- There is no economic reason why those at the bottom should not share in the gains from economic growth.
- Ralph Nader | $9 an Hour? How About a Living Wage!
- 9 Economic Facts That Will Make Your Head Spin
Dean Baker, AlterNet
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February 19, 2013 | It was encouraging to see President Obama propose an increase in the minimum wage in his State of the Union address, even if the $9.00 target did not seem especially ambitious. If the $9.00 minimum wage were in effect this year, the inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage would still be more than two percent lower than it had been in the late 1960s. And this proposed target would not even be reached until 2015, when inflation is predicted to lower the value by another 6 percent.
While giving a raise worth more than $3,000 a year to the country's lowest paid workers is definitely a good thing, it is hard to get too excited about a situation in which these workers will still be earning less than their counterparts did almost 50 years ago. By targeting wage levels that roughly move in step with inflation we have implemented a policy that workers at the bottom will receive none of the benefits of economic growth through time. In other words, if we hold the purchasing power of the minimum wage fixed through time, as the country as a whole gets richer, minimum wage workers will fall ever further behind.
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Ralph Nader | $9 an Hour? How About a Living Wage! Ralph Nader, The Nader Page
- Back in 2008, Obama campaigned to have a $9.50 per hour minimum wage by 2011. Now he's settling for $9.00 by 2015! ... How can leaders of poverty groups and unions accept this back-of-the-hand response to the plight of thirty million workers who make less today than what workers made 45 years ago in 1968, inflation adjusted?
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9 Economic Facts That Will Make Your Head Spin, Lynn Stuart Parramore, AlterNet
Half the population of the U.S. has slipped into poverty or is barely making enough to get by.
Jobs v. Loopholes
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February 27, 2013 | The President’s “sequester” offer slashes non-defense spending by $830 billion over the next ten years. That happens to be the precise amount we’re implicitly giving Wall Street’s biggest banks over the same time period.
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February 18, 2013 | How much will you need for medical expenses in retirement? What does it cost to keep 2.5 million Americans behind bars? Here are a few facts and figures that might surprise you.
The American labor movement is once again facing a most controversial issue — the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. While the KXL debate has largely centered around the environmental risks, from labor’s perspective opening up the Canadian Tar Sands is often seen as an economic, not an environmental, issue. And it’s no wonder: Construction unemployment is double the national average and, from a worker’s perspective, Keystone jobs will be good-paying union jobs in an economy that increasingly offers up only minimum-wage service work.