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« Çelik and Khare on microformats || Back to Blog | Knowledge and fallibility (Or: Postmodernism is right) » July 22, 2006
According to a story in the Boston Globe, Gov. Mitt Romney yesterday broke a campaign pledge to index the minimum wage to inflation, rejecting the Massachusetts Legislature's plan to raise the minimum wage from $6.75/hour to $8 over two years. Instead, Romney proposed increasing it by $0.25 and then have the executive branch study the issue." Romney called the legislature's plan an "abrupt and disproportionate" increase. The last increase for the 300,000 workers who make minimum wage was in 2001. According to InflationData.com, prices increased 13.25% between 1/1/2001 and 1/1/2006. Simply to keep up with inflation, the current minimum wage should be boosted by $0.93, about 3.5 times the Romney proposal. Someone working full time for the current minimum wage makes $13,500 a year before taxes. Under the Romney Take-a-Quarter plan, this would skyrocket to $14,000. [Tags: politics minimum_wage mitt_romney] Posted
by D. Weinberger at July 22, 2006 10:19 AM
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Comments
The situation in Massachusetts may be different than the national norm, but nationally, minimum wage hikes don't have much effect on the poor, and usually actually cost people jobs.
Nationally, the average household income is for minimum wage workers is $45k. Half of those working for minimum wage are under the age of 23. Only 11% of mimimum wage workers live in families with a household income at or below the poverty line. Among working age people who live at or below the poverty line, only 1.9% have a minimum wage job. Less than 2% of impoverished workers earn minimum wage. All data comes from the US Census Bureau.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a national boost in minmum wage would cause loss of 200,000 to 600,000 jobs.
So while it may feel good to raise minimum wage and say you're doing something to help the poor, economic data doesn't bear this out. It would be better to put the money into training and education programs and into small business programs to help the poor become self-sufficient and not need low-paying jobs.
Posted by: Adam Kalsey | July 22, 2006 01:06 PM
So Adam, is this ("It would be better to put the money into training...") a proposal to tax minimum wage employers the amount that they would be putting into a wage boost in order to fund training, education, and small business programs? I say why not just let them bear the burden of a minimum wage hike and fund the programs you suggest out of a progressive tax on business profits?
Your stx stink, by the way... "Less than 2% of impoverished workers..." WTF does that mean? 98% of impoverished workers are unemployed? 98% of impoverished workers earn more than minimum wage but still fall below the poverty income levels?
"Average household income = $45k...." Size of these households? ONLY eleven percent live in families below the poverty line. Eleven percent of what? So it goes - and I quote from your blog: lies, pure lies, and some drivel thrown in. :-)
You sound suspiciously like an "I got mine libertarian."
Posted by: fp | July 22, 2006 03:22 PM