Fighting Poverty Wages

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https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/05/24



We’re at a critical moment in our economic recovery that requires real leadership and people power to ensure true economic democracy in our country. There is incredible work being done to build a strong antipoverty movement, and spaces like these are fundamental to encourage an open dialogue about our strategies and tactics as well as our successes and failures.

As corporate profits keep soaring, workers’ wages continue to stagnate, creating the widest income inequality gap our nation has seen in modern times. At Jobs With Justice we still believe that in America, people who work hard should be paid enough to live with dignity and raise a family. Today, millions of people go to work every day and still don’t earn enough money to feed their families. If people can work full-time and still can’t afford groceries, rent and medication, then the entire model is flawed and unfair. We can’t continue down this path of creating bottom-of-the-barrel, low-wage jobs that condemn our friends and neighbors to poverty.

A critical first step toward regaining our country’s shared prosperity is to insist that lawmakers adopt a meaningful increase in the minimum wage. The Fair Minimum Wage Act would update the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour and give the law teeth by indexing it to inflation. According to the Congressional Budget Office, even this slight increase—which would be the first since 2009—would raise 900,000 Americans above the official poverty level. And it would boost pay for 30 million people, many of whom are teetering just above the poverty line.

Raising the minimum wage is essential to combating poverty in America. After all, of the 46.2 million Americans who live below the official threshold for poverty in the United States (less than $18,284 annually for a family of three), at least 10.4 million—or more than one in five—are “working poor.” According to other studies, as many as half of all poor families—and more than 70 percent of nearly poor families—were working in 2011. In other words, for millions of Americans, poverty isn’t caused by the inability to work or find work, it’s caused by lousy pay.