Americans Want to Raise the Minimum Wage
The Nation:
Americans Want to Raise the Minimum Wage
Bryce Covert November 15, 2012
Voters didn’t just send President Obama back to the White House on Election Day. They also voted to raise the minimum wage in three different cities. Albuquerque, NM raised its minimum wage from $7.50 to $8.50 per hour, and it will automatically adjust to keep pace with the cost of living in future years. San Jose, California, raised its minimum wage from $8 per hour to $10, and it will also adjust automatically. Long Beach, California, went even further, not only giving hotel workers a living wage adjustment to $13 an hour, but also guaranteeing them five paid sick days per year. The first two raises alone will impact an estimated 109,000 workers.
Yet action to raise the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is completely stalled at the federal level. It’s been stuck for over three years and it still isn’t indexed to inflation. That wage adds up to a pitiful $14,500 a year, not enough to make rent in any state. It’s over $3,000 below the poverty line for a parent with two kids. Its purchasing power is 13 percent lower than in 1979. Yet the average minimum-wage worker earns about half of his or her family income.
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The CBPP calculates that a mere twenty-five-cent increase in the minimum wage would mean an extra $520 a year for a full-time worker. If one plan to gradually raise the floor to $9.80 by July 1, 2014 were enacted, 28 million workers would get a raise of nearly $40 billion in additional wages....
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In post-election polling, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner found that a huge plurality of voters are for it. Nearly 70 percent of respondents support a raise, with 47 percent strongly in favor. A mere quarter stood against it.
Our economic times demand a raise in the minimum wage. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that it could increase GDP by about $25 billion and create approximately 100,000 net new jobs. Perhaps even more importantly for lawmakers, though, is that American voters also demand it.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/171284/americans-want-raise-minimum-wage
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