Link minimum wage to congressional pay raises?

[struggle4progress]

YES: The most needy workers deserve a similar rate of increase
SEN. JACK REED
McClatchy-Tribune News Service

Our government should not just focus on economic policies that benefit Wall Street, we need to take care of people who live on Main Street as well.

A minimum wage hike is sorely needed and long overdue. The federal minimum wage, which stands at $5.15 per hour, hasn't increased since 1997. Since then, inflation has not only wiped out that pay increase but reduced the real value of the minimum wage to its lowest level in half a century.

Meanwhile, members of Congress have awarded themselves $31,600 in pay raises over the last nine years. That's why legislation linking congressional pay raises to increases in the federal minimum wage is gaining support. If the minimum wage had increased at the same rate as congressional salary increases since 1997, the wage floor would now be nearly $6.50 per hour ...

No one who works full time should have to live in destitution, but the current minimum wage isn't enough to bring a single parent with one child over the poverty line -- even if the parent works 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. Five million more Americans have fallen into poverty since President Bush took office -- 37 million Americans now live in poverty, including 13 million children ...

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/opinion/15268507.htm

[MadMaddie]

1. Okay I said this two weeks ago....I really, really did...

Congress doesn't get a living wage increase unless minimum wage increases at the same %. It's that easy!!

[struggle4progress]

2. Apparently many brilliant thinkers have been having this idea.

:)

[MadMaddie]

4. Now if we could only get it implemented!!

[GOPBasher]

3. If that is a question, my answer is HELL YES. eom

[dcfirefighter]

5. MW is so far away from the cause of poverty...

...that it is just plain ineffective for ameliorating it.

The prevailing wage must be higher than the prevailing cost of living, or you have poverty.

Raise wages by increasing the demand for labor - not by arbitrarily increasing the price of labor. Increase the demand for labor by shifting investment away from natural (non-labor built) resource use (oil, water, coal, land, etc.) and on to building labor-made capital (factories, roads, power plants, stores, buildings, etc.). You do this by reducing the taxes on labor-made capital and increasing the taxes on pollution, extraction, and resource occupation. Increase the consumption of labor by reducing taxes on labor, such as the payroll tax and the first $100,000 of income tax on wages & salaries. Eliminating the payroll tax would see an immediate 7% raise in the MW, as well as some portion of the employer's 7%.

Reduce the cost of living by eliminating sales taxes, at least on necessities and labor-produced goods & services. (even a luxury tax on yachts is really a tax on the labor of the blue-collar boatwrights). Reduce the cost of living by reducing or eliminating taxes on buildings where people live and work - the largest single portion of living expenses is housing. Reduce the cost of living by funding public transit through local property taxes. Reduce the cost of living by coming up with some form of universal health care.

The legislated minimum wage can not be raise to an effective level without hurting the poor somewhere. If the minimum wage is high enough to be a living wage in Massachussetts, it will certainly force jobs in Arkansas to be outsourced to Central America or Asia.

[mascale]

6. Sentiment OK, Methodology Not

Suppose you have an income scale from the lowest to the highest and then you multiply everybody's income to compute a pay raise. The lower incomes get tiny little bits of money, and the upper incomes get enormous sums: They don't even need.

Follow the original post, and using the same percentage all those years doesn't even bring the federal Minimum Wage proposed even up to the current California Minimum Wage of $6.75 per hour. Is it any wonder that so many want to be re-elected to anything other than a Minimum Wage kind of job. The upper incomes get multiple thousands of dollars every raise: Not the few pennies per hour.

First alternative proposal is for a flat amount raise for every income. Second alternative proposal is to index that. That is not dissimilar from the raised and indexed Standard Deduction and Personal Exemptions in the federal tax code reform of 1986, when the liberals were in office. And in fact, that is an alternative three.

Outcome: Increase of Purchasing Power. Oucome: Ease of Implementation Worldwide.

It beats running on a pro-war platform hands down.