Raising Minimum Wage Can Yank Millions Out of Poverty and Jump-Start Economy [View all]

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/08/31-7



The federal minimum wage is just $7.25 an hour and hasn't been raised in three years. But a raise is much more overdue than that. If we look at the minimum wage 44 years ago, and simply adjust it for inflation, it would be more than $10 today.

This is another ugly symptom of what has gone wrong in America over the last 35 to 40 years. From 1979 to 2007, about 60 percent of the income gains have gone to the now infamous 1 percent at the top, with the majority of those gains going to the top 0.1 percent - people who made, on average, $5.6 million per year.

But some of the worst effects of giving more to those who have the most have affected people toward the bottom of the income ladder, and there is no excuse for it.

Productivity - the amount that a worker produces in an hour - has more than doubled over the last 44 years. When the minimum wage doesn't rise, or falls in terms of its purchasing power, it means that these millions of low-income workers are not sharing in the gains from improved technology, knowledge and organization.