Free Republic

Minimum wage is a topic that draws a lot of attention, especially in California, a state that has one of the highest minimum wages in the United States. In a debate Monday night, Rep. Barbara Lee defended her previous advocacy for a $50 minimum wage. “In the Bay Area, I believe it was the United Way that came out with a report that very recently $127,000 for a family of four is just barely enough to get by,” Lee said. “Another survey very recently: $104,000. For a family of one, barely enough to get by low income because of the...

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Just years after labor activists persuaded a handful of states to raise their minimum wage to $15 per hour, workers initially thrilled with the pay bump are finding their hard-won gains erased by inflation. New York City resident Anthony Rivera, 20, who sorts packages at a United Parcel Service facility in Brooklyn, said he had to take a second job at a grocery store after his food costs soared. “I was sitting at $15 an hour at UPS, and when it came to paying bills and buying groceries, it was starting to become not enough,” he...

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), predicted Friday that Republicans will have a “minimum” two-seat pickup in the Senate, taking them from 50 to at least 52. In a memo to NRSC donors, Scott said Republicans will defeat the radical Democrats in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania because of his strategy to spend early money in the races, thus “defining” Democrats early and impacting the media’s polling:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is pushing for a minimum age of 21 for the purchase of “assault weapons” and “high capacity” magazines. Feinstein’s office announced her push for a minimum purchase age, referring to the legislation as the Age 21 Act.

Workers in Los Angeles will earn about a dollar more per hour after Mayor Eric Garcetti announced on Thursday that the minimum wage will be bumped up to $16.04 beginning in July. The hourly increase from the $15 per hour rate follows the city’s municipal code that states wages will be increased annually.

LONDON (AP) – Millions of low-pay workers in Britain will get an inflation-busting pay increase next year after the government said Monday it will legislate to raise the National Living Wage to £9.50 ($13) an hour from the current rate of £8.91 ($12.25). Britain’s Treasury said the 6.6 per cent increase, which will apply to workers age 23 and up starting in April, means a full-time worker making the living wage would get an increase of more than £1,000 pounds ($1,374.90) per year.

Bank of America increases minimum wage to $21 an hour amid labor shortages © Greg Nash The Bank of America is increasing its minimum wage to $21 an hour amid labor shortages across the country, The company announced the increase Wednesday, following its move in May to make all its U.S. vendors pay its employees at least $15 an hour. “Our company’s focus on Responsible Growth requires that we provide a great place to work,” said Sheri Bronstein, chief human resources officer at Bank of America.

The short answer is, it depends... However, putting some of these conditions aside and focusing on population size, the minimum number is likely very small compared with the approximately 7.8 billion people alive today. Smith's research into early human civilizations and space colonization gives him pretty good insight into our apocalypse survival hopes. He expects big cities would be most vulnerable if global civilization were to crumble, as they import almost all of their food and are heavily reliant on electricity. Surviving populations would, therefore, likely spread out to find resources. A surviving population of just a few hundred people...

Unknown to most people except those with an interest in solar science, the sun is about to shut down. Well, not completely – we’ll still have plenty of sunlight and heat, but the small dark blotches on the sun’s surface called sunspots, visible in the figure below, are on the verge of disappearing. According to some climate scientists, this heralds a prolonged cold stretch of maybe 35 years starting in 2020, despite global warming.How could that happen? Because sunspots, which are caused by magnetic turbulence in the sun’s interior, signal subtle changes in solar output or activity – changes that...

Minimum wage laws appear to me to be unconstitutional because I do not find the legislative power in the constitution for Congress to legislation wages. Setting that concern aside something about minimum wage laws puzzles me. Some workers increased their value to the job market to earn more than the min wage. An example of what puzzles me is a person who worked hard and increased their job skills is now earning $15/hour. This person has several people working for him who is doing the job he used to do when he was paid min wage. He likely is working...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he does not support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, throwing a major wrench in Democrats’ already fraught hopes of giving workers a major pay raise. Manchin, who is among the most moderate of the Senate Democratic Caucus, did, however, open the door to a more narrow increase in the minimum wage from its current $7.25. “I’m supportive of an increase that’s responsible and reasonable, and in my state that’s $11,” Manchin told congressional reporters, adding that the rate should account for inflation. Manchin is bucking his own party’s leadership. House Democrats have...

