{"id":60115,"date":"2013-12-19T08:00:20","date_gmt":"2013-12-19T13:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.lclark.edu\/hart-landsberg\/?p=1925"},"modified":"2014-06-09T20:43:02","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T01:43:02","slug":"22-62hr-the-minimum-wage-if-it-had-risen-like-the-incomes-of-the-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/12\/19\/22-62hr-the-minimum-wage-if-it-had-risen-like-the-incomes-of-the-1\/","title":{"rendered":"$22.62\/Hr: The Minimum Wage if it had Risen Like the Incomes of the 1%"},"content":{"rendered":"

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.\u00a0 Several states<\/a> mandate a higher minimum wage; the state of Washington has the highest, at $9.19.<\/p>\n

President Obama recently voiced<\/a> his support for efforts to increase the minimum wage to $10.10. \u00a0The federal minimum wage was last raised<\/a> in 2009 and certainly needs to be increased again.\u00a0 The fact is that the federal minimum wage has not kept up with inflation. \u00a0As the New York Times<\/em> graphic<\/a> below shows, the current minimum wage is, when adjusted for inflation, 32% below what it was in 1968.\u00a0 It is 8% below what it was in 2010.\u00a0 In other words, those earning the minimum wage are suffering a real decline in income.<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As for the appropriate value, why not $22.62?\u00a0 That, as the graphic illustrates, is what the minimum wage would be if it grew at the same rate as the income of the top 1%. Alan Pyke <\/span>explains<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

[Such a large increase] may seem outlandish, but previous research indicates American workers have just about earned it. Worker productivity has\u00a0more than doubled<\/a>\u00a0since 1968, and if the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity gains it would have been\u00a0$21.72<\/a>\u00a0last year. From 2000 to 2012 alone workers boosted their productivity by 25 percent yet saw their earnings fall rather than rise, leading some economists to label the early 21st century\u00a0a lost decade<\/a>\u00a0for American workers.<\/p>\n

Looked at from that perspective the <\/span>current movement<\/a> for a $15 hourly wage at fast food restaurants sounds reasonable. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMartin Hart-Landsberg is a professor of economics at Lewis and Clark College<\/a>. You can follow him at Reports from the Economic Front<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.  Several states mandate a higher minimum wage; the state of Washington has the highest, at $9.19. President Obama recently voiced his support for efforts to increase the minimum wage to $10.10.  The federal minimum wage was last raised in 2009 and certainly needs to be increased again.  […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1853,"featured_media":60157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,253,85,304,76],"class_list":["post-60115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-history","tag-politics","tag-the-state","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/12\/19.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60115"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62914,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60115\/revisions\/62914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}