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| Saturday, October 28, 2006 |
| PBS NOW - Minimum Wage Wedge |
Last night I caught the latest episode of the PBS show NOW. It interviewed a Missouri daycare worker who is trying to support her family while making minimum wage (Federal Minimum wage is $5.15 an hour - Massachusetts recent raised its rate to $7.50 an hour).
You can watch the show online if you missed it when it aired on TV.
Minimum Wedge In the final days of campaigning, a big battle is brewing over small wages. While Congress raises their own wages routinely, they have not touched the federal minimum wage level in nearly a decade. Labels: Income |
| posted by Boston Gal @ 9:33 AM *
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| 6 Comments: |
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Thanks for the tip! I'm definitely going to check it out
Hazzard
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It's shameful that the minimum wage is so low. Fortunately people can still live on such a small amount of money. Hopefully they don't get sick and it completely wipes them out.
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The minimum wage debate is a vicious circle. It will be interesting to see what happens in Ma. I feel for those in the minimum wage arena but I'm wondering if just raising it is going to solve the issue??
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Very few people are on the Federal minimum wage - maybe 1% of the work force, if that (especially as half the population or more live in states with higher minima) and a lot of those are teenagers. Raising the minimum would help those who need it and have little effect on employment. Moderate raises have little or even positive effects according to the research.
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thanks for mentioning this, i actually did catch that episode last nite.
it is worth everyone taking a look, whether you realize you need to know more or if you think you know all about it....
ib
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Very few people are at federal minimum wage, mostly teenagers -- and why exactly are we trying to put more money in the pockets of teenagers?
I've got a friend in retail. He's at the top of the payscale at Wendy's. When the minimum wage in Washington went up, they did NOT raise the top of their payscale, so his pay has effectively been cut by the raise in minimum wage. Since minimum wage went up, Wendy's has not raised their prices -- but you now get smalls in all their extra value meals and have to pay extra for the medium that used to come in. So effectively yeah, the prices got raised. When minimum wage rises, effectively the cost of living rises as well and pretty soon the same people "depending" on minimum wage can't live at it anymore.
Instead, the thing to do is teach people how to get off that bottom rung and in to other jobs.
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Thanks for the tip! I'm definitely going to check it out
Hazzard