I followed the Obama campaign pretty closely, and I gotta say that I entirely missed him saying anything about transforming our minimum wage into a living wage indexed to inflation.

I also remember that raising the minimum wage to $7.25 was something that Nancy Pelosi pushed through in the 2007-2008 congress, with the help of one Senator Obama.

And not to beat a dead horse, but this is something Congress needs to pass, not something Obama can do by fiat, and I suspect in this crazy 60-votes-for-everything world we've suddenly entered into, there weren't 60 votes for raising minimum wage even when we had 60 Democrats in the Senate (but I bet there were 55!).

Oh, and on the economics of the matter, I think Cenk is doing a massive disservice to his viewers by telling people that the idea that minimum wage increases lead to increased unemployment is flatly false. Studies have actually shown that to be true, but the right exaggerates the effect far out of proportion with reality. The real left-wing answer isn't to lie and tell people it's not true, it's to then rejoin with "this is why providing unemployment benefits is important, because capitalism can't provide everyone a job that allows them to make a decent living."

When the minimum wage is raised, companies hire fewer workers and prices rise.

THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/316/increase-the-minimum-wage-to-950-an-hour/

Moving this video to Boise_Lib's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

>> ^quantumushroom:

When the minimum wage is raised, companies hire fewer workers and prices rise.
THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH.


Weird. I seem to live in a country where, while there is no law for minimum wage, we have unions (remember those things?) that have negotiated the MW to around 16$, usually more for most types of jobs. We also pay alot more taxes, especially the rich. And our government spends LESS on healthcare per capita than the US, and healthcare is free for everybody. And guess what? We dont really have an unemployment problem. College/university is also free, by the way.

How about that shit?

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:

>> ^quantumushroom:
When the minimum wage is raised, companies hire fewer workers and prices rise.
THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH.

Weird. I seem to live in a country where, while there is no law for minimum wage, we have unions (remember those things?) that have negotiated the MW to around 16$, usually more for most types of jobs. We also pay alot more taxes, especially the rich. And our government spends LESS on healthcare per capita than the US, and healthcare is free for everybody. And guess what? We dont really have an unemployment problem. College/university is also free, by the way.
How about that shit?


Does your country also have the third most population in the world?

BTW, min wage laws hurt those who most need a wage. It is really hard to get a job as a used up drug addict. A church I used to be a part of as a Christian tried at length to get the homeless into decent jobs, but when you don't have the faculties anymore, it is hard to get a job where you are worth 7.50 an hour. And while we never ended up facing this issue, because we stopped trying because of legal reason, we tried to do this kind of subcontracting where we would hire ourselves to clean local businesses restrooms for real cheap, "hire out" some help being burned out street people, then pay them the full amount we contracted ourselves for. It was a legal nightmare because of the min wage laws preventing us from doing it. In the end, it was a job that could of been done for money, but in the end, we had to just give them money. In other words, there are many jobs that could be done by the neediest of people who don't have the mental gusto to be deserving of a full wage job. In the end, it ends up forcing a charity gap, where people that don't have skills merit a wage of whatever the min wage is to rely on charity of some sort.

In this, we make law breakers out of them. The man that offers to wash your window for a buck or whathaveyou isn't really complying with min wage laws exactly. That doesn't matter when it is just a car driver handing out money, but when a business can't hire some street folks to make regular cleaning of their outside patio area, then something has broken. Even if I could be convinced that we need a min wage, the way it is setup atm is to "help" middle/lower middle class people at the expense of the most poor. Implementation is very important, almost more important that the act itself. Any act that explicitly raises unemployment for the poorest of the poor is explicitly bad in my opinion.

As a side note, even when I was an unskilled worker...a high school student, I have always made a wage greater than min wage, even when working in fast food. Think about your own wage history, have you ever made the actual lowest wage? If not, then think about the skill set of a person that makes it, and then think of the person that exists below it. The person that exist below the min wage is the person that is most afflicted with the negative this life has to offer, and is also rejected from employment opportunities. I can not morally and rationally support min wage laws as they exist today, I have dealt to much with the pain of rebuilding a life of work and happiness that hedges against the laws. Any law that makes flat out charity the ONLY means of rebuilding your life is morally objectionable.

>> ^possom:

http://www.politifact.com/truth
-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/316/increase-the-minimum-wage-to-950-an-hour/


Politifact is almost trustworthy if you ignore their topline ratings, and just read the associated analysis.

From that link:

There are at least two House bills that would increase the minimum wage in some respect. The WAGE Act would set a base minimum wage for tipped employees such as waiters and bartenders. If enacted this bill would raise the minimum cash wage of such employees (excluding tips) over time from $2.13 to $5.50 an hour. Meanwhile, the Living American Wage Act of 2011 would tie the minimum wage level to the poverty threshold for a family of two individuals. Both bills were introduced early in the year and seem to be stalled in committee. The chances of either passing in committee, much less in a full vote in the House, are remote given the Republican majority.