Republicans Lie to Stop A Minimum Wage Increase!
Republicans Lie to Stop A Minimum Wage Increase!
What is wrong with these people?
Why do they want to keep poor people poor?
What advantage is it to them to stop the buying power of lower income workers?
Are they just selfish and hateful or do they truly believe that the rich should be the only class who deserves more buying power? thinkingblue
Congressional Democrats are pushing a bill that would gradually raise the
federal minimum to $10.10/hour from $7.25 and index it to the Consumer Price
Index. But the measure faces little chance of passing the Republican-led House,
where many members argue that a higher minimum wage would lead businesses
to cut jobs.
Meanwhile, states and cities are taking up the issue. On Tuesday, the Washington,
D.C. City Council voted to raise the capital city’s minimum wage to $11.50/hour
from $8.25 by 2016. Last month, New Jerseyans voted to raise their state’s
minimum wage to $8.25/hour and index future increases to inflation.
Massachusetts’ state Senate voted last month to raise its hourly minimum wage to
$11.00 from $8.00.
Though raising the minimum wage is broadly popular, there are clear partisan
differences. Back in February, a Pew Research Center survey found that 71% of
people favored an increase in the federal minimum to $9.00/hour from $7.25. But
while large majorities of Democrats (87%) and independents (68%) said they
favored such an increase, Republicans were split.
Here are five more facts about the minimum wage and the people who earn it:
1 Adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage peaked in 1968 at $8.56 (in
2012 dollars). Since it was last raised in 2009, to the current $7.25/hour, the
federal minimum has lost about 5.8% of its purchasing power to inflation.
2 Just over half (50.6%) of the 3.55 million U.S. workers who were at or below
the federal minimum last year are ages 16 to 24; an additional 20.3% are ages 25
to 34 (both shares have stayed more or less constant over the past decade). That
3.55 million represents about 2.8% of all wage and salary workers.
3 Nineteen states (plus D.C.) have set their own, higher minimums, ranging from
$7.35 in Missouri to $9.19 in Washington State. (Some cities and counties have
gone even higher — San Francisco’s minimum wage, for example, is set to rise
19 cents to $10.74 next month.) Those states collectively include 45% of the
nation’s working-age (16 and over), meaning the federal demographic data don’t
capture a significant share of the nation’s lowest-paid workers. Fortunately, there
are other approaches.
4 Nearly 21.3 million U.S. workers (or 16.4% of the workforce) would be
directly affected by raising the minimum wage to $10.10 by July 2015, as the
Senate bill referred to above seeks to do, according to analysis of microdata
from the Current Population Survey by the Economic Policy Institute (a labor-
backed research group that supports raising the minimum wage). 85.5% of those
workers, according to EPI’s analysis, are 20 or older; 57.3% are female; and
39.4% are black or Hispanic (versus 26.8% of the workforce as a whole).
5 While not strictly minimum-wage workers, almost 23.2 million Americans
(17.8% of all wage and salary workers) worked in the nation’s lowest-paid
occupations as of last year, according to Pew Research Center analysis of
occupational employment and wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Those occupations, defined as paying $10.15/hour ($21,112/year) or less, were
largely in a few categories: retail salespeople (4.3 million), cashiers (3.3
million), food preparers/servers, including fast-food workers (2.9 million) and
waitstaff (2.3 million).
federal minimum to $10.10/hour from $7.25 and index it to the Consumer Price
Index. But the measure faces little chance of passing the Republican-led House,
where many members argue that a higher minimum wage would lead businesses
to cut jobs.
Meanwhile, states and cities are taking up the issue. On Tuesday, the Washington,
D.C. City Council voted to raise the capital city’s minimum wage to $11.50/hour
from $8.25 by 2016. Last month, New Jerseyans voted to raise their state’s
minimum wage to $8.25/hour and index future increases to inflation.
Massachusetts’ state Senate voted last month to raise its hourly minimum wage to
$11.00 from $8.00.
Though raising the minimum wage is broadly popular, there are clear partisan
differences. Back in February, a Pew Research Center survey found that 71% of
people favored an increase in the federal minimum to $9.00/hour from $7.25. But
while large majorities of Democrats (87%) and independents (68%) said they
favored such an increase, Republicans were split.
Here are five more facts about the minimum wage and the people who earn it:
1 Adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage peaked in 1968 at $8.56 (in
2012 dollars). Since it was last raised in 2009, to the current $7.25/hour, the
federal minimum has lost about 5.8% of its purchasing power to inflation.
2 Just over half (50.6%) of the 3.55 million U.S. workers who were at or below
the federal minimum last year are ages 16 to 24; an additional 20.3% are ages 25
to 34 (both shares have stayed more or less constant over the past decade). That
3.55 million represents about 2.8% of all wage and salary workers.
3 Nineteen states (plus D.C.) have set their own, higher minimums, ranging from
$7.35 in Missouri to $9.19 in Washington State. (Some cities and counties have
gone even higher — San Francisco’s minimum wage, for example, is set to rise
19 cents to $10.74 next month.) Those states collectively include 45% of the
nation’s working-age (16 and over), meaning the federal demographic data don’t
capture a significant share of the nation’s lowest-paid workers. Fortunately, there
are other approaches.
4 Nearly 21.3 million U.S. workers (or 16.4% of the workforce) would be
directly affected by raising the minimum wage to $10.10 by July 2015, as the
Senate bill referred to above seeks to do, according to analysis of microdata
from the Current Population Survey by the Economic Policy Institute (a labor-
backed research group that supports raising the minimum wage). 85.5% of those
workers, according to EPI’s analysis, are 20 or older; 57.3% are female; and
39.4% are black or Hispanic (versus 26.8% of the workforce as a whole).
5 While not strictly minimum-wage workers, almost 23.2 million Americans
(17.8% of all wage and salary workers) worked in the nation’s lowest-paid
occupations as of last year, according to Pew Research Center analysis of
occupational employment and wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Those occupations, defined as paying $10.15/hour ($21,112/year) or less, were
largely in a few categories: retail salespeople (4.3 million), cashiers (3.3
million), food preparers/servers, including fast-food workers (2.9 million) and
waitstaff (2.3 million).
posted by thinkingblue at 1:54 PM
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