Edwards Challenges Democratic Candidates to Support his Call to Raise Minimum Wage to $9.50/hour

[JohnLocke]

Edwards Challenges Democratic Candidates To Support His Call To Raise The Minimum Wage To $9.50 An Hour
John Edwards for President
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
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Chapel Hill, North Carolina – As the national minimum wage rose to $5.85 per hour today, Senator John Edwards challenged all the Democratic presidential candidates to support his call to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2012.

"Half a loaf is not enough for working men and women, but that is just what Washington—including my fellow Democrats—is giving them on the minimum wage. At $5.85 per hour, the minimum wage remains a national disgrace. Even next year's scheduled increase is not enough to keep a single parent with one child working full-time out of poverty.

"I again challenge other Democratic presidential candidates to support my call for a minimum wage of $9.50 an hour by 2012 so that the minimum wage will equal half the average wage, and to support indexing it to keep up with the cost of living. It is one of the most important tools we have to lift working families out of poverty and begin to make a dent in the inequality that defines the Two Americas."

"The American people are already there. When Congress hesitated before, I was proud to be part of the effort to mobilize voters in six states to act while Washington twiddled it thumbs. It is time to stop vacillating and triangulating, and start standing up for the people who deserve fair compensation for their hard work."

http://johnedwards.com/news/press-releases/20070724-minimum-wage-challenge/

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. $9.50 an hour?

That would be $1.50 raise for me. I've been stuck at $8 an hour for the past 3 years.

[THUNDER HANDS]

2. i'm curious about something

do other countries have minimum wages, and if so, what are they?

[JohnLocke]

5. Yes

Australia and Canada have minimum wages.

18 out of 27 European Union member stateshave national minimum wages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country

[iverglas]

9. oh my

I'm sorry, but I just find that question almost unbelievable. I don't want to make this personal -- to me it's symptomatic of so much that is wrong in the US.

It reminds me of when I was driving around in the US back in the 80s, and I picked up an unemployed housepainter in Kentucky on his way to visit his sick mother in Tennessee. He was curious, and asked me what it was like up in Canada -- were we free to go wherever we wanted?

There I was in the US ... So I said that really, it was pretty much just like there, except we had free health care. He pondered that, and said Ahhhh.

If people in the US knew what we out here in the outer darkness actually have ... well, it might be hard to avert a revolution.

This applies to Canada too, for instance. We get so busy comparing ourselves to the US, where people don't have so many of the things that we have, that we neglect to notice what people in Europe have that we don't and should be insisting on.

[obnoxiousdrunk]

3. Will that be

above the poverty level ?

[Mojorabbit]

4. It's amazing at how much the value of the dollar

has tanked. I remember making 4.25 an hour as a registered nurse in the late seventies and that was good money.

[draft_mario_cuomo]

6. This would essentially raise the minimum wage back to its peak level in the 1960's

Indexing it is a great move and will prevent the erosion of the minimum wage's purchasing power that we have seen over the past four decades.

[RandomKoolzip]

7. i'm liking Edwards more and more...

And this is great idea. However, it might also be a good idea to not only raise the minimum wage on the federal level, but allow states and local areas to pass their own "base" wage above the federal one, where appropriate - for example, the minimum wage of 9.50 an hour has more buying power in Montgomery, Alabama, than it does in San Francisco. As it stands, the ACORN and other movements have provoked some areas to do just this kind of localized repair on the economy, but the problem is that too many of these places have restricted "living wage" ordinances so that only those employees of the city or state (not of private businesses) receive such a boost in wages. I think the living wage ought to be applied across the board and extended to ALL businesses.

But even the proposal of a baby step is encouraging; none of the other candidates seem to give a fuck about the working poor. Thanks, John!

[Dragonbreathp9d]

8. Its already that in Santa Fe

and we'll have it up to 10.50 over winter hopefully


www.sflivingwage.org