day under the old pay schedule still made that wage. But if they met all of the company’s requirements, Ford gave a bonus of $2.70/day. The wage itself also incentivized increased productivity.
https://www.thehenryford.org/explore/blog/fords-five-dollar-day/
▪️Auto workers, like so many other industries, are renegotiating contracts after wages have been eroded by inflation in recent years. They are demanding, deserve, and will likely get, significant raises. Negotiations are always contentious, but pretending like auto workers were better off in 1914 is delusional.
It’s funny to see the left use the same conspiratorial rhetoric as the right did a year ago regarding the jobs numbers being downwardly revised. So many on the right, who knew nothing of how the jobs numbers are calculated or why they revise them, were convinced the downward revisions were a conspiracy to help Biden win.
If people want to have a debate about the birth death model or the survey methods, ok, but that’s not what’s happening here. Most people are under the delusion that the BLS report is the govt reporting every job created and lost, and are thus easily swayed it’s rigged when it suits their political ends.
This is almost laughingly misleading, as it leaves out everything before the letter.
▪️After being repeatedly lampooned by the Smothers Brothers over Vietnam, Johnson finally had enough. One night at 3 am he called the head of CBS William Paley, demanding that he “get those bastards off my back.”
▪️Paley then asked the heads of CBS entertainment to get them to back off of LBJ. However, instead of backing off the Smothers Brothers doubled down, booking a folk musician performing “Waist Deep,” an anti-war song about a soldier being stuck in the mud while “the big fool says to push on,” clearly a dig at LBJ.
▪️At the last minute, CBS cut the song from the pre-taped show to the outrage of the Smothers. They continued to push the boundaries off and on for the rest of his presidency, with CBS sometimes cutting segments that they thought went too far. Basically, it was a soft form of censorship.
▪️It wasn’t until Johnson made his surprise announcement not to run in 1968 ...