Political Quotes

“we should raise the minimum wage. It is indisputable that the minimum wage now lags far behind the cost of living. We last acted to raise the minimum wage in 2009, when we set the current rate of $7.25 an hour. Adjusted for inflation, that is just $6.62 in current dollars. And it is far lower than the rate in 1980, which was nearly $9 an hour when adjusted for inflation. The CBO estimates that nearly 1 million Americans would rise from poverty under this legislation. And earlier this year, economists who surveyed the empirical research on this subject estimated that the impact would be far greater: roughly 4.6 million people immediately lifted above the poverty line, and 6.8 million over time. And it is indisputable that failure to raise the minimum wage--among the lowest in the developed world--has contributed to growing income inequality. Here is what The Economist, a generally conservative publication, said in December: Skepticism about the merits of minimum wages remains this newspaper's starting-point. But as income inequality widens and workers' share of national income shrinks, the case for action to help the low-paid grows. The Economist and others recognize that we should consider this issue in the context of a large issue: Increasingly, working hard is not the path it used to be to get ahead in this country. Increasingly, income goes not to working families, but to investors, to the owners of capital.…”