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<< Christianity: Religion of Peace? | Main | Perot Voters Ride Again >> August 25, 2003Popularity of Raising Min Wage to $8/hrAfter the exchange with Matt on the merits of the EITC versus the minimum wage, along with my original post on Illinois raising their state minimum wage, I've decided that it's worth spending some time talking about the minimum wage, once a staple of progressive politics that is no longer at the top of that agenda. Which is a gross mistake. So I'm going to do a series of posts this week on the minimum wage. So stayed tuned. (I'm planning to concentrate on a single policy issue each week with a series of posts-- see "This Week" set of posts on right-hand column.) Before returning to some of the basic policy issues of why the minimum wage works, today's post will concentrate on why progressives are fools politically for not promoting it. It somewhat boggles the mind that progressive politicians for President aren't trumpeting an increase in the minimum wage on the campaign trail. Unlike a number of issues -- abortion, repealing the tax cuts, the war -- which deeply divide the population, raising the minimum wage is probably the most popular policy position trumpeted by progressives. It's a slam dunk winner. So here's the deal-- I will offer the coveted Presidential endorsement of NathanNewman.org to the first politician that comes out for an increase in the minimum wage to $8 per hour. Here's why- It's Popular with Voters Just look at a few polls: Why not focus on a core policy that elicits so much public support? An $8 per hour increase will help over 20% of the population See this chart on data of wages by percentile, showing 20% of the population making less than $8 per hour. An additional number making more than $8 per hour will get a pay increase as employers feel pressure to raise wages across the board at the lower end to compete for more skilled workers who previously had only those $5.15 an hour jobs to fall back on. So increasing the minimum wage to that level will directly help a large portion of the population in a direct and demonstrable way with no increase in the federal deficit. How many other policies do progressives promote that you say that about? Raising the minimum wage will increase the income of those workers up to $6000 per year for full-time workers. To achieve the same result for this population with tax funds would cost $50 to $90 billion each year, unlikely in this deficit situation so this is the best policy bet in any case for helping the working poor, whatever the merits of the EITC or other alternatives. It will increase voter turnout among the most disaffected populations Poorer voters have low turnout rates largely because so much of national debates don't involve their direct interests. The minimum wage would give those voters a direct reason to turn out to vote-- to vote themselves a raise to help their families. A few years ago, Washington State ran a minimum wage campaign that effectively used a ballot initiative raising the minimum wage as an effective spur to turnout. If you want to appeal to low-wage voters who rarely turn-out, what is better than directly mobilizing to increase their own wages? Why $8 per hour? On one level it's a very conservative number. All it does is restore the value of the minimum wage to about where it was in real dollars back in 1968. It seems reasonable that after thirty-five years of growth, the working poor should at least be making the same amount as back then. Others would reasonably ask why not a larger increase-- and the reductio ad absurdum is for conservatives to say, yeah, why not raise it to $50 per hour. The simplest answer is empirical-- let's raise it to $8 to the level in 1968 when the economy did fine with the rate at that level. Then talk about raising it some more then. A number of states have already raised the minimum wage significantly above the national level ($7.15 in Alaska, $7.05 Washington State, $7.10 Connecticut (1/04), and so on) and Santa Fe, New Mexico has raised their local minimum wage to $8.50 per hour with San Francisco voting on a similar increase this fall. So $8 per hour is right in the consensus level of state and local initiatives around the minimum wage. I'll be back in a day or so with posts on Why the Minimum Wage Can Increase Employment, Why We Shouldn't Worry if It Costs Jobs, and any other issues that come up in comments. Update: The DLC folks have posted an interesting set of indepth polling on popular agendas for Democrats. Yet when you look at their tested big ideas -- affordable college education, affordable health care, homeland security --none poll more than 62% popularity across the country. (See pp. 14-15). They notably did not poll for raising the minimum wage, since that doesn't support their agenda, but it's a rather compelling fact that support for the minimum wage is significantly more popular than their best list of issues. Posted by Nathan at August 25, 2003 08:41 AM Related posts:
Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: Comments"It somewhat boggles the mind that progressives politicians for President aren't trumpeting an increase in the minimum wage on the campaign trail." Simple. Fox News will rename it a "tax increase" then flood the airwaves with talking heads (from the Cato intitute?) repeating the mantra until the beneficiaries of such a policy will come to believe that it will actually result in job losses. Posted by: claude tessier at August 25, 2003 03:23 PM Minimum wage is a touchy issue at my house; my husband insists that raising the minimum wage will increase inflation. Are you going to cover that this week? If so, I'll have to send him some links... Posted by: Ab_Normal at August 25, 2003 04:40 PM Are you really trying to convince poor voters to vote themselves out of a job? Posted by: Ugh at August 25, 2003 11:27 PM Ab_Normal: This may be true, but the inflation will be confined to lousy hamburgers and getting your grass cut by someone else. Ugh: How do you figure? If something is essential, someone will be paid to do it. For your reasoning to hold, many minimum wage workers currently would have to be performing non-essential tasks. This in turn suggests that employers who pay at minimum are somehow altruistic, and that is nonsense. Posted by: Benedict@Large at August 26, 2003 12:01 PM Are you really trying to convince poor voters to vote themselves out of a job? Silly boy. If I am in the habit of selling something, and I gain the power to fix the price by collusion or law, do I set it higher or lower than the market price? Higher of course -- at the margin, my gain from the higher price exceeds my loss from moving a few fewer units. Look at OPEC. The minimum wage in effect lets low-wage workers set a monopoly price for their labor. That may or may not be good for society as a whole, depending on what other distortions exist in the labor market, but it's certainly good for those workers. Posted by: jw mason at August 26, 2003 04:46 PM I think that you should check all sources buddy Posted by: Paul at September 11, 2003 08:49 PM How do u feel about raising the minimum wage $0.75 a year so that it will not cause inflation or hurt small buisness's and farmers Posted by: frank at September 22, 2003 10:25 AM "It somewhat boggles the mind that progressive politicians for President aren't trumpeting an increase in the minimum wage on the campaign trail." It's not all that boggling if you remember who pays for political campaigns. We live in a corporatocracy, not a democracy, and the corporations sure don't want a higher minimum wage. Posted by: Phaedrus at December 27, 2003 09:03 PM Forgive me for not totally understanding the technical details on why the minimum wage should not be increased. But I probably represent the average worker. I don't see the harm in raising the minimum wage. Besides, even if they increased the minimum wage, people still have to pay state and federal taxes. Rents increase, grocery prices increase, why not increase the minimum wage? Posted by: Laliya at February 11, 2004 05:01 PM Post a comment
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