Posted on 02/07/2013 5:49:42 AM PST by Sir Napsalot
While Eric Cantor feebly tries to rebrand the GOP this week, and President Obama maneuvers to sidestep the sequester he signed into law in 2011, millions of America’s working poor continue to languish. The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009. ..... According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United States is near the bottom of advanced nations when it comes to the ratio of the minimum wage to the median wage. In Australia, the minimum wage now tops $15, and unemployment is 5.4 percent.
With facts like these – and a payroll tax hike that just took $100 billion a year mostly out of the pockets of ordinary workers – you’d think Obama would be leading the charge to give low-income workers a raise. Yet after pledging in his 2008 campaign to lift the minimum to $9.50 by 2011, he’s barely uttered a peep. .......
It’s no surprise that (Ralph) Nader, 78 years old and still fighting the good fight, worked with a couple of dozen liberal Democrats in Congress last year on a bill to lift the minimum to $10. That would still be below 1968’s level, but it would represent a $5,000-plus raise for close to 30 million workers at or near the minimum today (it would also add $25 billion to gross domestic product, according to the Economic Policy Institute). That bill went nowhere without White House leadership; even a lunch-bucket Democrat like Tom Harkin refused to hold hearings on the idea.
....
“Part of the answer,” says Gray Davis, the former governor of California who is thoughtful on these questions, “will be convincing people to pay a little bit more for things so that Americans can have jobs that pay a decent wage.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I just read from Drudge link (Washington Examiner article) that "President Obama’s executive order raising the salary of Vice President Joe Biden and other federal officials."
He can and he did the EO, so why this additional proposal for raising minimum wage, TO Spread The Wealth, I guess?
We on the right often say that the left wants to bring about economic equality by dragging everyone down to poverty, but I don’t know that I’ve seen a more blatant revelation of that fact. This writer thinks it’s a *bad* thing that the United States has a low ratio (0.38) of minimum wage to median wage. In other words, it’s bad that the median U.S. wage is well above minimum. The writer sees having a high minimum-to-median ratio as a goal. The ideal, to him, would presumably be a ratio of 1.0, meaning that everyone receives minimum wage.
Unless and Until it suits their argument.
Overdue? Makes economic sense?? If you like living in an automated, service free society with higher unemployment, especially among the young and the unskilled, then yes, it makes sense.
Raise it and hurt the ones you think you'll help. Make them and the cost of their labor more expensive! Great plan.
In Oz the minimum wage is A15/hour. Many would, OMG - cost of living in Oz must be through he roof!
Well, maybe not.
Below is a list of average costs for everyday grocery products in Australia:
loaf of bread – A$2.50 to A$3.00;
two litres of milk – A$2.20 to A$2.90;
newspaper – A$1.50 to A$3.00;
box of breakfast cereal – A$3.00 to A$4.00;
jar of instant coffee – A$3.00 to A$4.00;
bottle of soft drink – A$1.50 to A$3.00;
bottle of shampoo – A$2.50 to A$4.50;
bar of soap – A$1.50 to A$2.50;
one apple – 50 cents to 80 cents;
one banana – 60 cents to 90 cents;
beef (500 grams) – A$7.00 to A$8.00; and
chicken (600 grams) – A$7.00 to A$8.00
Ask yourself - if in OZ they pay under A3.00 for a half gallon of milk, why you paying so much more?
Current exchange rate
1 USD = 1.0166 Oz dollar.
There has to be other reasons for the low unemployment than the minimum wage.
Straw man - nobody claims that there are no other reasons for unemployment than the minimum wage. But it's basic economics that demand falls with rising price.
The Joint Economic Committee found that individual studies claiming no increase in unemployment from raising the minimum wage "are directly contrary to virtually every empirical study ever done on the minimum wage. These studies were exhaustively surveyed by the Minimum Wage Study Commission, which concluded that a 10% increase in the minimum wage reduced teenage employment by 1% to 3%." (http:// www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/minimum/50years.htm)
Harvard economics professor N. Gregory Mankiw concurs, saying "most research on the minimum wage finds that it reduces employment." (http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/mankiw/columns/ bglobejune01.html)
And here's a study confirming that consensus:
Neumark, David, Mark Schweitzer, and William Wascher. 2004. "Minimum Wage Effects throughout the Wage Distribution." Journal of Human Resources 39(2): 425-450.
Abstract: This paper provides evidence on a wide set of margins along which labor markets can adjust in response to increases in the minimum wage, including wages, hours, employment, and ultimately labor income. Not surprisingly, the evidence indicates that low-wage workers are most strongly affected, while higher-wage workers are little affected. Workers who initially earn near the minimum wage experience wage gains. Nevertheless, their hours and employment decline, and the combined effect of these changes on earned income suggests adverse consequences, on net, for low-wage workers.
“will be convincing people to pay a little bit more for things so that Americans can have jobs that pay a decent wage.”
Good lord. I have yet to find a lib willing to pay MORE for anything...most of the time they want it cheap and will last forever, without harming the environment and made by American workers who only work 25 hours a week.
Let’s make it $250,000 an hour! That way we can all be millionares.
Napscoordinator did not make the strawman argument.
It was the author of this article who implied a minimum wage of $15 had no consequences for umemployment rate (at 5.4) in Australia.
Because 11 nations in Europe (sorry, this passage had been deleted from earlier WaPo Opinion piece) and in this case specified, in the land of Oz had done it, US should follow the footstep in raising the minimum wage to at least $10. If it were up to the author, he said “$12, $15, or some other number”.
Sorry, napscoordinator! (But remember that quotation marks are your friends.)
If my memory serves, Nancy raised the minimum raise in the summer of 2009. Within 1 business quarter, we had a pretty significant increase in unemployment! However, we all know that common sense and historical truths are irrelevant to leftists.
Thanks. I just saw everything. Quite a heathly discussion.
I meant to add have a great weekend!
Why do politicians always have the worse prescriptions for economic malaise. Falling wages make more sense in high unemployment; just like maintaining price ceilings in shortages only make things worse.
>>>>>In Oz the minimum wage is A15/hour. Many would, OMG - cost of living in Oz must be through he roof!
Well, maybe not.
Below is a list of average costs for everyday grocery products in Australia:
loaf of bread – A$2.50 to A$3.00;
two litres of milk – A$2.20 to A$2.90;
newspaper – A$1.50 to A$3.00;
box of breakfast cereal – A$3.00 to A$4.00;
jar of instant coffee – A$3.00 to A$4.00;
bottle of soft drink – A$1.50 to A$3.00;
bottle of shampoo – A$2.50 to A$4.50;
bar of soap – A$1.50 to A$2.50;
one apple – 50 cents to 80 cents;
one banana – 60 cents to 90 cents;
beef (500 grams) – A$7.00 to A$8.00; and
chicken (600 grams) – A$7.00 to A$8.00
Ask yourself - if in OZ they pay under A3.00 for a half gallon of milk, why you paying so much more?
Current exchange rate
1 USD = 1.0166 Oz dollar<<<<<
Why won’t you tell about beer?
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