minimum wage - Page 6

Low wage workers in Seattle who spent months agitating for a city-wide $15-per-hour minimum wage were quite successful in their quest. But many have suddenly found that the new rate has had unexpected consequences.

Gene Sperling, former Director of the National Economic Council and current adviser to Hillary Clinton said that while Hillary believes in a “higher” national minimum wage as he does, he can’t say what level she would raise it to while

Heritage Foundation Distinguished Visiting Fellow and former Wall Street Journal contributor Stephen Moore squared off against New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in a war of economic arguments that pitted free market, supply-side economics against statist, Keynesian Obamanomics.

University of Pennsylvania Professor of American Social Thought and History and former Chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Mary Frances Berry argued that South Carolina should pass a minimum wage law in addition to removing the Confederate flag

On Saturday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti signed a measure that will raise the minimum wage in the city, currently $9 an hour, to $15 an hour by July 2020.

Speaking to a gathering of fast food workers and voicing her support for a $15 minimum wage, Hillary Clinton said, “I want to be your champion” to the assembled group.

The California State Senate voted on party lines Monday to raise the minimum wage to $13 per hour by 2017–a 44% increase from where it stands today, at $9 per hour. Just two years ago, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that increased the minimum from $8 per hour in 2013 to $10 per hour by 2016. The new bill, introduced by State Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) as a measure to reduce poverty and inequality, would amount to a staggering and unprecedented 62.5% increase in four years.

The Irvine City Council voted 4 to 1 to begin dumping an eight-year-old “Living Wage” ordinance on Wednesday night that forces most of the city’s thousands of contractors to pay all employees at least $13.34 an hour.

If any of his friends on the Left bothers to listen to what Buffett says about the minimum wage and welfare, they’re likely to be much more upset about his notion of identifying those who are “willing to work,” and holding those who are not responsible for their life choices.

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro expressed his pleasure with Los Angeles increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour on Wednesday’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” on MSNBC. Castro stated, “I was happy to see what Los Angeles did.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council passed a minimum wage law by a 14-to-1 vote margin that continually cranks-up wages for the next five years to $15 an hour. Meanwhile, employers are responding by investing in machines over people.

The Center for Jobs & the Economy has published a study entitled, “Economic Tale of Two Regions: Los Angeles County vs. Bay Area.” Their research, which compiles data to track jobs created in the past 24 years, reveals that the two regions have been at opposite ends of the wage spectrum. The Bay Area experienced high-wage growth that lifted the middle-class, while Los Angeles slumped toward a two-tier economy as higher-wage jobs shriveled and were somewhat replaced by lower-wage jobs.

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson advocated for a higher minimum wage in an interview with CNBC Chief Washington Correspondent John Harwood on his “Speakeasy” series. Carson, in response to a question about his lack of political experience, said, “We have

American opposition to the Obama administration and GOP establishment’s extremist immigration policies is boiling at an all-time high, a broad survey of polls shows.

While Fresno County is suffering from high unemployment–11.6 percent in February 2015, and 12.0 percent in January 2015–Fresno workers have joined the Fight for $15, a national campaign to raise wages and set the minimum wage to $15.

On Wednesday protests over the lack of “social justice” in the minimum wages paid to fast food workers were held in many of the nation’s most populated urban areas.

Now that Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Marco Rubio (R-FL) have officially launched their presidential campaigns, the Democratic Party is gearing up its propaganda machine to attack the Republican contenders. But a series of Facebook images they posted this week has many scratching their heads, wondering why the Democrats would use what seem to be Republican talking points in their messages.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, desperate to prove that workers are underpaid by their greedy employers, reported that their data showed 56 percent of money flowing from the federal and state level, that was spent between 2009 and 2011 on welfare programs, went to “working families and individuals with jobs.”

Perhaps political attitudes would change if more people understood that the government is raking in more money from their purchases than Walmart is. Politicians excel at portraying themselves as perpetually under-funded in their selfless quest to make life better for everyone. At the same time, they teach the public to believe private industry is rapacious and exploitative, rather than working with six or seven-percent profit margins.

The Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Eric Garcetti will meet with representatives of the California Restaurant Association and other city officials Tuesday to consider steadily raising the minimum wage over the next four years.

As a minimum wage increase looms in Seattle, the city is losing restaurants.

In an exposé entitled “Poor Kids of Silicon Valley,” a CNN reporter seems shocked to uncover a high level of child poverty in the affluent Bay Area. CNN concludes, after consulting with “economists and experts,” that a minimum wage hike to $10.10 would significantly help end child poverty. But if CNN actually talked to the most impoverished families, they would have learned that raising minimum wage, like Oakland just did, results in maximizing single young mothers and their children living in poverty.

Hillary Clinton used a paid speaking engagement and subsequent question and answer session at a Silicon Valley conference for women Tuesday to begin testing out her policy positions prior to the expected launch of an official 2016 campaign for the White House.

Due to the new increased minimum wage law in San Francisco, a beloved bookstore and mainstay of the Mission District has been forced to close its doors for good.

At the beginning of the year, 20 states boosted their legally mandated minimum hourly wages. The hikes were the result of recently passed legislation or automatic inflation adjustments set into law. A new study, however, adds to the decades of economic research showing that such moves harm low-skilled workers, the very people such laws are intended to help.