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 ...
Why do WaPo hire one-sided opinion writers like this?
Never mind, stupid question.
Personally, I think they should raise the minimum waget to $100 per hour. That way everyone with a job would be “rich” and we would never have poverty again. It’s so simple, really. Only liberals get it.
Man, that would be sweeeeeeet!
;-)
Do not raise the minumum anything, by any amount. On anything.
But DO start buying American.
Buy American. Bring back US jobs now.
“it would also add $25 billion to gross domestic product”
I guess it just comes from Scrooge McDuck’s vault, where it wasn’t being uesed before.
“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.”
...”thoughtful on these questions”?! Marxist on these questions, yes. Socialist on these questions, yes. His statement is astronomically lacking in common sense.
Wa' sto' at $100 per awa'. Ma' babidaddy aint' gibben me 'nuff sueport munny. Howabow' $200?
I guess the answer is making people pay more for stuff they don’t need, and go into more debt doing it.
Why not lower the minimum wage back to $1, so we can buy new cars for $1500, a new home for $12,000, milk for 20 cents a quart, and gas for 27 cents a gallon again? (KIDDING!)
Yeah, I can NOT possibly make a decent living with less than $50 per hour. Doesn't matter if I deserve it with my knowledge/skill set or if there is a need for such things or not. Who the heck define 'decent'?
Out of thin air!
Or maybe by diluting the value of the other dollars by that amount?
Wow. Talk about flash mobs. People would be fighting to get off unemployment. Wait a minute. Congress would probably just increase the benefits to keep pace.
Yes just raise to $1000 per minute if it doesn’t negatively affect wages or employment.
While we’re at it... since debt doesn’t matter, just stop taxing.
>> But DO start buying American.
I did my own landscaping project, instead of hiring a less than minimum wage Mexican.
I dug the dirt and shoveled the gravel and laid the stone that most Americans won’t dig and shovel and lay.
Does that count?
The shovel was an old Craftsman but I’m pretty sure the “Husky” rake is Chinese.
In Australia, the minimum wage now tops $15, and unemployment is 5.4 percent.
There has to be other reasons for the low unemployment than the minimum wage.
>> Personally, I think they should raise the minimum wage to $100 per hour.
I see what you’re doing there. :-)
But seriously — there IS a “minimum wage” above which it makes a LOT of sense to automate. I mean, how hard would it be to train a robot to flip burgers? Or clean a motel room?
Bye bye minimum wage job... forever.
Minorities and the poor will be hardest hit. I wonder if journalists ever consider the unintended consequences? Nah.
The writer uses the quote, but apparently doesn't understand the implication of the word "instead".
Plus, he doesn't once address the proven positive correlation between increases in min wage and unemployment.
My guess would be immigration control.
Liberals are so awesome, they can point out the obvious flaw in their plan, refer to it as a 'problem' to be solved, and then skip away through the flowers.. Every time you raise wages to the 'living' standard, you raise prices so it's no longer a 'living' standard. In the end, you get a whole bunch of people fired, a fair number just never even get offered a job, and a HUGE population has their standard of living reduced via inflation of prices for basic items.
How many of those who are unemployed today would be employed doing something if there were no minimum wages? Oh, and of course, liberals are working ever so hard to make illegals legal, cutting into entry level jobs (and further eroding middle class jobs) and creating a massive burden on the social services including schools.
Ahh, Grayout, you still are an utter idiot.
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