Raise the Wage

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are both on board with the "Fight for $15" campaign for fast-food workers. That's not a shock. They are candidates in a progressive primary for President, and taking the progressive position. No shock there. It's also no shock that the opposition to raising the minimum wage is spouting off the same nonsense they always do.

1. "Wage increases slow hiring, raise the price of goods and services, and cause layoffs." The problem is that, of course, they can't cite examples of this happening at a level that off-sets the good of the wage increase.
2. "The market should decide the wage, not the government." Of course, we should not expect for-profit companies to set a living-wage on their own, their job is to make money. They would naturally set a very low wage that maxes out their profits. That is the point of a company anyway.
3. "If a higher minimum wage is good, why not set the wage at $100 an hour?" This is a moronic "what if" that isn't grounded in reality. No one is suggesting raising the wage from it's current level by over $92 an hour. There are obvious economic problems with that. There is no real reason to discuss it. The discussion is about a $10.10 minimum wage from the White House, or a $15 an hour wage from the "Fight for $15" crew.

Here's the main point- putting more earnings in the pocket of low-income workers gives them more ability to live a comfortable life. That is a much more noble goal than feeding the never-ending need for higher profits by corporate executives. It is important that we understand that FDR never saw the minimum wage as a bare-bones wage. He saw it as a living wage. We've went from a mindset in his day that we wanted the working class lifted up, to a mindset post-Reagan of wanting to maximize profits. There is less economic benefit to this mindset. It does not create the kind of robust economic growth that workers having money does.