What Happens When People—Rather Than Politicians—Are Given the Chance to Vote for a Higher Minimum Wage?
Michelle Chen on October 29, 2014 - 3:17 PM ET
Protesters at a rally to raise the minimum wage in Maryland. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Next Tuesday, there’s one vote that looks set for a landslide victory. And the winner will be not a candidate but a number: a higher state minimum wage.
Pundits see these initiatives as a vote-boosting strategy for Democrats in key races. But advocates focused on economic justice simply see direct democracy as a straightforward way to deal with an issue politicians often ignore.
--- Especially at the city level, but in states too, advocates go directly to the voters to raise the minimum wage because that’s an effective way to win more meaningful increases and side-stepping the effect of money in politics and special interests’ ability to water down legislation. ---
--- Let’s do some math. If that individual purchased $100 a week in groceries, that would be $5,200 annually. Then, if the individual spent $300 a month for housing, that would be $3,600 annually. That means the individual has spent $8,800 of the $13,000 and we have not discussed an automobile, gasoline, money for medical bills, clothing, and the various insurances that are required. People cannot work at the state minimum wage and make their budgets balance. ---
This also leads to imbalances in government budgets. According to a study by the right-wing Cato Institute .. http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/08/19/work-or-welfare-what-pays-more/, the typical “package” of welfare benefits for a struggling household in Arkansas is $17,423. (Caveat: the study casts a biased negative light on public spending for federal welfare programs. But actually, the deep unmet needs of benefits recipients should be seen as an indictment of the state’s entire package of budget priorities).
Arkansas’s ballot measure would enact a three-step raise in the minimum wage to $8.50 by 2017, and affect roughly 168,000 people, or about 15 percent of the workforce, both through a direct income boost as well as broader economic ripple effects for other workers. The vast majority would be over the age of 20—that is, not of the mythical class of teenage after-school burger-flippers who right-wingers dubiously argue .. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/03/21/3417540/ryan-minimum-wage-teenagers/ .. are typical minimum-wage workers.
In addition to fighting a court challenge, the Arkansas campaign has countered the right’s argument that an excessively high floor wage would be a “job killer.” In fact, a report by Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families .. http://www.aradvocates.org/assets/PDFs/Tax-and-budget/Paying-a-Living-Wage-Will-Make-Arkansas-A-Better-Place-to-Live-and-Work.pdf .. states, “Most research on the effects of increases in minimum wage finds that the change in jobs after a minimum wage increase is either zero or very close to zero.”
Besides, the bean-counting debate among economists over the exact statistical impact of the minimum-wage hike is largely eclipsed by the overarching issue of inequality .. http://www.thenation.com/section/inequality?lc=int_mb_1001. And raising the incomes of the lowest-paid workers would help narrow the abysmal income gap by simply restoring the real value of the minimum wage, which has eroded steadily as the cost of living rises.
--- The declining value of the minimum wage has played a key role in these trends. Setting the minimum wage at an appropriate level can help spur broad-based wage growth.… Such policies are needed to reverse those policies that have strengthened the hands of employers and undercut the ability of low- and middle-wage workers to have good jobs and economic security. ---
Moreover, “a higher minimum wage would disproportionately affect women,” who make up the majority of benefiting workers (and would especially gain from a long-overdue raise in the subminimum wage for tipped workers .. http://raisetheminimumwage.org/pages/tipped-workers). The wage boost would also disproportionately impact black and Latino workers.
Back in Arkansas, Copley tells The Nation, voters have a better grasp of these inequality figures than the politicians do, and the broad popular support for the measure goes beyond partisan politics:
--- So many folks have family members, friends, neighbors who are working on that [amount], and they see every day the struggles they have to make a living…. Folks see it, they get it, they know it’s not enough and they know it needs to be raised. ---
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