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| Minimum wages nationwide. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Raising the minimum wage was also part of the economic
vision that President Obama laid out in Galesburg, Illinois today, as he described what we need to do to support the middle class and those who are trying to join it. In his own words, “because no one who works full-time in America should have to live in poverty, I will keep making the case that we need to raise a minimum wage that in real terms is lower than it was when Ronald Reagan took office. “
Indeed, in his State of the Union earlier this year, President Obama called for bringing the minimum wage back up to the same value it had at the beginning of the Reagan Administration and for permanently indexing it to inflation, so it does not experience the same erosion in purchasing power that has happened over the past three decades. And he called for increasing the minimum wage received by workers who rely mostly on tips – which hasn’t been raised for over two decades.
After all, the economic case for a minimum wage increase is clear. For workers and their families, it provides a boost to their income that both helps them make ends meet and increases spending in the broader economy. (And the...
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