Billionaire activist and 2020 Democrat Tom Steyer pledged to push for a $22 minimum wage if he wins the White House in November. Steyer made the pledge while campaigning in Winnsboro, South Carolina, on Sunday. His minimum wage standard is the highest so far of the Democratic presidential primary field. The federal minimum wage has sat at $7.25 for the past decade. Washington, D.C., and 29 states have set higher standards, however. Steyer’s wage floor is set much higher than what most politicians and activists are currently calling for. Former Vice President Joe Biden, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete...

Over the next few weeks, mid-latitude observers might experience the best noctilucent cloud viewing of their lifetimes. Observers over the northern half of the U.S. are reporting something they have never seen before — electric-blue noctilucent (night-shining) clouds. They are wispy in appearance, and continuously change shape. They can be seen when the sun is about 6 to 16 deg. below the horizon, so about 1 to 2 hours after sunset or before sunrise. During that time of night the sun is still shining on these clouds, but not on any normal weather-related clouds. In the late spring every year,...

ALBANY — AOC will be waiting tables once again. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is returning to her restaurant roots this week to show support for the federal Raise the Wage Act and abolishing below-minimum wage for tipped workers in the Empire State. The Bronx-born freshman congresswoman plans to pour a few pints and take a few orders at a restaurant in her district on Friday at an event organized by Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United, the Daily News has learned. The exact location will be revealed later in the week.

**SNIP** “As the minimum wage went up, we saw massive job growth, a stronger economy, and the biggest drops in unemployment in the communities where the most people, some 30 or 40 percent of workers, benefited from the increase,” Farnitano said. Farnitano added that, rather than shutting down or downsizing, many employers had a hard time filling available positions. “In Massachusetts, there’s places where low-wage workers can’t survive on $11 an hour,” Farnitano said, referencing 2017′s minimum wage. “So they move somewhere else, and then those businesses can’t find people to fill those jobs after.” Christopher Carlozzi, state director for...

CARACAS - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro raised the minimum wage by 300 percent to 18,000 bolivars per month, around $6.70, as part of routine wage hikes in an economy suffering from annual inflation approaching 2 million percent.

Democrats introduced a bill Wednesday to gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, a long-shot plan that comes as the party tries to bill itself as a champion of the working class. The proposal to hike the U.S. wage floor from the current $7.25 will likely fail in the GOP-held Senate even if it gets through the Democratic-controlled House. However, the new House Democratic majority sees the measure as a message that it wants to lift low-wage workers and boost the economy — and an effort to focus on its policy priorities amid the longest government shutdown...

The legal minimum wage for New York City employers with 11 or more workers rose more than 15 percent on Dec. 31, 2018, to $15 per hour from $13, giving fast-food, retail and other employees a bump in pay. But some New York City restaurant owners say the latest minimum wage hike is forcing them to cut workers' hours just to stay afloat. It's the third rise in the city's base wage since Dec. 31, 2016, when it went to $11 an hour. The latest increase is part of a plan that phases in minimum wage hikes across New York...

PHOENIX — A state lawmaker wants to give Arizona voters a chance to decide if the current $10.50 an hour minimum wage is as high as it should go. Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, said her proposal would not repeal what voters approved last year, at least not entirely. The wage gains that already have taken place — from $8.05 an hour in 2016 to $10.50 now — would remain intact. But she wants to put a question on the November ballot to block the future increases that are supposed to take place between now and 2020 when, unless repealed, the...

Seattle leaders are displaying shocking bias by turning over a study on their minimum wage increase to Michael Reich, a left-leaning economics professor at the University of California Berkeley, after their initial sanctioned study with the University of Washington (UW) proved their decision to raise the wage was having adverse effects. Seattle’s 2014 legislation called for a gradual increase of the city’s minimum wage until it reaches $15 an hour. Following the vote, commissioners recruited a team of UW researchers to find the effects of the steady rising minimum wage. Not to the surprise of fiscal conservatives, the study found...