Economy
Minimum Wage: The Ups & Downs

Minimum Wage: The Ups & Downs

Raising the minimum wage is offered as a way to help minorities and the working poor, but doing so would end up hurting those groups the most. ...
Michael Tennant

Politicians — particularly Democrats — have been stumping for an increase in the federal minimum wage for some time now. And with 2014 being an election year, the calls for hiking the wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour — a 39-percent jump — are growing ever louder; and they are getting results.

The nation’s politician in chief, President Barack Obama, called for a minimum wage hike in his last two State of the Union addresses. In 2013 he said, “Let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour.” Such a move, he claimed, would “raise the incomes of millions of working families,” stimulate the economy, and reduce dependence on government handouts.

This year, having upped the ante to $10.10 an hour, Obama called on Congress to put the minimum wage increase to a vote. “You’ve got a choice,” he said. “You can give America the shaft, or you can give it a raise.” That remark drew “thunderous applause” from the audience at the University of Michigan, reported the New York Times.

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