Seven Minimum Wage Facts That Have Democrats Worried
With the midterm elections just over 300 days away, nervous Democrats reeling from the Obamacare debacle are hoping a big push to raise the minimum wage will be the silver bullet that will spare them from the historic losses they suffered in 2010.
Democrats and unions are busy working to get minimum wage initiatives on state ballots in the hopes of creating an electoral “minimum wage magnet” to attract low-income, minority, and union voters to the polls.Seven minimum wage facts, however, may diminish Democrats' high hopes.
1. Just 2.8% of American workers earn at or below the minimum wage.
The U.S. Department of Labor says 1.6 million people make the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Another 2 million earn below that rate, such as restaurant servers who make tips in addition to a lower base hourly wage which, according to U.S. News and World Report, "in many cases actually puts them significantly above the minimum wage in reality, if not officially." That means in a nation of 317 million people, just 3.6 million (1.1%) make at or below the minimum wage. As a share of the U.S. workforce, just 2.8% of people working make minimum wage.
2. Half of all minimum wage workers are 16 to 24 years old.
According to the Department of Labor, "minimum wage workers tend to be young," and "about half of those paid the Federal minimum wage or less" are below age 25. Many of these are students working while in school or teenagers with part-time or summer jobs. That means half of the people most affected by a minimum wage hike are among those least likely to show up at the polls to vote, especially in a midterm election year. Indeed, minimum wage workers who are 16 and 17 years old are not even legally eligible to vote.
3. Labor workers already make well above the minimum wage.
Democrats and unions hoping labor workers will be energized by a minimum wage bump will be sad to know that laborers in every single sector of what the government calls "production and nonsupervisory employees"—like manufacturing, construction, mining, retail, transportation, etc.—already earn well above the minimum wage. In fact, in November 2013, the government reported that the average hourly labor wage across all industries was $20.31—a figure nearly three times the federal minimum wage. And as the unions themselves boast, a union member's annual salary is already $10,400 higher than a non-union worker.
4. Even those who support minimum wage hikes concede it could kill jobs.
Many economists and conservatives point to the body of economic literature that shows minimum wage increases kill jobs and simply encourage companies to pass along the added cost in the form of higher prices. But even ardent supporters like socialist Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant, who recently helped pass a $15 minimum wage in the SeaTac, Washington, concede the move could spawn job losses. "There may be a few jobs lost here and there, but the fact is, if we don't fight for this, then the race to the bottom will continue," said Sawant.
5. Minorities and the poor are hit hardest by the minimum wage.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman famously noted that "the most anti-black law on the books of this land is the minimum wage law." Higher wages mean employers seek higher, more skilled workers. That, said Friedman, puts those with disproportionately less education and experience at a significant disadvantage when looking to put their foot on the first rung of the employment ladder.
6. Even progressives concede the minimum wage is no panacea for America's economic woes.
President Barack Obama's former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Economic Advisers Christina Romer says, "economic analysis raises questions about whether a higher minimum wage will achieve better outcomes for the economy and reduce poverty." As a result, says Romer, "most economists prefer other ways to help low-income families." Similarly, progressive Daily Beast writer Jamelle Bouie says while he supporters the move, "the minimum wage is a Band-Aid for wage stagnation and income inequality" and "doesn't make up for our sluggish economy and weak labor market."
7. 21 states already have minimum wages that are higher than the federal $7.25/hr rate.
Just last week, 13 states boosted their minimum wage rates above the federal minimum wage rate of $7.25/hr. That means 21 states now already have minimum wages that exceed the federal rate.
For these reasons and more, Republicans see Democrats' minimum wage tactic as a desperate attempt to run from the Obama record.
"If I had a dollar for every time Democrats thought their issue of the week was going to be their pathway to victory, I would have enough money to pay taxpayers back all the money that was wasted on the broken Obamacare website," said Republican Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman Andrea Bozek.
Querida, encogí a Estados Unidos: La influencia global americana con Obama
Una encuesta publicada recientemente por Pew Research, “El lugar de Estados Unidos en el mundo”, indica que el enfoque de Obama hacia los asuntos exteriores ha tenido un efecto profundamente negativo en el modo en el que los americanos ven su papel en el mundo.
Lejos de ver la “la refulgente ciudad en la colina” expresada por los líderes políticos americanos, desde William Bradford a Ronald Reagan, los americanos consideran que, en la actualidad, su influencia como nación a nivel mundial está en declive. “Por primera vez en unos estudios que datan desde hace cerca de 40 años, hay una mayoría (53%) que dice que Estados Unidos desempeña un papel menos importante y poderoso como líder mundial que el que desempeñaba hace una década”, indica Pew.
Entre los hallazgos más sorprendentes del estudio de Pew, llevado a cabo desde el 30 de octubre al 6 de noviembre entre 2,000 adultos, destaca el que la proporción de americanos que piensa que la influencia de Estados Unidos está en declive se ha incrementado en 12 puntos, llegando a duplicarse desde 2009, el primer año de mandato de Obama. No resulta sorprendente, indica Pew, que “Un porcentaje cada vez mayor quiere que Estados Unidos ‘se preocupe de sus propios asuntos a nivel internacional’ y preste mayor atención a los problemas internos”.
