Elizabeth Warren: Minimum Wage Would Be $22 An Hour If It Had Kept Up With Productivity

[marmar]

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) made a case for increasing the minimum wage last week during a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing, in which she cited a study that suggested the federal minimum wage would have stood at nearly $22 an hour today if it had kept up with increased rates in worker productivity.

"If we started in 1960 and we said that as productivity goes up, that is as workers are producing more, then the minimum wage is going to go up the same. And if that were the case then the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour," she said, speaking to Dr. Arindrajit Dube, a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor who has studied the economic impacts of minimum wage. "So my question is Mr. Dube, with a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, what happened to the other $14.75? It sure didn't go to the worker."

Dube went on to note that if minimum wage incomes had grown over that period at the same pace as it had for the top 1 percent of income earners, the minimum wage would actually be closer to $33 an hour than the current $7.25. .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/elizabeth-warren-minimum-wage_n_2900984.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

[onehandle]

1. Jeez. Could you imagine? If GOPers want the 1950s world that never was...

...they would insist on paying all people fairly.

Real income would make families more stable, home ownership more common, and substantial buying power would keep the rich rich.

[Scuba]

2. I hope she wakes up a bunch of people. She just might, you know?

[Initech]

3. But... corporations need their billions! It's so hard being an executive!

After all those 22 room palaces, Bugatti Veyrons, private golf courses, Gulfstream Vs, and anatomically correct ice statues of David that dispense vodka aren't going to buy themselves!

[Demo_Chris]

4. I started off skeptical about Warren, but she is RAPIDLY growing to be my favorite dem

[Redfairen]

5. k/r*

[Octafish]

6. I'm starting to notice a pattern here.

Someone in office who tells the truth.

What a concept!

Quickly, Alfred! The ammonium carbonate!

[datasuspect]

7. Dear Senator Warren

please please please stay away from small aircraft, helicopters and have people around you at all times.

[reformist2]

8. The truth cuts through years of BS in mere seconds, doesn't it?

This one point puts the lie to all the people crowing about how great the US is economically. If the stock market is at record highs and productivity is higher than ever, but 90% of your population isn't benefitting at all, and hasn't benefitted for 20+ years, guess what. There is something very, very rotten indeed going on.