When major economic policies like the minimum wage are debated in Washington, the conversation tends to get bogged down in complex numbers and political jargon. Unfortunately, what gets lost in the process are the personal stories — the real-life struggles of people earning minimum wage and the impact an increase would have on their lives.
That’s why Seth Harris, the Acting US Secretary of Labor came to Boston last week — to hear directly from area workers dealing with these issues every day so that he can carry their voices back to Capitol Hill. Harris listened as more than a dozen parents and grandparents described the challenges of making ends meet on minimum wage, and the real benefit their families would see from improved wages. An estimated 234,000 Bay State workers would be impacted by the president’s proposed increase to $9/hour — and the hour-long conversation certainly drove home the need for immediate action.
Check out this video to hear first-hand worker testimony on why it’s so important that we raise the minimum wage now:
Something has to be done about what is happening to our country . Shouldn’t a hard days work equal a living wage? At this point, even $15/hr isn’t enough to pay for all of our basic needs, and why on earth would our government think that it’s a better idea to subsidies low wages so that corporate profits can soar. There was a time those profits would be reinvested in the Main St economy in America. That simply doesn’t happen anymore. I’m glad Seth Harris came to hear the stories, but we need action, and we needed it 4 years ago.
I don’t know who the creator of this video is and I didn’t fact check it, but it seems like it’s based on the study I linked to above. How much farther do we have to allow this to go on? How much longer before this country just completely loses it? Is it too late?
The wealth distribution is, mathematically, approaching a “scale-free” distribution. It’s called that because it turns into a straight line when drawn on a log-log scale (logarithmic x and y axis). These scale-free distributions turn out to be quite common in network phenomena, a whole field of mathematics and network theory has emerged that study them.
These distributions tend to emerge naturally when a population forms into a network following rules that are now fairly well-understood. The web has a scale-free distribution of websites — a tiny number sites (google.com, amazon.com, etc) have an enormous number of inbound links, while an enormous number of sites have a tiny number of links. This happens because a user is more likely to encounter, and thus link to, a well-connected site than a tiny site. Social networks are the same, you see the same distribution if you plot facebook users and bin them according to the number of friends they have. The economy is another such network. We see a similar scale-free distribution in company sizes — there are a tiny number of ENORMOUS companies (think Microsoft), and an ENORMOUS number of tiny companies.
This scale-free distribution of wealth is a predictable and predicted consequence of the way money moves in a “free market” economy. An entity who already has wealth is more likely to gain new wealth. It will stay that way until we change the rules.
The bottom line? No amount of “hard work” will make any difference at all. Changing the wealth distribution is an example of something people and states cannot do for themselves.
The problem can only be solved by the federal government, in the form of tax policy that by design redistributes wealth to avoid this phenomena.
n/t
I’d start with expanding who’s eligible to unionize, card check, and a corporate tax structure that rewards keeping jobs, and particularly good jobs here, and punishes moving jobs overseas for profit.
A “market correction” because the market, as it exists, does not distribute wealth in a way we find acceptable as a society. We have been through this before (1860s-1930s).
we’ve been riding on air for a few years now. At some point, this stock market bubble with burst though, no matter what the Fed does.
Aside from creating rules that force corporate America to be fair about distributing their gains throughout Main St America, (and not via a $9. minimum wage increase, which is basically worthless, of course better than not, but still, worthless to the prosperity of all of the people of this country.) tax policy is the only way. Tax that money back into the system, or create a fee of some sort. They have no problem creating taxes and fees for the lower brackets.
Here is the link: This viral video is right: We need to worry about wealth inequality
This viral video is right: We need to worry about wealth inequality
government is still looking for revenue from regressive taxes. Perhaps, they just have no idea what is going on.
How high can the minimum wage go? As it turns out, a lot higher. Economists typically examine whether current minimum-wage laws hike pay rates up too high and cause employers to shed workers from their payrolls in response. But the current stockpile of economic research on minimum wages suggests that past increases have not caused any notable job losses. In other words, minimum wages in the United States have yet to be set too high. In fact, if we use past experience as a guide, businesses should be able to adjust to a jump in the minimum wage as great as 70%. That would push the federal minimum wage up to $12.30. In states with average living costs, full-time earnings at $12.30 per hour can cover the basic needs of the typical low-income working household (assuming both adults in two-adult households are employed).
More here: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2012/0712wicks-lim.html