Minimum wage an ongoing issue
By Eleazar David Melendez, Huffington Post
Even as he’d confidently promised before television cameras in January that he would deliver an astounding increase in the minimum wage, the president knew it would be a difficult fight. Unprecedented federal debt and thorny unemployment weighed heavily on Washington, both cautioning against forcing businesses to give low-paid workers a raise.
The president’s own top economic expert had told him the government shouldn’t further distort the dynamics of the free market. Big business was adamantly against the plan.
And Congress? That lot of obstructionist conservatives and their “do nothing” attitude would relish any chance to get in the administration’s way, especially if its members could call him a “socialist” and once again bring up his controversial universal health care plan.
So it was in 1949, when President Harry Truman declared the federal minimum wage ought to be nearly doubled, from 40 cents an hour to 75 cents. Using a measure of what minimum-wage earners could purchase with that amount compared with the rest of society, the 1949 increase is roughly the equivalent of a wage today jumping to $10.70 from $5.70.
As labor activists across the U.S. begin a round of Labor Day strikes this week in a bid to increase the wages of low-paid workers, raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 has become a rallying cry of the boldest proposals. With most political forecasters declaring President Obama’s more modest call for a minimum wage raise to $9 dead in the water, the idea of more than doubling the minimum wage is generally dismissed as fanciful.
The challenge of economics in a free market society….do you control wages and let the prices float…..do you also put in price controls….do you subsidize raw material (farms, etc.)…..or do you just let supply and demand drive pricing and compensation?
We have a mix of the above and are not a true free market. What a wage might need to be in one location is significantly different than another area of the country. Several States have set their own ‘minimum’ wage higher than the Federal government and that supports locational wages. Let the States decide.
Another problem is that if we raise the minimum wage all other wages will have to be adjusted to compensate. This, in turn, will drive up the cost of goods and services. It is a never-ending cycle which cannot and should not be driven by government intervention.
I think the Feds are really excited about the idea of minimum wage and others going up. In addition to the increased prices we’ll pay for everything, we’ll also pay more in taxes! It isn’t indexed.
I think we can all agree that the reaganomics supply side economy has been a devastating failure for 99% of our citizens. Nothing is ever going to trickle down and the economy does not grow from the top down, it grows from the middle out.
The conservatives should face up to the fact they’ve been duped and move on. More and better financed GOP/teabagger attempts at less government and more corporate theft and privatizing the commons, support for a bootlicking labor force enamored with the success of a few as opposed to the prosperity of all, is obviously a stupid path to take forward.
An increase in the min. wage has never been the demise of small business people and never will be. That’s nonsense whining that never happens.
Give the working man some money to spend and watch the cash registers all over town show an increase in sales.
Sorry, no, BB. We can’t all agree on any of that. You have no right to assume we should. Brilliant economists still disagree on what works and what doesn’t. Your disparaging language toward people who see things differently from you is not going to convince anybody to come over to your side. Insults don’t make you look smarter.
“To argue with a (wo)man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.” Thomas Paine
I always assume you’re wrong… doesn’t everyone? You’re disagreeing with me validates my position and thanks for that.
Wow. Just wow. Does bullying make you feel like a real big man?
Dogula,
I feel for you.
Being surrounded by stupid makes life hard especially in time like these where we see our way of life being destroyed by the “Most Ignorant Generations”.
This bozo with the Reagan argument is not worth your troubles.
The irony of that comment makes my spine tingle.
” Brilliant economists still disagree on what works and what doesn’t”
Listens to economists… doesn’t believe in science.
CJ you are pointing the finger in the wrong direction.
If America hadn’t allowed the symbiotic relationship of gov’t & unions to drive out industry, we wouldn’t have a low-paying service economy.
PS thanks for the support, CJ. Some people here make a lot of ignorant assumptions about how other people think and what they do without having any idea. They seem to have more interest in belittling people than actually discussing the issues at hand. Pity.
Or put another way Dogula, when one can’t argue the facts, some people think it’s best to just argue!
I was going to use the old saying “great minds think alike” to describe the defenders of the economic failure of reaganomics but then I noticed that the verb in that phrase is inoperative.
Or to put it another way…you got nothin’ so you play the whiny victims. EOM
Yeah, don’t argue the facts, just make personal attacks!
” assumptions about how other people think and what they do without having any idea”
How old is the earth?
Exactly. That is how we know how you ‘think’.
As for the history of unions….
you’re wrong. The statement ‘symbiotic relationship between the government and unions’ couldn’t be any more wrong.
‘how can you possibly be so wrong, all the time’
-not me
Also parker, how many weathers make a climate.
Your move.
That pesky minimum wage….where did it come from? why did it come? when people talk about redistribution of wealth, they wring their hands and shriek about ‘socialism’ unless the wealth is concentrated at the top. Then it’s okay. Anyone know the figures for how corporate profits changed during Cheney/Bush’s Great Fleecing of America?
Nobody here is arguing FOR corporatism. But the current administration is certainly expanding it. All you guys are still trying to take the discussion into a completely different direction instead of dealing with the topic.
Typical tactics.
Don’t you think the poor folks living on minimum wage deserve a break.
They work just as hard as anyone. They should make enough to stay out of poverty and not have to work 2 or even 3 jobs just to make ends meet.
It is possible, just cut some of the bloated salaries for the Fat Cats and spread the wealth.
Just a thought .
“Nobody here is arguing FOR corporatism” You’re not? Really?? I don’t believe you.
It is a control freak thing… Our nations economy and free market structure has been decimated by progressives in favor of big government and big corporations.
As a result we have the lowest labor participation rate in 34 years, not since Jimmy Carter ravaged our countries economy in the late 70’s have so few jobs and opportunities existed for Americans.
The number of publicly traded corporations has been cut in half since 1997 and indications are that the private small business have suffered even greater declines. This is indicative of a sick and declining economy and a declining level of freedoms for the people.
The American Dream is being systematically destroyed in favor of big government and big corporations dominating our futures. This is not what made America great; this is what is destroying America.