US Uncut - In comparing Detroit’s “Big Three” automakers — one of the top industries in the US — with our competitors overseas, low wages are precisely the problem. American-made General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Fiat Chrysler pale in comparison to Germany’s Big Three: Daimler (Mercedes-Benz’s parent company), BMW, and Volkswagen. In 2010, Germany produced 5.5 million automobiles, while the US produced just 2.7 million. In that same year, German auto workers were paid an average of $67.14 (USD) per hour in combined wages and benefits, while their American counterparts were paid just $33.77 an hour. Essentially, Germany makes twice as many cars and pays its workers twice as much.
Minimum-wage
hikes are not always associated with immediate spikes in employment;
especially in recessionary moments. But PolitiFact notes
that “[of the] five minimum wage hikes that occurred when a recovery
was under way, joblessness declined four of those times.”
So Carson got the economics of minimum-wage increases wrong, as
did the other Republican contenders who said “no” to living-wage
proposals during Tuesday’s debate. Billionaire Donald Trump was really
wrong when he suggested that the problem facing America is “high wages,”
and Florida Senator Marco Rubio was really, really wrong when he argued for permanent wage stagnation as a check against job losses to automation.
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