Raising The Minimum Wage To $10.10 Could Lift Nearly 5 Million Out Of Poverty

[Bill USA]

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/01/03/3115831/minimum-wage-poverty/


Raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour could lift about 4.6 million people out of poverty directly, according to a new study from economist Arindrajit Dube. Longer-term effects could reduce the number of people living below the poverty line by 6.8 million.

That wage level “would reduce the poverty rate among Americans between the ages of 18 and 64 by as much as 1.7 percentage points,” Jillian Berman explains in the Huffington Post. Poverty increased by 3.4 percent during the recession, a rate that has not improved since, but a $10.10 wage would erase more than half of that uptick. Dube’s findings come from an analysis of 23 years of data on minimum wage increases as well as a review of previous findings.

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The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and it has stayed at that level for more than four years. That’s not enough to keep a parent who works for that wage full-time, year-round above the poverty line, nor is it enough to make market rent in any state. But the wage used to be enough to keep a family of two above the poverty line, and in the 1960s it was even enough to keep a family of three out of poverty.

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A $10.10 wage makes sense in other ways. It would bring it in line with where it would be if it had kept up with inflation over the past half century. (To keep up with increases in all other workers’ wages, it would have to be $10.65, and to keep up with increases in worker productivity it would be $18.30.) Given that low-income workers are likely to spend a large portion of any extra pay, putting the money back into the economy, a $10.10 wage would boost GDP by $22.1 billion, supporting the creation of 85,000 new jobs. And Americans support such a wage: one poll found 80 percent support for it, including two-thirds of Republicans, and another found that two-thirds support a raise to $10.25 an hour.[/font]

[Laelth]

1. k&r for labor. n/t

-Laelth

[indepat]

2. The Congress ain't gonna' risk reducing corporate profits an iota just to lift 4.6 million

people outa' poverty: this is 'murika and the bidness of 'murika is bidness, so come to grips with living in a corporatist national security surveillance state.

[colbertforpresident]

3. GOP talking points

What's the best response to those that say why not raise it to $1000 per hour?

[1StrongBlackMan]

4. Point out ...

there is no efficacy in arguing the absurd. Any policy argument, when taken to the extreme becomes absurd; but that does not refute the legitimacy of the actual policy.