Obama: 'Give America a raise!'

[ProSense]

Obama: 'Give America a raise!'
http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/2014/01/28/4991847/

• Raising the Minimum Wage to $10.10 for Those Working on New Federal Contracts. A higher minimum wage can raise earnings and reduce poverty. More businesses, from small businesses to large corporations like Costco, see higher wages as the right way to boost productivity, reduce turnover and increase profits. The President will issue an Executive Order to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for the individuals working on new federal service contracts.
  
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• Raising the Minimum Wage to $10.10. The President will continue to call on Congress to pass the Harkin-Miller plan to raise the Federal minimum wage for working Americans in stages to $10.10 and index it to inflation thereafter, while also raising the minimum wage for tipped workers for the first time in over 20 years. The President knows this is important for workers and good for business.

The State of the Union Fact Sheet: Opportunity for All
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/01/28/state-union-fact-sheet-opportunity-all

Sanders Statement on State of the Union

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement tonight after President Barack Obama delivered his fifth State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress:

“I welcome President Obama’s focus on reducing inequality and helping working families in America. The American economy is not sustainable when so few have so much and so many have so little. It’s a moral issue and it’s an economic issue.

“The American people, no matter what part of the country they are from or what political party they support, want us to put millions of people back to work. They want to deal with income and wealth inequality. They want us to raise the minimum wage.

“I applaud the president’s decision to issue an executive order which will raise wages for hundreds of thousands of workers, an issue that I and other senators have been working on for months. The president has made it clear that employees working for government contractors should not be paid starvation wages. This executive order also gives us momentum for raising the minimum wage for every worker in this country to at least $10.10 an hour.”

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-statement-on-state-of-the-union2014

[davidpdx]

1. I think it is a wonderful way to campaign for minimum wage increases both federally and in states

More than half of the states in the country pay at or less than the federal minimum wage.

The top 2 states:

1) Washington
2) Oregon

[Gravitycollapse]

2. "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."

[Cha]

3. Straight from the Heart!

[Cha]

4. Join the Fight!

[reformist2]

5. It's nice, but in truth it really doesn't help much. We need to think about wealth redistribution.

[ProSense]

6. Actually,

"It's nice, but in truth it really doesn't help much. We need to think about wealth redistribution."

....it will have a significant impact, raising the minimum wage for about a half a million workers, which is likely to force Congress to act.

The days are long over when minimum wage workers were high school kids from middle-class families picking up spending money working after school. The workers who will benefit from a minimum wage hike are overwhelmingly adults, many of whom are supporting children. The higher minimum wage will also put a substantial dent in the poverty numbers, reducing the share of the population in poverty by 1 to 2 percentage points, close to 5 million people.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/dean-baker/53892/president-obamas-inequality-story

The Tight Link Between the Minimum Wage and Wage Inequality

by Lawrence Mishel

A higher minimum wage is an important way to address wage inequality, as the erosion of the minimum wage is the main reason for the increase in inequality between low-and middle-wage workers (in particular the 50/10 wage gap, that between the median and the 10th percentile earner). This is particularly true among women, the group for whom the wage gap in the bottom half grew the most. As the figure below shows, two-thirds of the increase in the 50-10 wage gap can be attributed to the erosion of the real value of the minimum wage. [The 50/10 wage gap grew 25.2 (log) percentage points between 1979 and 2009 and that two-thirds of this increase (16.5 percentage points, or 65 percent of the total) can be attributed to the erosion of the minimum wage.] The paper this figure draws on usefully and appropriately captures the spillover impact of the minimum wage—the impact on those earning above the legislated rate. This finding makes sense, since it was in the 1980s that the minimum wage eroded the most, and that was the same time period when the 50/10 wage gap among women expanded greatly. The erosion of the minimum wage explains over a tenth (11.3 percent) of the smaller 5.3 (log) percentage point expansion of the 50/10 wage gap among men. For workers overall more than half (57 percent) of the increase in the 50/10 wage gap was accounted for by the erosion of the minimum wage.



- more -

http://www.epi.org/blog/tight-link-minimum-wage-wage-inequality/

How about the health care law that some people wanted to kill. In addition to the benefits to tens of millions of low-income Americans, the new taxes kicked in.

Obamacare Will Help Reduce Income Inequality

by TomP

Obamacare is far from perfect. Many of us have long sought a single payer system, but that was not doable in 2010. Perhaps a public option was, and it is unfortunate that we did not achieve that. It is one of the reforms to Obamacare that progressives should fight for.

My post today is about some good news. A study from the Brookings Institution shows that Obamacare will help reduce income inequality. Of course, much more is needed, but it all adds up. This is a step forward. (Raising the minimum wage also is very important because it will cause a bump in wages at minimum wage and wages above it (and it likely will have to be done state-by-state).)

Here's the study on Obamacare and inequality:

THE ARCHITECTS OF THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT (ACA) sought to expand health insurance coverage, slow the growth of health care spending, and improve the quality of care. Changing the distribution of incomes was not a stated objective. Nonetheless, the ACA may do more to change the income distribution than any other recently enacted law. It does so by requiring employers to offer affordable health insurance to their full-time employees, by providing refundable tax credits to help make private health insurance affordable, and by expanding eligibility for Medicaid. The law penalizes nonpoor adults who are offered affordable coverage and do not buy it. It reduces subsidies for some Medicare plans and imposes new taxes on the labor and investment incomes of high-income families. In each of these ways, the new health law will change the net incomes of Americans at all income levels.

Brookings Institution: POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT ON INCOME INEQUALITY

You can read the entire study at that link. Here is a synopsis from TPM:

Obamacare is poised to mitigate soaring inequality by raising the incomes of the poorest Americans, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution.

By 2016, when its core provisions will have fully taken effect, the law will lift the average incomes of the bottom one-fifth of earners by nearly 6 percent, and the incomes of the bottom one-tenth by more than 7 percent, the study found.

The "great majority" of beneficiaries of the law's subsidies and Medicaid expansion will be in the bottom half -- and the "overwhelmingly majority" in the bottom third -- of the income distribution.

Obamacare is worth defending.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/27/1272820/-Obamacare-Will-Help-Reduce-Income-Inequality

Krugman: Obama and the One Percent
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024391415

The new heatlh care law raised the payroll tax for high income earners and taxed investment income.

Net Investment Income Tax

A new Net Investment Income Tax goes into effect starting in 2013. The 3.8 percent Net Investment Income Tax applies to individuals, estates and trusts that have certain investment income above certain threshold amounts. The IRS and the Treasury Department have issued proposed regulations on the Net Investment Income Tax. Comments may be submitted electronically, by mail or hand delivered to the IRS. For additional information on the Net Investment Income Tax, see our questions and answers.

Additional Medicare Tax

A new Additional Medicare Tax goes into effect starting in 2013. The 0.9 percent Additional Medicare Tax applies to an individual’s wages, Railroad Retirement Tax Act compensation, and self-employment income that exceeds a threshold amount based on the individual’s filing status. The threshold amounts are $250,000 for married taxpayers who file jointly, $125,000 for married taxpayers who file separately, and $200,000 for all other taxpayers. An employer is responsible for withholding the Additional Medicare Tax from wages or compensation it pays to an employee in excess of $200,000 in a calendar year. The IRS and the Department of the Treasury have issued proposed regulations on the Additional Medicare Tax. Comments may be submitted electronically, by mail or hand delivered to the IRS. For additional information on the Additional Medicare Tax, see our questions and answers.

http://www.irs.gov/uac/Affordable-Care-Act-Tax-Provisions