Incluso son más los encuestados que dicen que Estados Unidos está perdiendo el respeto internacional. Su número casi se equipara con el del segundo mandato del expresidente George W. Bush (71% en mayo de 2008), aunque las cifras de Bush se vieron afectadas por el desapego general a su “estilo de cowboy” de Texas y por dos guerras que fueron impopulares entre la opinión pública extranjera. En el caso del presidente Obama, llegó al cargo inmerso en una ola de benevolencia internacional, recibiendo el premio Nobel de la Paz incluso antes de ocupar el cargo.
Sin embargo, los tiempos han cambiado. La estrepitosa caída de este año en la confianza ha estado causada por la torpe política de actuación respecto a la guerra civil siria, el intento de apaciguar el programa de nuclear de Irán y las deferencias con los líderes políticos de Rusia y China.
Por sorprendentes que sean las conclusiones de Pew, en realidad no deberían constituir ninguna sorpresa. Al fin y al cabo el presidente comenzó su mandato en el cargo con una gira mundial para pedir perdón. Los críticos de la política exterior de Obama han argumentado durante años que para el plan del presidente para este país, es crucial un menor impacto a nivel global, una consecuencia natural de su visión política. Entre quienes han expuesto este argumento se encuentra Dinesh D’Souza, autor de “Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream, published before the 2012 election”.
La puesta en acción de la doctrina Obama supone nada más y nada menos que un ariete apuntado hacia el poderío americano y con éste, los cimientos del sistema global posterior a la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Aunque los americanos se están dando cuenta por fin de esta escalofriante revelación.
The Genealogy of Obamacare
Harking back to the worst of the New Deal.
Jan 13, 2014, Vol. 19, No. 17
• By JAY COST
Despite its clunky rollout, Obamacare continues to move
forward. Many of the problems with the website have been fixed, at least
on the “front end” that the consumer sees. The government, meanwhile,
has reported nearly 2 million enrollments between the federal and state
exchanges. This number is well below the 3.3 million expected—and it is
almost surely an overestimation, considering the potentially high levels
of nonpayment by enrollees and the remaining problems on the “back
end,” where the insurance companies interact with the government. Still,
it suggests that the program is here to stay for the time being.
Supporters
of the law are breathing a huge sigh of relief, but their respite may
be short-lived. Already there are hints of bigger problems with the
law—bad ratios of healthy to sick enrollees, limited networks of doctors
and hospitals, paltry drug formularies, and more. And there are more
problems to come, symptoms of a deeper malady inherent in the law: It is
ill-suited to our Madisonian system. Obamacare seeks to micromanage a
vast sector of the American economy, when our government was designed
purposely to prevent that sort of control. When central planners during
the New Deal ignored the limitations placed on our pluralistic
government, the results were disappointing and often perverse. The flaws
already evident in the Obamacare system suggest that history may be
repeating itself.
The progressives of the early 20th century were a diverse
group of activists, but one thing they had in common was a taste for
telling people what to do. Early progressive thinkers like Herbert Croly
were enthusiastic about grand, government-directed endeavors to make
America a better place. And that was the subtext of Theodore Roosevelt’s
famed Osa-watomie speech: He wanted to co-opt Lincoln’s wartime
coercion for peaceful social engineering.
The problem the progressives encountered is that our
Madisonian system is incompatible with their grand ambitions. If the
progressive left was bent on telling people what to do for their own
good, just that sort of curb on individual freedom was
one of the Framers’ biggest fears. For a decade, the Founding generation
had been bossed around by a distant and unsympathetic British
government, and then—after throwing off the shackles of colonialism—they
found themselves, under the Articles of Confederation, at the mercy of
ignorant, capricious, yet effectively omni-potent state legislatures.
The subtext of Federalist 51 is a promise from Madison to the
people: Nobody is going to tyrannize you under this new government. In
Madison’s scheme, the government would empower a broad spectrum of
interests to check one another, thus breaking and controlling what he
called in Federalist 10 “the violence of faction.”
Of course, this has not stopped the government from
finding novel ways to boss people around. Even so, the Madisonian system
has often thwarted central planners who think the world would be a
better place if only the country would follow their dictates.
This was a lesson the progressives had to learn the hard
way during the New Deal. Today when people think of the New Deal, they
are wont to recall Social Security or the minimum wage. But those were
actually part of the second New Deal, which focused on granting
new rights or powers to different groups. The first New Deal had more
to do with controlling almost every aspect of American economic life,
and it was an epic disaster that even the staunchest FDR cheerleaders
are hard-pressed to defend.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) of 1933 was the
first major program of the New Deal, and it was straightforward: The
government would pay farmers not to farm in the hope that this would cut
down the glut of agricultural products, raise farm prices and wages,
and thus promote prosperity. Yet in practice it failed in surprising and
far-reaching ways. It was in Dixie that the AAA wrought the most harm,
decimating the economic standing of poor farmers, many of them black.
Wealthy landowners manipulated the payment program so as to stiff
tenants, purchase farm equipment, and send unskilled laborers crowding
into the big cities looking for work. When reformers in the Agriculture
Department tried to do something about this, they were unceremoniously
sacked to keep congressional bigwigs like Senate majority leader Joseph
Robinson of Arkansas happy. CONTINUE READING
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