$7.25 an hour was considered good money while the minimum hourly wage was $1.85 forty years ago. $7.25 was already considered low income by 1994. $7.25 will not come close to lifting anyone out of poverty as the national minimum wage today. These are not just kids getting their first taste of the workplace getting this hourly rate. Many of these low income workers are adults over 30 with families to support. The government subsidizes many service industry and other employers because their underpaid employees have to make up the shortfall with a variety of government assistance. That amounts to corporate welfare while conservatives espouse the unfounded idea that paying a living wage will discourage employers from hiring. Does anyone really believe President Obama's proposed minimum of $10.10 an hour will break Walmart or McDonalds?
They are the same ideologues who say keeping extended unemployment benefits will allow job seekers to get lazy. Where's the evidence of this? While they're mounting a lobbying campaign against the first minimum wage increase in years and blocking emergency unemployment compensation, they have no problem cutting food stamps while buying into the right wing talk radio propaganda that accuses America's neediest of bleeding this country dry. The Pope, our President and noted economists like Robert Reich and others warn how income disparity has approached alarming levels. We can't afford to assume they're wrong. History is full of what happens when a tiny percentage of society controls an outrageous chunk of its wealth.
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