Quote:
Originally Posted by GatorB
Listen you have to give and take. You can't ask business that in 2006 were paying $5.15 and hour to pay $10.50 an hour in 2010. You'll never get support for that. If you give business a tax break in exchange for higher minimum wage you'll get broad support for it.
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That's one way to look at it.
The way I look at it is they've been getting away with underpaying their workers for decades and now the tide will turn.
I agree you can't do it all in one year, too much of a shock, but we can raise it $1 per hour per year until it's the inflation adjusted equivalent of what minimum wage was in the 1960's (today would be like 9.50 an hour).
How is it that the value of a CEO has gone up 100 fold in the past 10-15 years but the workers at the bottom aren't worth anymore at all?
Obviously I agree that a CEO is more valuable, but he's not 100 times more valuable than he was in 1995. The money is there for higher wages, it's just all gone to the folks at the top.
I could maybe go along with the tax break if it were temporary. If it existed only during the 2 or 3 years the wage was increased substantially, and then expired when the wage stabilized and was tacked to inflation.
Otherwise, you're really back to the government subsidizing low wages again.