In the 1960s, a minimum wage job would keep a family of three afloat.
While Donald Trump believes in huge tax breaks for billionaires, he believes that states should actually have the right to lower the minimum wage below $7.25. What an outrage!
At the current $5.15 an hour, the federal minimum wage has become a poverty wage. A full-time worker with one child lives below the official poverty line.
Taxes on capital, taxes on labor, inflation, bureaucratic regulation, minimum wage laws, are all - to different degrees - unnecessary slices of the wedge that stand between an individual's effort and reward for that effort.
Especially for the young and the lowest-skilled, minimum wage becomes a toll that prevents many from entering the work force and gaining the skills that can make a low income or middle class worker a high income worker. This is so obvious that one wonders why liberals keep championing the minimum wage cause.
Social Security, which transformed life for the elderly in this country, was 'socialist.' The concept of the 'minimum wage' was seen as a radical intrusion into the marketplace and was described as 'socialist.'
When I recently spent a night at a homeless shelter, I was dismayed that members of the middle class had moved in and that earning above the minimum wage did not protect adults from having to share a room with dozens of others.
The typical minimum wage earner is a provider and a breadwinner - most likely a woman - responsible for paying bills, running a household and raising children.
The state of Alaska has a minimum wage which is higher than the federal level because our state leaders have made that determination.
Ohio is one of only two states that have a minimum wage below the federal level of $5.15 an hour.
President Obama has made a minimum wage increase a focal point of his economic agenda.
A minimum wage leads to higher levels of unemployment.
Raising the minimum wage means raising the living wage - and that's good news for Ohio.
The minimum wage should be a living wage.
The real minimum wage is zero.
Raising the minimum wage means we have workers paying more in to support the Social Security system.
Raising the minimum wage is the right thing to do, but it's a popular thing to do as well.
Many unions have contracts with employers that are based on a multiple of the prevailing minimum wage. If the minimum wage goes up, union salaries go up by a similar percentage.
If the price of a burger goes up 5 cents, and the minimum wage that you have received is going up from $7.25 to $15 an hour - and there have been a number of studies that document just how much the price of a burger might go up if you increase the minimum wage. You match the costs, and the benefits far outweigh the costs.
Mr. Speaker, the time for an increase in the minimum wage has not just arrived; it is long overdue.
