So you open up the local newspaper to page 4 only to learn that the
a. Farm workers,
b. Personal and Home Care Aides,
c. Food Preparation and Serving workers, or
d. Portfolio Managers at Large Hedge Funds,
are on strike. Choose the strike least likely to put a wrinkle in your day. Sure, I’m being a bit (willfully) naïve here, but workers in the first three categories make under $10 an hour, while those in category “d” are averaging 2.2 million a year. That is roughly a factor of 100 in annual salary, which should somehow translate into the value of the work to society. Sure, I know there are more food prep workers than hedge fund managers, and that hedge fund managers have gone to Harvard—but so have Astronomers, at about $100k a year.
Waddya say we raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour and take the hedge fund advantage down to about 50 to 1. Will it lead to the end of the free world? I’d have to say it’s worth the risk.