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Poverty in the midst of plenty exists because many working people simply don’t make very much money. This is possible because the minimum wage that businesses must pay is low: only $7.25 per hour in the United States in 2016 (although it is higher in some states and cities). At that rate, a person working full-time for a whole year, with no vacations or holidays, earns about $15,000—which is below the poverty line for a family of two, let alone a family of four.

A minimum-wage employee is poor enough to qualify for food stamps and, in most states, Medicaid. Adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum is roughly the same as in the 1960s and 1970s, despite significant increases in average living standards over that period.

At first glance, it seems that raising the minimum wage would be a good way to combat poverty.

Raising the federal minimum wage, which currently stands at $7.25, has become a flashpoint among Democrats, many of whom rightly feel the issue demands urgent action.

Moderates argued that they wanted a slower implementation of a higher wage. And some, such as Sen. Joe Manchin, also wanted a smaller increase to the minimum wage.

The recent attempt to raise the minimum wage through budget reconciliation misses a key point from the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the first bill to establish a minimum wage: compromise.

Low-wage workers in Florida’s sprawling service economy may soon find themselves on the path to a $15 minimum wage, thanks to one of the most far-reaching referendums in the country this year.

Amendment 2: a proposal to raise the statewide wage floor from its current $8.56 an hour to $15 an hour by 2026.

state’s food and hospitality industries, which say they can’t sustain the higher labor costs on top of lost revenue due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Democrats’ failure to pass a minimum-wage increase could spur bipartisan negotiations to bridge the big gap between the party’s progressive wing, its centrists and Republican senators on raising workers’ pay.

President Biden called on Congress to raise the wage to $15 an hour by 2025, a key demand of progressives, and House Democrats included the proposal in the version of the legislation they initially passed. But the proposal fell apart in the Senate, where centrist Democrats opposed it and special procedural rules forbid its inclusion in the relief package.

“It seems to me the universal agreement among not just Democrats, but Republicans who have recently introduced bills to raise the minimum wage, suggests that there’s broad bipartisan agreement,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.) recently. “So I do think there’s room for compromise.”

It started in 2012 with a group of protesters outside a McDonald’s demanding a $15 minimum wage — an idea that even many liberal lawmakers considered outlandish. In the years since, their fight has gained traction across the country, including in conservative states with low union membership and generally weak labor laws.

In 27 of these places, the pay floor will reach or exceed $15 an hour, according to a report released on Thursday by the National Employment Law Project, which supports minimum-wage increases.

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has endorsed $15 an hour at the federal level and other changes sought by labor groups, like ending the practice of a lower minimum wage for workers like restaurant workers who receive tips.

there are strong reasons to believe that the kind of minimum wage increase the president is proposing would have overwhelmingly positive effects.

the great preponderance of the evidence from these natural experiments points to little if any negative effect of minimum wage increases on employment.

Why is this true? That’s a subject of continuing research, but one theme in all the explanations is that workers aren’t bushels of wheat or even Manhattan apartments; they’re human beings, and the human relationships involved in hiring and firing are inevitably more complex than markets for mere commodities. And one byproduct of this human complexity seems to be that modest increases in wages for the least-paid don’t necessarily reduce the number of jobs.

One of the most interesting recent political and policy developments is the involvement of Ron Unz in a major effort on behalf of a referendum to raise California’s minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2016.

The American Conservative (he served as publisher until recently), favor an increase in the minimum wage,

“We have all these low-wage workers who are getting $7.50, $8, or $9 an hour, and because they earn such small wages, the government subsidizes them with billions or tens of billions of dollars of social-welfare spending that comes from the taxpayer. It’s a classic example of businesses privatizing the benefits of their workers while socializing the costs

Conservatives — with the backing, I have to admit, of many economists — normally argue that the market for labor is like the market for anything else. The law of supply and demand, they say, determines the level of wages, and the invisible hand of the market will punish anyone who tries to defy this law.

Specifically, this view implies that any attempt to push up wages will either fail or have bad consequences. Setting a minimum wage, it’s claimed, will reduce employment and create a labor surplus, the same way attempts to put floors under the prices of agricultural commodities used to lead to butter mountains, wine lakes and so on

Pressuring employers to pay more, or encouraging workers to organize into unions, will have the same effect.

Though raising the minimum wage is supported by two thirds of Americans, corporate interests have successfully framed the issue as a give-and-take between better wages and fewer jobs.

Their argument was simple: this wasn't a debate about their needs versus the needs of their employers. It was about what kind of society we wanted to be.

During the 1930's, the Social Gospel was a popular religious social reform movement in America and offered a moral framing for many of the reforms of the New Deal. Franklin D. Roosevelt adopted this moral argument when he declared that "no business which depends for its existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country."

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro just increased the nation's minimum wage by 40%.

inflation is expected to soar by nearly 500% this year and 1,660% next year

Venezuela's minimum wage, including food subsidies, is rising to 90,812 bolivars a month.

But a union drive at one of its warehouses in Alabama has the retailer doing a political balancing act: staying on the good side of Washington’s Democratic leaders while squashing an organizing effort that President Biden has signaled his support for.

Amazon workers in Bessemer, Ala., have been voting for weeks on whether to form a union. The voting ends Monday. Approval would be a first for Amazon workers in the United States and could energize the labor movement across the country.Labor organizers have tapped into dissatisfaction with working conditions in the warehouse, saying Amazon’s pursuit of efficiency and profits makes the conditions harsh for workers.

