Raising the minimum wage is the right idea for the right

[ProSense]

Raising the minimum wage is the right idea for the right

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

<...>

The policy in question is raising the minimum wage. The only mystery is why so few conservative politicians see the issue this way. Rank-and-file conservatives know better. A December Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 53 percent of self-described conservatives supported a minimum wage increase. Republican politicians who are so solicitous of conservative opinion need to follow the moral and practical intuitions of those they say they represent.

One conservative, at least, is speaking for this majority. Ron Unz, a Silicon Valley millionaire and one-time Republican candidate for governor of California, is championing an initiative to raise his state’s minimum wage to $12 an hour...Unz has argued that a minimum wage hike “would function as a massive stimulus package.” He told ABC News that if the national minimum were increased to $12, “probably between $150 billion and $175 billion a year would go into the pockets of the lower-wage families that spend every dollar they earn. It would cause a tremendous boost in economic demand.”

<...>

“One of the strange things in our society right now is that we have all these low-wage workers who are getting $7.50, $8 or $9 an hour,” Unz said, “and because they earn such small wages, the government subsidizes them with billions or tens of billions of dollars of social welfare spending that comes from the taxpayer. It’s a classic example of businesses’ privatizing the benefits of their workers while socializing the costs.”

Now the truth is that inequality has grown so much that various programs to improve the living standards of the working poor are absolutely essential. Some should be expanded. Both Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and President Obama have suggested that help received under the earned-income tax credit be broadened to support workers without children (although Rubio has an ill-advised proposal to restructure the EITC and cut some of its benefits). A nation that proclaims its reverence for work should agree that nobody who works full time should fall below the poverty line.

- more -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-jr-raising-the-minimum-wage-is-the-right-idea-for-the-right/2014/02/16/b83cf4f0-95dc-11e3-8461-8a24c7bf0653_story.html

Crossing Borders and Changing Lives, Lured by Higher State Minimum Wages
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024511661

[shenmue]

1. It's a win for everybody

It rewards work, which the right is supposed to support. We'll see if they actually do that.

[ProSense]

3. Yup. n/t

[Prophet 451]

2. But that would mean heling people

And that's anathema to the right. When they see wages so low that the state has to give out subsidies, they look to remove the subsidies.

[aikoaiko]

4. What happens to other wages higher than min wage...

... When the minimum increases?

Compression? Proportional expansion?

I'm curious.

[reformist2]

6. They go up too, but less so as you move higher. Probably no change for people making $20 an hour.

[reformist2]

5. What about all the people without jobs? We need to address that issue - simultaneously.

[ProSense]

7. Yes, and unemployment benefits.

All necessary.