Thread by @ceprdc

“Think of what the country would look like if the lowest paying jobs...paid $26 an hour,” writes @DeanBaker13 in his UPDATED look at the disconnect btwn minimum wage & productivity.
cepr.net/the-26-an-hour…

.@DeanBaker13 warns, “Don’t try this at home...The $26 an hour is useful as a thought experiment for envisioning what the world might look like today, but it would not be realistic as policy...without many other changes to the economy.”

“We have...shifted huge amounts of income upward, so that we cannot support a pay structure that gives workers at the bottom $52,000 a year. This is the whole point of my book, Rigged (it’s free!).” @DeanBaker13
deanbaker.net/books/rigged.h…

.@DeanBaker13 on how to re-connect the link btwn minimum wage & productivity: “Just to quickly run through the short list, we can start with my favorites, government-granted patent and copyright monopolies.”
cepr.net/report/is-inte…

.@DeanBaker13 writes: “The reason we don’t see downward pressure on CEO pay is that the corporate boards that most immediately determine CEO pay are largely selected by the CEO & other top management.”
cepr.net/154043-2/

.@DeanBaker13 on reconnecting the link btwn minimum wage & productivity: “We have created a tax and regulatory structure that allows some people to get incredibly rich by making little or no contribution to the productive economy.”
cepr.net/beating-up-on-…

.@DeanBaker13 writes: “Doctors & other highly paid professionals [make] more than 2X as much as their counterparts in other wealthy countries because we protect them from competition...”
weatherbyhealthcare.com/blog/annual-ph…

$26/hr minimum wage? “We have to make many other changes in the economy to make this possible. These changes are well worth making,” writes @DeanBaker13.
cepr.net/the-26-an-hour…