The majority of Americans say they support raising the minimum wage -- by a lot.
More than two-thirds of Americans say lawmakers should raise the national minimum wage to $10 per hour from its current $7.25, a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute finds. While Democrats were more likely to support a minimum wage boost, more than half of Republican respondents said they would like to see the minimum wage go up, according to the survey.
Support for a minimum wage boost has held at stable levels for more than a year. An October 2010 by the National Employment Law Project found that at the time, two-thirds of Americans supported a hike in the minimum wage.
Read the rest at The Huffington Post
19 comments:
The minimum wage peak, in real terms, was $1.60 in 1968. In 2011 dollars, that'd be $10.43/hr.
However, if you adjust by SSA's Average Wage Index (which of course has an anchor tied to it with the real minimum wage falling 30% over 43 years) the minimum wage should be over $12/hr (latest figures are for 2010, when it'd be $11.96/hr). Our current minimum wage is $7.25/hr.
If Australia can have 5% unemployment with a A$15.51/hr (US$15.85/hr) minimum wage, I'm pretty sure a $10 to $12/hr minimum wage won't kill us, and like the Australians do, we should adjust it annually.
I'm not sure Australia has the immigration issues the USA does. All of our "guest workers" keep downward pressure on wages.
Eliminating FICA in conjunction with a smaller increase would do the same thing.
Hot potato.
@Chewitup
I always thought that the free flow of capital, goods, and services, and the restricted flow of labor kept labor rates artificially low. That and economic vulnerability.
Plus if we eliminated both sides of FICA it amounts to only $0.87, assuming that benevolent employers put the employer side of FICA into the pockets of the minimum wage workers.
Thoughts?
The real issue here is what the subsistence level is.
Should it be permissible to pay merely subsistence or even less than subsistence wage, since this makes workers at the bottom unfree in the economic sense of "free," that is, unable to negotiate wages.
This situation forces workers to accept any job offer under any conditions just to survive. What is the difference between this and serfdom or slavery? How can the US call itself a "free country" under these circumstances?
How can there be a truly capitalistic economy when the most significant factor, labor (workers), is in thrall to the dominance of capital (owners).
One side effect of this is that the govt spends tens of billions subsidizing the working poor. If the US has an Australia-scale minimum wage, full time workers would literally make too much to qualify for most means tested welfare programs (food stamps, section 8 housing, EITC, etc).
Its like our economy is one big field trial to replicate the Speenhamland Effect (mission accomplished!).
Speenhamland was an attempt to raise earnings without placing a burden on employers. If wages fell below a certain level, the government made up the difference; as wages rose, the government benefit fell. Employers soon discovered they could “game” the system by cutting wages below what workers were really worth to them...
The Poor Law Commissioners’ Report of 1834, summarizing the failed program, called Speenhamland a “universal system of pauperism.”
“In the long run, the result was ghastly,” wrote economic historian Karl Polanyi in his 1944 classic The Great Transformation . “Wages which were subsidized from public funds were bound eventually to be bottomless.”
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_19_3/tsc_19_3_rubenstein_3_printer.shtml
And 76% of Americans oppose gun control. Do you support the majority at all times or only when it supports your position?
To me, Tom, everything is a subset of money in our political system. Without changing that, we're doomed to make slight changes at the periphery. The system is brilliantly adept at assimilating change efforts.
Or am I too pessimistic?
Joe C.,
You're right. Broad sweeping changes are not possible. Just have to keep plugging away. It's been a little more than a year since I've been aware of MMT and from my perspective, it seems to be gaining steam.
The hard part is getting elected representatives to fully grasp reality. Once in, the lobbyists are much more convincing than the constituents.
Beowulf, that is a great find. It's obvious and doesn't need a commission to study it, but there is is anyway, going on two hundred years old.
Anonymous, it's not a matter of the public agreeing with a position to give it cred if it is correct and can be substantiated. The numbers show how difficult the task is to implement it. These numbers are encouraging. It's pretty much the diehard ideologues opposing it now.
BTW, majority support/opposition is considered something of a political marker. for example, recently the public shifted from majority opposition to majority approval or medical marijuana That was considered a landmark. Obviously, this is only an indicator. At about the same time, the Obama administration decided to more vigorously enforce the federal laws against this. However, it indicates a direction of public opinion and establishes a developing trend.
@ Joe C
I agree that money is everything in our political system, almost. The only thing that politicians are influenced by more than money is angry voters. The voters are getting angry, and they are angry now about the money in politics.
The questionnaire used was very faulty. It just asked a simple question - "Would you be in favor of increasing the minimum wages from $7/ hr to $10 per hour.
The question that should have been asked is "To what level should the minimum wage be raised? with multiple choices.
It should also have said that in 1968, the minimum wage was $1.60. Since then, the cost of living has gone from 100 to 650. Further, GDP per capita has gone from 100 in 1967 to 1050 in 2010
If the increase in gdp was shared proportionally to the income distribution in 1968, the minimum wage would have been $16.80
Source of the GDP per capits is World Bank, World Development Indicators
In light of my above comments, it should be emphasized that the median hourly wage in 2011 is ~ $16.25 an hour.
To emphasize again, if the income inequality that existed in 1968 had not changed, the minimum wage would have been $16.80/hr
This gives another flavor to the 99% paradigm
Clonal, fascinating info. Check out the Universal Living Wage site.
http://universallivingwage.org/ulwformula.htm
It uses the HUD afforable housing index for each metro area to set the local minimum wage (HUD formula is thousing should be no more than 30% of income).
To use national average rent for efficiency apartments (I'll skip all the math) of $710 a month, minimum wage should be $14/hr.
Beo,
See my comment at nycga
@ Beowulf
This is the kind of rule that is needed to set the minimum wage.
But if the minimum wage is set by a rule (indexed), then it doesn't function as a price anchor, as in the MMT paradigm, and could become inflationary.
Fix?
Devise a way to use the top earners to anchor the system when inflation becomes a problem. Tie the tax rates, especially capital gains, to inflation.
But Tomato, if you did that the wealthiest would not be able to buy bentleys, err, I mean hire employees and grow the economy
We are not subsidizing the working poor with Welfare. We are subsidizing the rich who hires them. They get all the profits while stick the costs to society.
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