The Minimum Wage: Time to Start Working on the Next Increase
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This is a cross-post from Jared Bernstein’s blog, On the Economy. Bernstein is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) and, from 2009 to 2011, was the chief economist and economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.
I’ve always thought the national minimum wage is a lot more important than most people tend to think. By definition, it sets a floor on the low end of the job market, though to their credit, many states now set their minimums above the federal level of $7.25 (Washington State clocks in at a cool $9.04). So it’s a floor, not a ceiling.
Lots of low-wage workers and their families depend on it, and its long slide, as shown in the accompanying chart, especially over the Reagan years, contributed to wage losses and working poverty for many who toil to this day in low-end services.
Of course, when someone raises the idea of a raise, you hear a huge outcry from some in the business lobby. Their generic argument is that the increase will lead to job losses among those low-wage workers affected by the higher wage level. Such workers, they say, will now be “priced out of the labor market.”
Yet, you hear the opposite from groups that represent low-wage workers’ interests, groups like the National Employment Law Project, or NELP (proud disclosure: I’m on their board). Read the rest of this entry »
Stories from the Kitchen Table: America’s Middle Class Is Struggling
When revenue problems forced the Central Community Schools in DeWitt, Iowa, to cut back on expenses, Amanda Greubel and her husband, Josh, who both work at the schools, kept their jobs but lost $10,000 a year in income. With a five-year-old and another child due in December, a mortgage and student loans to pay, their life has changed dramatically.
Greubel, director of the Family Resource Center for Central Community Schools, told a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing today what life is like in the day-to-day world of middle-class Americans struggling in this economy. The hearing was aptly titled, Stories from the Kitchen Table: How Middle Class Families Are Struggling to Make Ends Meet. Said Greubel:
Sometimes the grocery money runs out before payday, and then we have to be creative with what we have in the cupboards until we get paid again. My son ends up eating more cold cereal at dinnertime than I care to admit.
It means that most of our clothing now comes from Goodwill, garage sales, or clearance racks. This past spring our son was hospitalized for three days, resulting in $1,000 in out-of-pocket medical expenses. This month a problem with our roof required $1,500 in repairs. Even though we’d been setting aside a little money each month for medical expenses and home repairs, we weren’t prepared enough and have spent the last few months catching up.
Manufacturing Policy Key to Economic Recovery
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Unlike our nation’s economic competitors, such as China and Germany, which have national policies geared to increasing their economic development, the United States does not. While we admonish such countries to consume more and export less, they are figuring out ways to increase exports and consume less—and, in turn, are growing their economies far faster than the United States.
In a recent letter to President Obama, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and a group of bipartisan senators wrote that the key to turning our economy around and creating good new jobs is a national industrial policy that would emphasize long-range actions to rebuild our manufacturing base, which has been decimated over the past few decades. In short, they urged the adoption of a national manufacturing policy.
The loss of manufacturing plants and jobs has stifled economic opportunity for middle-class families and compromised our ability to compete in the 21st century economy. Indeed, for the last several decades, administrations have passed up critical opportunities to formulate a rational and comprehensive manufacturing policy. Continued apathy will undermine our country’s ability to achieve energy independence and place our military readiness at risk.
Progressives Set for America’s Future Now Conference, June 7–9
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More than a year into the Obama administration and with November elections just ahead, progressive activists will gather June 7–9 in Washington, D.C., to forge a strategy to build a majority for real change in America.
The America’s Future Now conference, sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF), traditionally is the largest gathering of progressives in the country. There’s still time to register for the conference. Register now here or click on the America’s Future Now icon above.
Grassroots activists and policy-wonk analysts have gathered at the campaign’s conferences each year for six years to forge an economic agenda for change—and the organizing strategies for taking that agenda to the country.
Symposium to Tackle Challenge of Putting America Back to Work
The contrast is staggering: While Wall Street celebrates record earnings for the fat cats at the top financial firms, the reality on Main Street is that more than one in six working Americans is now unemployed or underemployed.
In the midst of this jobless “recovery,” leading policymakers and experts will gather to discuss how public policy should respond to this unprecedented unemployment crisis at the conference, “The Jobs Deficit: The Challenge of Putting America Back to Work.” The New America Foundation’s Bernard L. Schwartz Economic Symposium is sponsoring the discussion Oct. 20 in Washington, D.C.
For more information and to register for the symposium, click here.
America’s Future Conference: Restore the Middle Class with Employee Free Choice
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The nation’s economy is in a tailspin, and one of the best ways to help turn it around is by passing the Employee Free Choice Act, several speakers said this morning at a national gathering of progressive leaders.
Sponsored by Campaign for America’s Future, the previously titled “Take Back America” annual conference has been renamed “America’s Future Now” to emphasize that this could be the greatest period of progressive reform since the 1960s.
Opening the three-day conference in Washington, D.C., Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, told participants the Employee Free Choice Act is
essential to insuring that the blessings of the next prosperity will be widely shared, that the American middle class will expand, not decline, and that the progressive majority will be consolidated.
Obama Reverses Bush Executive Orders, Creates Middle Class Task Force
President Barack Obama today reversed three Bush-era anti-worker executive orders and created a Cabinet-level task force to rebuild the nation’s middle class. In a White House ceremony this morning attended by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and other union leaders, Obama signed three executive orders that reverse a series of orders by then-President George W. Bush, which govern the way federal contractors deal with unionized workers.
The three new executive orders:
- Require federal service contractors to offer jobs to current workers when contracts change.
- Reverse a Bush order requiring federal contractors to post notice that workers can limit financial support of unions serving as their exclusive bargaining representatives.
- Prevent federal contractors from being reimbursed for expenses meant to influence workers deciding whether to form a union and engage in collective bargaining.
Obama Economic Plan: Create Made-in-America Jobs
President-elect Barack Obama today laid out some of the details of his economic recovery plan. While the current President focuses on giving the Medal of Freedom to the leader of a country that has the highest number of trade union murders in the world and on spending nearly $600,000 on new china for the White House days before leaving office, Obama is moving to clean up the Bush economic mess. Giving the Democratic radio address this morning, Obama said:
Our first job is to put people back to work and get our economy working again. This is an extraordinary challenge.
Three Cheers for Jared Bernstein, Named Chief Economist to Biden
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How’s this for change in Washington after eight years of conservative and corporate- fawning economic policy? Respected progressive economist Jared Bernstein was named Friday to the newly created post of chief economist and economic policy adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.
Bernstein is a 16-year veteran of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and mostly recently served as EPI’s director of living standards program.
Says Biden:
Jared Bernstein is an acclaimed economist and a proven, passionate advocate for raising the incomes of middle class families. His expertise and background in a wide range of domestic and international economic policies will be an invaluable asset to the Obama-Biden administration.
