Is a minimum wage necessary?

Ditto Thomas - My basic premise is that minimum wage (in most cases) will not have an impact - other than the possibility of people being laid off.

Here's an interesting LINK where you can find out your own city's stats. Give it a try, and tell us what you found that you were unaware of before looking at the stats of your city.

Thomas, I still think you may have struck brilliance with the EITC alternative

and love your use of the word "we". Does this mean you'll be joining us?

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Thomas, I still think you may have struck brilliance with the EITC alternative

Thanks, but the brilliance is Milton Friedman's, who came up with the general concept in his book Capitalism and Freedom. Friedman proposed a "negative tax rate" on any income less than a certain minimum. This would have ensured a minimum income for everyone, including people who may be better off not working, such as single moms. But subsidies, with no strings attached, for people who don't work, weren't politically feasible at the time. So as an alternative, Congress enacted the EITC during the Ford administration. Clinton greatly expanded it, encouraged by some brilliant liberal economists he hired. Brad deLong was one of them, and he has an interesting article on the EITC here.

I will, but I'm still procrastinating. It's not that I'm having second thoughts, I just procrastinate a lot.

Thomas wrote:
Sorry, CI, but I don't understand how you get from "less than $9 an hour" to "around the minimum wage". " Between 1 and 1.75 times X" isn't the same as "around X".


I'm a bit confused too, but the last sentence seems to imply those numbers represented the minimum wage earners of $5.15 to $2.85.

The confusion:
According to numerous sources, approximately 30 million workers between the ages of 18 and 64 earn less than $9 an hour in their jobs -- a full-time annual income of $18,800, assuming a full-time (40 hour week), 52-week work schedule -- the income that marks the federal poverty line for a family of four. These are folks making somewhere around the minimum wage ($5.15 an hour for nontipped workers, and $2.13 an hour for tipped workers).

65 years and over: 12.5% (male 15,542,288/female 21,653,879)