#1 on Economic agenda - tie Federal minimum wage to inflation rate just like Social Security

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

If this had been done years ago, wages and salaries of the middle and lower classes would not have become so eroded and stagnant.

Remember, they NEVER care about the runaway executive compensations, but they always claim that this simple remedy that benefits wage earners will put businesses out of business. No, it won't.

Businesses are in the habit of absorbing EVERY OTHER increase in the world, whether it is an increase in gasoline or utility costs or insurance or rents. There is no reason in the world that any business should not be able to cope with incremental wage increases as well. Not to mention that healthcare costs for employers should decrease in the near future when some kind of health care plan is finally crafted.

[fascisthunter]

1. Wages Should Always Reflect Inflation....

[clear eye]

2. Sounds good at first blush, but

wouldn't that create a constant increasing inflationary spiral, where there is inflation causing all wages to rise which would fuel additional inflation and so on? So the wages would be higher dollar amounts but not necessarily more buying power, and the inflating dollar would reduce the value of savings?

On the other hand, some sort of requirement for CEO compensation package increases to be tied to performance sounds like an excellent idea.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

5. No. It just keeps the wage stable and in line with what is happening with

other tracked commodities. The COLs are pretty much lowballed BS anyway from what I understand, because they do not take into account gasoline and groceries.

Plus, there ALREADY is an inflationary spiral, wage earners just aren't allowed to keep up with it.

[msongs]

3. prices are now falling. therefore your wages should fall as well? hmmm nt

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

6. No. There just would be no increase.

Some people just can't bear to see those lowest on the totem catch a break.

[unblock]

14. prices aren't yet falling on a year-over-year basis

social security cost of living adjustments are made annually, and presumably if the minimum wage were indexed to inflation it would be adjusted similarly, on an annual basis.

and one month of price decreases do not an annual adjustment make.

personally, i would be ok with the mandated minimum wage falling if we actually had a full year of negative price adjustments. note that employers might have a hard time actually cutting wages, though. actually cutting someone's wage does not go over well, so not all employers would actually do so.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. Oregon did this a few years ago...

We're now up to $7.95 per hour

Jan. 1 2009 it will go up to $8.40... a huge jump compared to the $.15 increase last year.
http://www.hrtools.com/news/alerts/oregon_announces_minimum_wage_increase_to_840_per_hour_for_2009.aspx

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

8. Good for Oregon.

I think California is pretty good too. I believe in California restaurant workers make minimum and tips and not just a portion of minimum as is common in many states. Also, in California, overtime kicks in after any eight hour shift, not just after 40 in a week.There is NOTHING wrong with enlightened labor laws like these.

[Elwood P Dowd]

7. Social Security is not tied to "real" inflation.

The official CPI numbers used by the government exclude food, energy, and they have all these neat little substitution tricks that lower the "real" number.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

9. I know. I mentioned that in my post #5.

They can't let us know what the REAL inflation numbers are so they play all these little statistical tricks to make the picture rosier than it is.

It would be something if an Obama adminstration decided to treat the American people like adults and show us real statistics concerning jobs and wages that doesn't drop off the long term unemployed or the underemployed and shows the actual rate of inflation.

I guess government thinks we can't handle it, although we ARE handling it every time we go to a store or buy a car or rent an apartment.

[Lugnut]

11. 2008 has been a nightmare for SS recipients.

The SS increase was .023 which fell far short. For '09 the increase is .058 which would have been nice to get for '08.

[Elwood P Dowd]

12. My mother is 90, and her expenses on food, utilities, transportation, insurance,

prescription drugs, property taxes, and others she compared went up an average of over 7%. Like you posted, she received a paltry increase. I will start drawing SS next summer, and that might be my only income considering what's happened to the economy and my finances the past few years.

[unblock]

13. they do NOT excluded food and energy

http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpiqa.htm

there are complicated gimicks that they use, some of which cause inflation to be somewhat understated.
but excluding food and energy is not among them.

they do provide a "core" inflation number that excluded food and energy, but it's not used to set cost of living adjustments.

economists pay attention to the "core" number because the headline number can be very volatile because food and energy prices can jump around so much. e.g., this month's numbers show massive price declines, but the core numbers only came down a very small amount.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

10. kick for evening crowd.