Just some minimum wage facts, since many still seem to believe minimum wage is for 16 year olds who live at home and don’t have bills and ignore “near minimum wage” when discussing raising it (which current plan will not instantly raise it to $15, but gradually raised to $15 over the course of multiple years):
Gradually raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would lift pay for nearly 32 million workers—21% of the U.S. workforce.
Two-thirds (67.3 percent) of the working poor in America would receive a pay increase if the minimum wage were raised to $15 by 2024.
The majority of workers who would benefit are adult women—many of whom have attended college and many of whom have children.
More than half (51%) of workers who would benefit are adults between the ages of 25 and 54; only one in 10 is a teenager.
Nearly six in 10 (59%) are women.
More than half (54%) work full time.
More than four in 10 (43%) have some college experience.
More than a quarter (28%) have children.
Today, in all areas across the United States, a single adult without children needs at least $31,200—what a full-time worker making $15 an hour earns annually—to achieve a modest but adequate standard of living.
Essential and front-line workers make up a majority (60%) of those who would benefit from a $15 minimum wage.
More than one-third (35%) of those working in residential or nursing care facilities would see their pay increase
Workers earning the current federal minimum wage are paid less per hour in real dollars than their counterparts were paid 50 years ago.
In states without a $15 minimum wage law, public supports programs for underpaid workers and their families make up 42% of total spending on Medicaid and CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program), cash assistance (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF), food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP), and the earned income tax credit (EITC), and cost federal and state taxpayers more than $107 billion a year.
Increasing the federal minimum wage from the current $7.25 an hour to $12 an hour would reduce the poverty rate by as much as 2 percentage points, according to Dube’s estimates. Put differently, it would lift roughly 6 million Americans out of poverty.
Two-thirds of Americans (67%) support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, including 41% who say they strongly favor such an increase, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted this spring.
Statistical analysis of the effect of the minimum wage on employment, has been very active for the last quarter century. More than 60 analyses using U.S. data have appeared since the exchange between David Neumark and William Wascher, and David Card and Alan Krueger in the AER (December 2000). This study presents a meta-analysis of the 37 that report results in a way that makes them easily comparable and suitable for this technique. [...] We find a moderate degree of publication bias in this literature, but no support for the proposition that the minimum wage has had an important effect on U.S. employment.
The government right now provides a form of subsidy to major corporations that do not pay a living wage. While Walmart and other companies pay starvation wages, the government provides their workers welfare to help them get by, therefore making us taxpayers pay to help corporations exploit their workers.
Walmart and McDonald's are among the top employers of beneficiaries of federal aid programs like Medicaid and food stamps, according to a study by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office released Wednesday.
The question of how much taxpayers contribute to maintaining basic living standards for employees at some of the nation's largest low-wage companies has long been a flashpoint in the debate over minimum wage laws and the ongoing effort to unionize these sectors.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., commissioned the study, which was released Wednesday by the congressional watchdog agency. The Washington Post was the first to report on the data. Sanders, who has run for the Democratic nomination for president, is a leading progressive lawmaker and a consistent critic of corporations.
The GAO analyzed February data from Medicaid agencies in six states and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — known as SNAP, or food stamps — agencies in nine states.
Walmart was the top employer of Medicaid enrollees in three states and one of the top four employers in the remaining three states. The retailer was the top employer of SNAP recipients in five states and one of the top four employers in the remaining four states.
McDonald's was among the top five employers of Medicaid enrollees in five of six states and SNAP recipients in eight of nine states.
Other notable companies with a large number of employees on federal aid include Amazon, Kroger, Dollar General, and other food service and retail giants.
About 70% of the 21 million federal aid beneficiaries worked full time, the report found.
“U.S. taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America," Sanders said in a statement Wednesday evening. "It is time for the owners of Walmart, McDonald's and other large corporations to get off of welfare and pay their workers a living wage."
Mythical_Atlacatl on February 22nd, 2021 at 22:34 UTC »
I think the fact minimum wage hasn’t increased due to inflation is enough of a reason to increase it.
People on minimum wage have actually taken a pay cut as everything around them costs more each year.
shenanigan_shannen on February 22nd, 2021 at 23:00 UTC »
Too many people want to feel better than others, so they become outraged when those people live comfortably for the first time in their lives
BaldKnobber123 on February 22nd, 2021 at 23:06 UTC »
Just some minimum wage facts, since many still seem to believe minimum wage is for 16 year olds who live at home and don’t have bills and ignore “near minimum wage” when discussing raising it (which current plan will not instantly raise it to $15, but gradually raised to $15 over the course of multiple years):
https://www.epi.org/publication/why-america-needs-a-15-minimum-wage/
https://www.aeaweb.org/research/charts/minimum-wage-family-income-anti-poverty
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/30/two-thirds-of-americans-favor-raising-federal-minimum-wage-to-15-an-hour/
https://voxeu.org/vox-talks/could-15-minimum-wage-save-lives
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2705499
The government right now provides a form of subsidy to major corporations that do not pay a living wage. While Walmart and other companies pay starvation wages, the government provides their workers welfare to help them get by, therefore making us taxpayers pay to help corporations exploit their workers.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html
Dozens of highly regarded economists have signed on backing a $15 dollar minimum wage: https://www.epi.org/economists-in-support-of-15-by-2024/