Ralph Nader: Where is Obama’s promised minimum-wage hike?

Reuters' The Great Debate ^ | July 24, 2012 | Ralph Nader

[2ndDivisionVet]

During the 2008 campaign, presidential candidate Barack Obama made a pledge to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 per hour by 2011. Promises like this one inspired a generation of young voters, excited long-neglected progressive voters and gave hope to millions of his supporters across the country.

President Obama ran a campaign of soaring rhetoric and uplifting ideas. Amidst two unpopular wars, a rapidly deteriorating financial crisis and the wildly unpopular presidency of George W. Bush, Americans were desperate for a change. He was viewed as a “transformational” candidate, a president who would turn the page on the stagnant politics of Washington.

It is now four years later, and there has been no increase to the minimum wage. There has been no congressional vote, much less a whisper from the White House on the minimum wage.

President Obama understood the importance of this issue in 2008. The merits of raising the minimum wage haven’t changed since then, but his political courage has. The inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage has been in decline since the 1960s, losing over 30 percent of its value and leaving hard-working Americans struggling to get by from paycheck to paycheck. At the same time, the cost of living has continued to rise steadily, further eroding the value of a minimum wage. Had the minimum wage kept pace with inflation since 1968, today it would be at $10.57 per hour, instead of the current federal minimum wage of $7.25....

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

If a state is particularly hurting with unemployment, there is nothing preventing them from setting up a program like the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps.

Granted, there likely wouldn’t be much need for labor intensive environmental projects, but states could assign such labor, unskilled and skilled, to all sorts of projects, state, county and local, *as workfare* for their benefits.

That is, the state is *already* paying them benefits, of one kind or another, so why not set them to constructive work, employment, until they can work in a commercial job?

[killermosquito]

Eliminate the minimum wage. Allow anyone under 18 to work without having to pay taxes.

[BfloGuy]

Leave it to Nader to wail about one of Obama’s broken promises that would have made the jobs situation even worse than it already is. What a maroon.

[Gay State Conservative]

We’ve gotta give Crazy Ralph credit for *one* thing...he saved us from four (or more) years of algore.We’ll see in November if he’s outlived his usefulness or not.

[RagingBull]

Hmm... $1/hour * 40 hours/week * 52 week/year is $2,080/year. Even if there's no income tax, there's still FICA which drops it to $1,934/year.

Every $1 increase in hourly pay results in $800+/year of extra debt?

[supercat]

Increasing the minimum wage has the effect of increasing the wages of some workers by removing other would-be workers from the marketplace. If the supply of labor is reduced, the price of labor will increase.

Of course, since those who unemployed as a result of the minimum wage will still need to be fed, and since the government has decreed that those who have jobs must pay to support those who do not, it's not clear that even who keep their jobs and see increased wages really comes out ahead. The only people who really come out ahead are those who are in the business of wealth redistribution.

[supercat]

That is, the state is *already* paying them benefits, of one kind or another, so why not set them to constructive work, employment, until they can work in a commercial job?

From what I understand, Keynes believed that anti-cyclical government spending should be on useful things. The idea being that if the government would need to spend money on a bridge at some point in the future, spending the money during a downturn in the economy and then not having to spend it during the upturn would have the effect of lessening the effects of both. I happen to believe that Keynes was just plain wrong, and that heightened government spending dries up the capital that businesses need to recover, but it's interesting to compare that with things like Cash for Clunkers, which spent billions of dollars to destroy perfectly good cars which would otherwise have been useful.