The New York Times on how the minimum wage is going up, even as the Republicans continue to fight it.
Stagnating wages and widening inequality are the central economic challenges of our day. Without wage growth, the gains from economic expansion — as measured by income and wealth — become increasingly concentrated at the top of the economic ladder in a self-reinforcing process that makes broad prosperity impossible.
With Congress unwilling to address those challenges, the states have picked up some of the slack. Currently, for example, 26 states and the District of Columbia have, or soon will have, raised their minimum wage above the paltry federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. …
In November, ballot measures in San Francisco and Oakland will let voters decide on raising their cities’ minimum wages. In San Francisco, the push is for $15 an hour by 2018, up from $10.74 and equal to the nation’s highest citywide minimum, which was enacted recently in Seattle. In Oakland, which does not have its own minimum wage now, the goal is $12.25 an hour by 2015.
Really, this is the one issue on which every Democratic candidate should be pounding the living crap out of every Republican candidate. Why this isn’t in every Democratic ad is beyond me.
Sorry I’m running late this morning. But hey, there’s more below the fold…
