MY TWO NOTES TO Alexia Fernández Campbell

Re: Democrats tried to win over working-class voters. But they ignored their biggest worry.
https://www.vox.com/2019/7/31/20748003/democratic-debate-2020-working-class-voters-issues

(8/1)
"When you take inflation into account, workers’ real wages only grew about 1.3 percent over the past year."

Just a reminder: we don't need 3% raises -- we realistically need more like 100% raises (on average). If fast food can pay $15/hr with 25% labor costs, then, Walgreen's and Target can pay $20/hr with 15% labor costs, and, Walmart can pay $15/hr ($1,000/wk!) with 7% labor costs.

And don't forget centralized bargaining, a.k.a., sector wide labor agreements -- widely used in continental Europe, French Canada and, I believe, even in Argentina and Indonesia (once we get the unions in).

Now if the rest of the supposed (well meaning anyway) progressive class would just catch on.  ;-)

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(8/2)
More on doubling (on average) the pay of the lower 40%.

Just as with minimum wage, people auto associate hiking lower 40% wages with job loss -- predicting lessening of (what-I-call) 59% demand.  But, doubling lower 40% income share (at loss of 14% of mid-59% income) doubles 40% demand.  Upshot: no loss of overall demand.  Examples: higher end restaurant businesses may suffer when lower wage labor gets large raises -- but IHOP parking should get more crowded.
 * * * * * *

More on centralized bargaining.

Before I lucked into Andrew Strom's regularly scheduled cert/recert/decert proposal* the "magic bullet" I was pushing was sector wide labor agreements.  The big idea was that Congress could impose on whole industries any labor contract negotiated where the few unions already existed.  Of course, it might have been a stretch to impose agreements from 7% private (non gov) unions to the other 93% of firms.

Centralized will be a great clean up hitter if we got 25% certified unions.  Sector wide agreements would be the icing on the cake if we got 50-75% certified.
 
* https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/