Posted on 04/10/2012 6:57:23 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
As the nation’s economy slowly recovers and income inequality emerges as a crucial issue in the presidential campaign, lawmakers are facing growing pressure to raise the minimum wage, which was last increased at the federal level to $7.25 an hour in July 2009.
State legislators in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois and elsewhere are pushing to raise the minimum wage above the federal level in their own states, arguing that $7.25 an hour is too meager for anyone to live on.
These moves are giving momentum to an effort to persuade Congress to embrace a higher national minimum wage. Some liberal and labor groups, capitalizing on the energy and message of the Occupy Wall Street movement, are urging Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, to head a Congressional effort to raise the federal minimum to $9.80 an hour by 2014.
The business community is not at all happy about these developments and has warned President Obama, Democratic lawmakers and labor groups that with weak job growth, the time is definitely not right to raise the minimum wage.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Hikes in minimum wage are a source of inflation, just like a hike in gas prices.
It’s election time. Raising the minimum wage is part of the Dem playbook. They know it won’t happen in the Rep controlled House, but they just want the issue, not the increase.
And people, with a straight face, call our system “free markets”. What a joke.
The economy is not recovering and income inequality is a non-issue for most of us.
The economy is not recovering and income inequality is a non-issue for most of us.
All blue states, all in deep financial trouble and they think this is going to help matters?
The minimum wage is the floor for the guidelines to UNION WAGES. If the minimum goes up then so do all the union contract demands.
Just thinking of High School in the late 70’s. I worked at a variety of stores, making minimum wage which was in the $3.75 range. Gas was in the $0.79 range - so 1 hour of work paid for ~4.75 gallons of gas. Or, about 30 minutes of work paid for my commute to my job.
Today, my wife has to work 1.5 hours to just pay for the gas it takes to make the trip to work and back. The increase in the price of gas has far outstripped inflation, and is becmoing more and more a critcal cost of living - yet is NOT include in the Gov’t Cost of Living calculations.
Gee, now in who’s best interests would that serve? It just makes Obama’s numbers look good. IMHO, the reason we had the housing collapse and entered the Depression (that Obama has magnified) is the $5/gallon gas prices that preceeded the collapse. You have no choice - you MUST fill that car in order to get to work. If your transportation costs increase, then your food costs must also increase. We have no choice, we MUST eat, we MUST heat our homes, we MUST drive to work. When it comes down to priorities, paying the mortgage became impossible. We are now set to repeat the cycle again - because Politicians are too stupid to see a pattern.
People talk about a “gold standard” for the dollar.
We have a “mundane labor standard” for the dollar, thanks to minimum wage.
The value of a gallon of gas is always about equal to a half hour of floor sweeping or burger flipping. Raising the fiat dollar value of an hour of floor sweeping or other mundane labor (jobs which pretty much anyone can do with no skill or training or capital) only changes the numerical dollar value of a gallon of gas, it does not change the relative value thereof.
Pay the gas station clerk $100/hr and you won’t be paying $3.50/gal for gas for very long (would soon rise to $48/gal).
A belief that raising the minimum wage will help the poor is a sure indicator someone doesn’t understand basic economics.
In the late 1970s, the minimum wage ranged from $2.30 in 1977 to $2.90 in 1979. It remained at $2.90 until 1983 when it was raised to $3.35, where it remained until 1990. In 1990 it was raised to $3.80.
Federal Minimum Wage Rates, 1955–2011
In 1979 gasoline prices sharply rose over the first half of the year due to the Iranian crisis, spiked in the summer and then fell. For the year the average was $0.86.
On a note unrelated to gasoline, but related to the minimum wage, I have to ask the following:
If someone can only earn the minimum wage, why should the be expected to only work 40 hours a week? I remember one summer working a minimum wage job and there was a guy about 50 years old working there for minimum wage. I think I worked about 50 hours a week (ten hours a day). The older man worked 60 hours a week (12 hours a day).
If you can work at the same job for 60 hours, and get overtime, that would produce about $25K/year. Working two different minimum wage jobs (no overtime) would get you close to $22K/year.
This is a classic instance of the wisdom of the founding fathers in letting each state be a laboratory of democracy. If raising the minimum wage creates jobs then a state that raises the minimum wage above the federal level should do better than one that does not.
For instance California has a state minimum wage above the federal level and its economy is doing so much better.....oh wait there a minute.
Any Minimum Wage sets a floor for prices of goods and services that depend on people receiving wages. Thus, consumer prices must stay the same or increase.
As an exercise in economic cause and effect, have your students plot the # of jobs going to foreign countries vs the price change in the US Minimum Wage by year.
Then have your students try to explain any correlation they see in 1.) the classroom, 2.) to their parents, and 3.) to the local TV station at a school press conference. Tri-Cornered Hats are optional, of course.
That sounds like a good exercise. I teach in an area once dotted with furniture plants, but since the jobs went overseas they now have 14% unemployment. Tricorn hat might be required, actually.....
Glad to be of help.
BTW, you could work in a little Physics lesson also, you know, “For each Action there is an Equal an Opposite Reaction.” (Issac Newton)
Always open to teaching ideas- you can find them a lot places if you know what to look for. I do spend some time connecting Newton’s law of gravity to John Locke’s law of government- if a government isn’t protecting people’s rights of life, liberty, and property, then it will be replaced. Just like tossing a rock up, and watching it fall, because of the law of gravity.
Glad to help. As for teaching ideas, - - - LOOK UP! You are on FR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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