Some of the company’s critics are also using its resistance to the union push to argue that Amazon should not be trusted on other issues, like climate change and the federal minimum wage.

While the final Senate bill has not been released yet, lawmakers are expected to make two major changes -- narrowing eligibility for the stimulus checks and nixing an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The bulk of the Senate legislation will, however, largely mirror the $1.9 trillion package approved by the House and laid out by President Joe Biden in January.

Senate Democratic leaders are facing more hurdles to advancing the legislation since the party can't afford to lose a single member thanks to the 50-50 split in the chamber. Plus, they must adhere to the strict rules of reconciliation, which they are using to approve the bill without any Republican support.

As life in the United States tiptoes back toward something resembling Before Times, many employers are facing an unexpected problem: they can't hire the workers they need. Despite unemployment numbers in the millions, some 8.1 million job vacancies remain. This problem is concentrated among America's low-wage workforce, hitting restaurants, warehouses, manufacturers and the service industry.

"We should not be in the business of creating lucrative government dependency that makes it more beneficial to stay unemployed rather than return to work," Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas, who is leading the Senate charge to cut off the benefit, wrote in the Kansas City Business Journal.

In reality, researchers have found that the unemployment benefit's impact on the labor shortage is fairly small.

A Florida ballot initiative that will gradually raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 per hour is projected to pass, according to The Associated Press. 

Amendment 2, needed at least 60% approval to pass under the state constitution. 

wage of $8.56 will rise to $10 next year. It will increase $1 each year thereafter until it hits $15 in 2026. After that, it will adjust annually according to an inflation index.

Mr. Price surprised his 120-person staff by announcing that he planned over the next three years to raise the salary of even the lowest-paid clerk, customer service representative and salesman to a minimum of $70,000.

Under a financial overhaul passed by Congress in 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission was supposed to require all publicly held companies to disclose the ratio of C.E.O. pay to the median pay of all other employees, but it has so far failed to put it in effect. Corporate executives have vigorously opposed the idea, complaining it would be cumbersome and costly to implement.

his unusual proposal does speak to an economic issue that has captured national attention: The disparity between the soaring pay of chief executives and that of their employees.

Yaneth Ochoa, a Colombian woman who lives in Queens, was glad to find a job cleaning the subway last summer, as demolition jobs had dried up during the pandemic.

But as trains rolled into the Jamaica-179 Street Station in Queens, she learned she would not just be wiping down cars to remove traces of the coronavirus.

Like workers at end-of-line stations all over New York City, Ms. Ochoa, 30, was expected to scrub away grime, sputum and even human excrement, she said, without adequate training or special equipment.

The Biden administration is trying to persuade other nations to approve a global minimum tax as it works to curb profit shifting and raise corporate taxes in the United States.

Such a pact has been elusive for years, as countries like Ireland sought to keep taxes as low as possible in order to attract global investment. But the Biden administration has made securing a global minimum tax a priority as it looks to raise corporate taxes domestically to help pay for a sweeping expansion of the nation’s infrastructure.

She scrapped a Trump administration proposal that would have essentially allowed American technology companies to opt out of new global digital tax rules. And last month, the Treasury Department said it would support a global minimum tax of at least 15 percent, which was lower than the 21 percent that other countries believed the United States was demanding.

President Joe Biden on Friday proposed a $6 trillion budget for fiscal year 2022, laying out details of a proposed dramatic increase in federal spending that serves as the underpinning of an economic agenda that seeks to transform the American economy as the country emerges from dual public health and economic crises.

The budget proposal, which is an opening bid in negotiations with Congress and is expected to change before being signed into law, calls for the most sustained period of spending in more than half a century. The White House budget serves more as a marker of administration priorities than a policy blueprint destined to be signed into law. It would invest heavily in Biden's top priority areas including infrastructure, education, research, public health, paid family leave and childcare.

The proposal includes the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan, the $4 trillion infrastructure, jobs and economic proposal that the President had previously laid out and is negotiating with lawmakers. It also outlines additional funds to launch a new health research agency to focus on diseases like cancer, and funds to address gun violence, tackle the climate crisis, help end homelessness and curb the opioid epidemic.

The future of the Biden presidency, the terrain of the midterm elections and the fate of the Republican Party will all be shaped by a series of early battles unfolding on Capitol Hill.

The White House is standing firm behind Neera Tanden, its pick for budget director, though her nomination seems doomed. Aides to Joe Biden know this first big fight will help set the terms of the new President's relationship with Congress. Other bitter confirmation hearings are turning into early de-facto fights on the great issues of the Biden era, like climate change and expanding access to health care.

Republicans are meanwhile beginning to mobilize against Biden's $1.9 trillion Covid rescue package in the hope of billing it as an example of massive liberal overreach and winning a political payoff.

Both Apple’s patent and Amazon’s are incredibly broad. And they give the publisher and bookstore a lot of control over what would happen — including, possibly, providing for a cut of each resale.But what about the one-penny problem? These patents also give the publisher or bookstore the right to impose a minimum price for reselling an e-book. That limit could drop over time, as Apple’s patent makes clear: “As another example, all digital movies must be sold for a minimum of $10 until six months after their respective original purchase date. After the six month period, all digital movies must be sold for a minimum of $5.”Both proposals suggest that publishers could also limit the number of times a digital item can be resold: “A threshold may limit how many times a used digital object may be permissibly moved to another personalized data store, how many downloads (if any) may occur before transfer is restricted, etc.,” says Amazon’s patent. “These thresholds help to maintain scarcity of digital objects in the marketplace.”