Media Advisory: Furman, Harkin, Miller to Discuss Path Forward for Raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $10.10
Via an Economic Policy Newsflash (hat tip KH):
On Tuesday, January 14, 2014 at 9:15 a.m. ET, Jason Furman (Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers), Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) will join EPI President Lawrence Mishel to discuss the economic case for raising the federal minimum wage and their plans to enact the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013.
At the event, EPI will release a letter from economists, including seven Nobel Prize laureates, endorsing a $10.10 minimum wage.
The Fair Minimum Wage Act, introduced by Harkin and Miller, would raise the federal minimum wage in three incremental increases of $0.95 from its current level of $7.25 per hour to $10.10 per hour. The Harkin-Miller bill would then index the minimum wage to inflation, so that as prices rise in subsequent years, the minimum would automatically be adjusted.
EPI research shows the Harkin-Miller bill would give a raise to 27.8 million workers, who would receive about $35 billion in additional wages. A $10.10 minimum wage would increase GDP by $22 billion, creating roughly 85,000 new jobs.
The event will be livestreamed here.
And help out social security and Medicare so I am sure the GOP will never let it become law. Somewhat off topic, but in the same vein of whose country is it anyway, my wife noted today that several private foundations had put up $300 million dollars to spare the Detroit Art Museum from bankruptcy proceedings. I am all in favor of art, and music and literature–although I tend to prefer pulp fiction in my spare time–but is there anything going on with the retired pensioners of the City of Detroit? Who is going to bail them out? Any wealthy foundations going to see that they can put food on their tables and heat their dwellings in what has been an old fashioned winter here in the upper Midwest? I mean it seems like we have gone from an ideological debate, effort to protect the wealthy from paying more taxes and denying the black guy a second term, to pure unadulterated stomping of people who are not in the top 25% economically in this country with special hatred toward those in the bottom 25% as well as their children and dependents. And of course there is always an undercurrent of racism to the efforts at least among the “conservatives” I interact with although they would deny it.
I am sick to my stomach that seven Nobel Prize winners are supporting a $10 an hour minimum wage — when I, a gypsy cab driver from the Bronx, can work out a million angles why a $15 an hour minimum wage is both super doable and a desperate necessity.
This week I am beginning to work on the “other side” of the supply and demand chart: on how the demand curve moves (up and to the left? — whatever) when the minimum wage is raised too.
Meantime these guys are just perpetuating the image that the current labor market situation resembles sanity in any way. If they wanted to jump to $10 all at once to prove nothing bad happens, fine. But, they undoubtedly want to creep up on a dollar less than 1968, year by year by year — may they roast in … .
My response yesterday to a comment on a CBS blog defining the minimum wage as a loss of freedom:
An unregulated market does not make a free market — not in the sensible sense of the word. A market that permitted unlimited monopolies would not be free for most of us who would be forced to pay much more than ownership would be willing to sell for if we had a free alternative.
Ditto for the labor market. With no mechanism with which to withhold their labor to get the best price — no unions and a minimum wage that is $3.50 an hour below 1968’s minimum while per capita income doubled — today’s American workers are not really in a free market in the best sense of the term.
Doubling (that’s right, doubling) the minimum wage to $15 an hour would only shift 3.5% of GDP to the 45% of our workforce who is earning less than that — and currently taking only 10% of overall income from the 55% who take 90%. If the market bears that, that is a fair free market price. Guess what: I don’t think the 55% are going to tell the 45% to go home, that their output is not needed anymore. 🙂
Terry:
As I understand the draft plan, the $300 M allows Detroit to keep the art AND increase payments to creditors, including pension plans.
A little murky though.
FWIW, the Detroit pensioners consistently elected thugs and goofballs to the pension boards, who proceeded to pay “13th checks” to earlier retirees.