Should Iowa lawmakers reconsider increase in minimum wage?
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A belated Christmas gift is coming today to hundreds of thousands of low-wage Americans in 10 states across the country: A higher minimum wage.
But don’t expect to see the same in Iowa, where the state’s minimum wage rate of $7.25 per hour isn’t going to budge. Last raised by state lawmakers in 2007, from $5.15 to $6.20, and again in 2008 to $7.25, Iowa’s rate has matched the federal rate ever since the federal rate became $7.25 in 2009.
The lack of an increase isn’t for lack of trying by Democratic legislators in Washington, D.C. Just ask Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who introduced a bill in July to raise the rate to $9.80 by 2014, and then establish annual increases. Harkin chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which plays a central role in such legislation.
In a divided Washington, Harkin’s bill has gone nowhere so far, although the new year will bring elevated Democratic numbers to both the House and Senate.
For now, Harkin isn’t giving up the fight, calling it a “modest, common-sense proposal” that would grant an automatic raise to 28 million American workers. He cites polls showing popular support for the idea and says it is overdue, arguing that the current minimum wage has 30 percent less buying power than it did at its peak of effectiveness in 1968.
Do you think Iowa lawmakers should reconsider an increase in the state’s minimum wage?
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What good is an increase in the minimum wage if business isn’t hiring?
The economy doesn’t create minimum wage positions out of thin air, it does it because there is a business need to provide labor to support an enterprise. In a robust economy a minimum wage isn’t necessary because there are more jobs looking for people than people looking for jobs. As long as we have politicans like Harkin whose perspectives is always to restrict the economy we worry about the wrong things.
Tell Harkin to get government off the back of businesses so they have a reason to look for people to hire or go home.
What good is it to have a job if you can’t live on what you are paid no matter how hard you work?
What good is it for business to keep wages low if it means that people can’t buy the stuff business is selling?
What good is it for taxpayers if wages are so low that even people with full time jobs are forced to depend on charities and government assistence to keep a roof over their head and food on the table?
Your mantra of “get the government off the back of business” makes about as much sense as “unleash Ciang Kai-shek”
“What good is it to have a job if you can’t live on what you are paid no matter how hard you work?”
Great logic – no job is better. Matches liberal logic where the Federal government can continue to borrow 40% of what they spend every year and survive. Maybe I should declare myself a sovereign nation and start taxing the State of Iow, makes as much sense.
Ellis,
You’re off topic and you’re not making any sense.
We are talking about raising or not raising the Iowa minimum wage. We are not talking about you declaring yourself a sovereign nation.
Can you please explain to me
1) why having a job that doesn’t pay enough to cover basic expenses, that forces people to seek government assistance, help from local charities, PayDay loans, borrowing from friends or relatives who haven’t any money either is better than no job
2) how depressed wages helps businesses when a serious lack of disposable income means than people cannot pay for the goods and services these businesses are selling
3) how taxpayers subsidizing low wage jobs through welfare assistance is a good thing. Businesses like Wal-Mart aree making astronomical profits. Why do we have to kick in additional money to pay its employees? Why can’t Wal-Mart pay its own employees?
I recommend Roberta that you take a course in macro economics and read the books of Thomas Sowell on economics to help you understand why things are as they are.
Things you need to learn as a minimum:
- The government is funded by the private sector. Countrys with either no private sector or weak private sectors are poor nations. Cuba is a good example where the minimum wage and the maximum wage are the same – everyone is poor. They are poor because they are a government based NOT an economic based society.
- Businesses do not create jobs that don’t produce a profit. If you squeeze the profit the business will quit that enterprise and eliminate all the low paying and all the high paying jobs.
- People with no skills and no education need to GET skills and education. That’s why its important to have successful families to get children through school to get an education before they go out into the world to try and get skills to earn a real living.
Your problem is you support liberal ideology in the society and our culture that creates numbers of people with no skills and no education. Liberal ideas that limit personal responsibility, incentives and hate business are the problem they are NOT the solution to either human or economic problems.
Ellis,
I’ve read Thomas Sowell. I was not impressed.
The things that you say I should learn have nothing to do with macroeconomics. You’re talking about the behavior of individuals within specific situations and then generalizing from insufficient information.
And you have not a clue what Liberalism is
But I’ll give you a hint. It’s an 18th century political and economic philosophy that supports capitalism and constitutional republics. Liberals are traditionally big on education, merit, equality, you know, the stuff that’s in our Declaration of Independence.
It seems that anyone who works a full time job (40 hours per week) should earn enough to get a family of 2 above the poverty line. Our current minimum wage of $7.25 does not do that. That is shameful.
Rich you need to develop an understanding of economics before amking such a statement. If the education and skills of the individual you describe are not in demand then they will have to compete with all the other people who don’t bother to get an education or develop skills. Maybe you should examine our education system which has been degrading under liberal ideas producing fewer and fewer able, reasoned and skilled people.
Ellis
Do you think it would be at all possible for you to disagree with people without calling them stupid.
