All of the polarizing social commentary aside, two parties have two very different approaches to expanding the middle class. I'm interested in learning how many on here think we established a middle class initially.
Henry Ford started the middle class by doing the exact opposite of what a Republican today would do. Every problem we have in the U.S. has been solved at least once in our history but people (Repubs) are too thick skulled to know their own history.
Labor philosophy
The five-dollar wage
Time magazine, January 14, 1935
Ford was a pioneer of "
welfare capitalism", designed to improve the lot of his workers and especially to reduce the heavy
turnover that had many departments hiring 300 men per year to fill 100 slots. Efficiency meant hiring and keeping the best workers.
[21]
Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($120 today), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers.
[22] A
Cleveland, Ohio, newspaper editorialized that the announcement "shot like a blinding rocket through the dark clouds of the present industrial depression."
[23] The move proved extremely profitable; instead of constant turnover of employees, the best mechanics in Detroit flocked to Ford, bringing their human capital and expertise, raising productivity, and lowering training costs.
[24][25] Ford announced his $5-per-day program on January 5, 1914, raising the minimum daily pay from $2.34 to $5 for qualifying male workers.
Detroit was already a high-wage city, but competitors were forced to raise wages or lose their best workers.
[26] Ford's policy proved, however, that paying people more would enable Ford workers to afford the cars they were producing and be good for the local economy. He viewed the increased wages as profit-sharing linked with rewarding those who were most productive and of good character.
[27] It may have been
Couzens who convinced Ford to adopt the $5-day.
[28]
The profit-sharing was offered to employees who had worked at the company for six months or more, and, importantly, conducted their lives in a manner of which Ford's "Social Department" approved. They frowned on heavy drinking, gambling, and (what today are called)
deadbeat dads. The Social Department used 50 investigators, plus support staff, to maintain employee standards; a large percentage of workers were able to qualify for this "profit-sharing."
Ford's incursion into his employees' private lives was highly controversial, and he soon backed off from the most intrusive aspects. By the time he wrote his 1922 memoir, he spoke of the Social Department and of the private conditions for profit-sharing in the past tense, and admitted that "paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, often special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will do more to solidify industry and strengthen organization than will any social work on the outside. Without changing the principle we have changed the method of payment."
[29]
