The Case for a Higher Minimum Wage

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/opinion/sunday/the-case-for-a-higher-minimum-wage.html

The Case for a Higher Minimum Wage

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

FEB. 8, 2014

The political posturing over raising the minimum wage sometimes obscures the huge and growing number of low-wage workers it would affect. An estimated 27.8 million people would earn more money under the Democratic proposal to lift the hourly minimum from $7.25 today to $10.10 by 2016. And most of them do not fit the low-wage stereotype of a teenager with a summer job. Their average age is 35; most work full time; more than one-fourth are parents; and, on average, they earn half of their families’ total income.

None of that, however, has softened the hearts of opponents, including congressional Republicans and low-wage employers, notably restaurant owners and executives.

This is not a new debate. The minimum wage is a battlefield in a larger political fight between Democrats and Republicans — dating back to the New Deal legislation that instituted the first minimum wage in 1938 — over government’s role in the economy, over raw versus regulated capitalism, over corporate power versus public needs.

WHAT’S THE POINT OF THE MINIMUM WAGE? Most people think of the minimum wage as the lowest legal hourly pay. That’s true, but it is really much more than that. As defined in the name of the law that established it — the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 — the minimum wage is a fundamental labor standard designed to protect workers, just as child labor laws and overtime pay rules do. Labor standards, like environmental standards and investor protections, are essential to a functional economy. Properly set and enforced, these standards check exploitation, pollution and speculation. In the process, they promote broad and rising prosperity, as well as public confidence.But the results of the wage debate are clear. Decades of research, facts and evidence show that increasing the minimum wage is vital to the economic security of tens of millions of Americans, and would be good for the weak economy. As Congress begins its own debate, here are answers to some basic questions about the need for an increase.

The minimum wage is specifically intended to take aim at the inherent imbalance in power between employers and low-wage workers that can push wages down to poverty levels. An appropriate wage floor set by Congress effectively substitutes for the bargaining power that low-wage workers lack. When low-end wages rise, poverty and inequality are reduced. But that doesn’t mean the minimum wage is a government program to provide welfare, as critics sometimes imply in an attempt to link it to unpopular policies. An hourly minimum of $10.10, for example, as Democrats have proposed, would reduce the number of people living in poverty by 4.6 million, according to widely accepted research, without requiring the government to tax, borrow or spend.

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More plus an interesting graph on the link

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

Their graph says that production per worker has increased so much, that by 1960s wage/output standards, the minimum wage should be $18. Instead the current wage is less than the wage in the 1960s, which was $9 in today's money.

[mota bhai 2,675]

No one worthy of breathing our air and drinking our water actually makes minimum wage anymore.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

No one worthy of breathing our air and drinking our water actually makes minimum wage anymore.

Oh, how wrong you are.

[mota bhai 2,675]

Nope.

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

No one worthy of breathing our air and drinking our water actually makes minimum wage anymore.

as a former plant operations manger, working for a company that used Temps at Min Wage.

I have to disagree. We got some good people in.However if they worked and applied themselves they usually got hired on Permanent and could be at 10.00 within 6 months.

[mota bhai 2,675]

as a former plant operations manger, working for a company that used Temps at Min Wage.

I have to disagree. We got some good people in.However if they worked and applied themselves they usually got hired on Permanent and could be at 10.00 within 6 months.

I meant min wage as a lifestyle. Those people are pure garbage. A waste of flesh.

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

I meant min wage as a lifestyle. Those people are pure garbage. A waste of flesh.

yes as a lifestyle

[lostinblue 1,989]

Their graph says that production per worker has increased so much, that by 1960s wage/output standards, the minimum wage should be $18. Instead the current wage is less than the wage in the 1960s, which was $9 in today's money.

So how much as a business owner how much are you paying your employees?

Edited February 11, 2014 by lostinblue

[Penny Lane 8,159]

I wonder how much those 1000 employees at the local family owned grocery store make?

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

So how much as a business owner how much are you paying your employees?

The lowest paid worker gets $15 an hour.

[DavenRoxy 1,073]

The lowest paid worker gets $15 an hour.

What business/industry?

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

What business/industry?

Pencil factory.

[Teddy B 17,252]

Pencil factory.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

You know, if conservatives like the past, and fear change, then they should get behind this push the replicate the wages of the 1960s. That was good times, right? Sweet cars and hot women? Before the hippies ruined it all, of course.