What Rich Greer said seems to me to be self evident. That our current minimum wage can’t get a one person household, much less a family, above the poverty line is simple fact.
And he managed to post that with no errors of grammar or spelling.
Oh and FYI, public education is a Liberal idea. It goes with the idea of meritocracy. Just thought you should know
If an employer cannot fill positions they will raise the compensation, by their own choice, in order to fill them. Mandating a raise in Minimum Wage will do nothing. We also need to remember that any increase in operating costs, either by choice or mandated, will be passed on to the consumer. So don’t complain when your Mc D goes up in cost. ,
First of all, you will never find me at a Mc D so I can’t relate to an increase in their prices. The more important question is to what degree we allow employers to exploit low income people. By extension, people like Leo and Gary are advocating a form of slavery.
Second of all, Mr Hogan, right now there are more people looking for jobs than there are jobs. Which means employers have no incentive to raise anybody’s wages. In fact employers have no reason to make their workplace attractive to anyone.
Low paid, disrespected, mistreated restaurant workers spit in your food. Ask anybody who has ever worked in a restaurant. Just keep that in mind next time you waltz into a McD
Wow, it’s obvious that both Roberta and Rich have never owned, or operated a small business. So you want me to do what? Pay a high school kid to play on the internet and sweep the floors $10 an hour? My employees are pretty happy having fun, playing golf, going on paintball days, and relaxing with minimal daily work to do. Your asinine push for increasing the minimum wage would force me to let them go completely. To go work at Mc D’s and hate every second of their young working lives. The stupidity of lumping every pay situation into one mass conglomerate, is only superseded by your ignorance of inflation and the taxes businesses pay for the luxury of hiring employees.
Sorry, Mr Chrzan, but I have difficulty taking seriously people who can’t seem to get beyond their own narrow experience.
I also find it difficult to believe that you can run a successful business by hiring a gaggle of high school kids to do nothing. If there’s no work to be done in your place of business, why do you have employees?
Apparently Mr Chrzan is not running a business to make money but rather to provide a place for recreation whilst paying the recreators (to coin a word) to recreate. ( LOL (I really did laugh) — I never cease to appreciate a new example of “creative reasoning” ! )
Can we see what history has to show?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85OIBOSJTwg
Please don’t send any fiery replies my way, I have heard Mr. Williams speak and his facts seem to be accurate.
Todd Woods
History has to show what?
Free Market Capitalism didn’t free the slaves in this country. Last time I checked it took a civil war and the Thirteenth Amendment. Last time I checked it took active government interference to put an end to jim crow, segregation, and Klan terrorism that had kept slavery in place for a century after it was supposed to be gone.
But we are talking poverty rates and whether or not government can make a difference.
US poverty rates. Official tracking using a consistent measure (Census Bureau data) did not begin until the late 1950s. However, poverty levels during the Great Depression were estimated to be as high as 50%
WW II brought them down to 33% in 1945 and 20-25% during the 1950s.
Keep in mind that New Deal safety net programs were in place, WW II required lots and lots of government spending, and we had a booming post war economy with lots and lots of government investment in infrastructure, education, and research & development in technology. Poverty levels were 22% in 1960
1965 14%
1970 12.5%
1975 11%
1980 11% (1982/83 15%)
1985 13%
1990 13% (1991/92 15%)
1995 14%
2000 11%
2005 13%
2010 15%
(percentages rounded off)
Poverty levels track with economic downturns and with reductions in government spending and government poverty programs (beginning with the Reagan Administration)
Johnson’s War on Poverty was announced in January of 1964. The poverty rate in 1963 was 17.3%. It dropped to its lowest point of 11.1% in 1973 and has fluctuated between 11% and 15.2% ever since. The most successful anti poverty program has been Social Security which has reduced poverty among the elderly from over 50% in 1940 to just under 10% now.
Oh, and because your youtube begins with a clip of Martin Luther King, just a reminder. King was not a believer in the efficacy of the Free Market in ending discrimination or alleviating poverty. He was in Memphis when he was killed supporting a strike by city employees represented by AFSCME. I really wish all you conservatives would get your own dam icons. For a change
I clicked on the news story which had the following information:
25% of Iowa households have poverty level incomes
40% of Iowa children live in households with poverty level incomes.
Oh good god.
Poverty correlates with all kinds of problems. Like increased levels of crime, sickness, malnutrition, mental health issues, problems in school, substandard housing, frequent moves, unsupervised children, increased levels of drug and alcohol abuse, and on and on and on.
Poverty is a downward cycle that is extremely hard to break. Increased levels of poverty cost all of us. A lot.
And lots and lots of poverty seriously undermines economic development by lowering state revenues, undermining infrastructure support, diverting public money into dealing with all the problems associated with poverty, and driving the better educated, higher skilled workers out of the area along with the businesses that would hire these workers.
Republican objections to raising the minimum wage? Businesses won’t hire young people and will have fewer entry level jobs.
Oh foo
We’ve got three quarters of a century’s worth of data on the minimum wage. If businesses need the workers, they hire. Has nothing to do with minimum wage.