A stunning new poll conducted by Hart Research Associates finds that 63 percent of respondents support raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour over five years. A less ambitious proposal to raise the minimum wage to $12.50 an hour earns an even more overwhelming 75 percent support, including support from a majority of Republicans. The poll additional finds that 82 percent of respondents support indexing the minimum wage to inflation, while 71 percent of respondents favor eliminating the federal tip credit. The survey of 1002 adults was conducted January 5-7, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.
The federal minimum wage currently stands at $7.25 an hour, and at just $2.13 an hour for tipped employees.
Why Democrats aren’t flocking to this issue, I just don’t know. It’s a political no-brainer.
Why Democrats aren’t flocking to this issue, I just don’t know. It’s a political no-brainer.
Maybe because if someone ever asked the CBO, which now won’t have Elmendorf, to score the effects upon jobs, Dems would have a hard time spinning the results.
Last year, if you’ll recall, a proposed national minimum wage increase to $10.10 was determined by CBO to result in a likely range of job losses ranging up to 1,000,000.
Care to estimate how many Americans would lose their jobs if the wage were raised to $15? How about the upper end of the ‘likely range’ in that scenario?
Recall that polls showing 70+/-% in favor of a national $10.10 minimum wage became 57% opposed
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported last month that moving to a $10.10 minimum wage would increase the earnings of about 16.5-million low-wage workers, but also cause the loss of about 500,000 jobs.
Presented with that information, 57% of the 1,001 respondents said the trade-off was unacceptable. About a third — 34% — said it was acceptable.
http://articles.latimes.com/20.....l-20140312
when the poll respondents were informed about the job losses that would occur? Instead of nearly 70% support, there was only 34% support. Funny how things are different when people realize that it might be THEIR job that goes away when employers are forced to come up with substantially higher payroll.
Since the ’13-’14 debates about $9/10.10 wage levels, Senate control has flipped, and CBO’s leadership has changed.
At $9/hr people in Congress were moving toward an some sort of agreement – Susan Collins was right in the middle of it until Reid insisted on $10.10 and refused to allow amendment efforts. You could have had something. At $10.10/hr it became a dead issue.
Now you’ve got both Congressional houses held by the other side, and no chance at anything meaningful until at least 2017. You’ve got a $7.25 national minimum wage. You’ve got Van Hollen now gunning for middle-class tax cuts. You know, to try to get back some of those working people who abandoned Dems last Fall.
When House Democrats huddle in Philadelphia at the end of the month for their annual retreat, reflecting on the bruising election results of 2014 and plotting a strategy for not repeating the same mistakes in 2016 will likely be a key topic of discussion. Many members were disgruntled with a perceived lack of soul-searching and accountability among the Democratic leadership, and the caucus has generally been experiencing some angst over what needs to get done differently to pick up seats in two years and beyond.
http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/.....llen/?dcz=
Well played, Dems.
Liberals, don’t fall for Bob’s bullshit. A bad attempt to disenfranchise you from voting democrat, his hope that you’ll jump and abandon ship, that he wants you to believe is sinking.
Bob, your time would be more productive telling the GOP how loony they are.
The only reason the GOP can win an election is because of cheating, mot on popularity. They’ll never get the popular vote, so they need to constantly change the rules.
@ 2
Well, at least you didn’t allege it to be a ‘corporate lie’.
All I pointed out, ‘bagger, is the downside. Had Goldy addressed it, he wouldn’t have had to ask why Dems aren’t ‘flocking’ to it.
Don’t be a sheep, ‘baaaaaaahhhhhhhhgger. Learn to think a little different from the liberal flock every now and then.
They don’t flock to it because it’s not worth the political capital. The number of actual minimum wage eligible voters who cast ballots approaches zero, and spending capital on it gets you essentially nothing with active voters, even if they support it in the abstract.
In fact, it can be twisted around and used as a bludgeon in campaign ads aimed at the poor sap who does vote, who makes just slightly too much money to have this help him, and can be easily inflamed about how Joe Politician is doing something for everyone but him.
I’m telling you, structure it as an earned income tax credit and everyone gets on board. It’s there for the taking…
The flock, you mean the working class that is driven by the GOP fear and hate machine?
Ebola, Ebola
Be careful of what you wish for
leftiesrighties..Bob is “concerned” it will cost you jobs..
Be careful of what you wish for
“libbies”right wing dingies..Bob is really, really “concerned” it will cost you your jobs!
Be careful of what you wish for
“socialists”klownservatives..Bob (and Sarah “the quitter” Palin) are “severely concerned” it will move your jobs to Russia!
Be careful of what you wish for
“commies”right wing nuts..Bob is relieved that women can just barely choose in your state but he’s losing so much sleep about the jobs you’ll lose it’s spoiling his relocation plans to Galt’s Gulch.
This article provides interesting statistics on how many workers are paid $7.25 an hour or less, what industries they work in, and where they live. Not surprisingly, the highest concentration of ultra-low wages is in the South.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac.....imum-wage/
@1 ” … up to 1,000,000.”
Nice spin, Bob. The CBO mid-range projection was, as I recall, 500,000. While you’re at it, why don’t you tell us how many unpaid internships will be lost if employers have to pay those workers.
I won’t work for $7.25 an hour. Period. Ever. Nobody else should, either. Workers should just walk out on employers paying $7.25 an hour and never come back. No one’s work is worth so little. You’re worth at least that much just for showing up.
While we’re on the subject of employment, here’s an article from CBS News today titled, “How To Blow Your Job Interview.” Here are some of the bullshit rules you have to follow to not be kicked out of the workforce:
“Some hiring managers are very good at reading body language, and shared some no-nos that anyone looking for a job should remember during an interview. When asked about mistakes in body language that job candidates make, here’s what they said.
Not making eye contact: 65 percent
Not smiling: 36 percent
Playing with something on the table: 33 percent
Bad posture: 30 percent
Fidgeting too much: 29 percent
Crossing their arms over their chest: 26 percent
Touching their hair or face: 25 percent
Weak handshake: 22 percent
Too many hand gestures: 11 percent
Too-strong handshake: 7 percent”
And here’s the spin the CBS article put on it:
“To be fair, getting a job is hard work. Hiring a new employee requires four hours of face-to-face meetings on average, the owner of recruitment firm Babich & Associates wrote recently in Entrepreneur. It can be tough to say all the right things and maintain smiles and eye contact for that long. It’s so tough, in fact, that an entire industry has sprung up to help prep people for job interviews.”
Really? Did you notice there isn’t a fucking thing in here about the years you spent in college, your relevant work experience, and so on? Wha this article (and many others I’ve seen) says is you have to hire an interview coach to teach you how to play the game so you don’t blow your job prospects by shaking the interviewer’s hand too hard or not hard enough. That’s employers’ hiring criteria now? If it is, fuck ’em, why would anyone want to work for such anal assholes in the first place?
Not me. I’m totally unwilling to play these games. I went to college for 8 years. I have a double undergraduation major with a strong minor, half a dozen graduate school courses, a law degree, and 40 years of highly variegated work experience. If that isn’t enough to get me hired — if I’m going to be rejected for scratching an itch on my face or shifting in my chair to get more comfortable, then I don’t want to play the game, because it’s a shitty and dishonest and pointless game.
Employers of America, Roger Rabbit has a message for you: If this is what the hiring process has degenerated into, then I don’t need you, and you have nothing to offer me that I want badly enough to put up with your CRAP.
Besides, it’s a lot easier to just buy stocks, collect the dividends, and sleep in every day. And there’s no commuting hassles or gas expense.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ho.....interview/
It used to be most jobs weren’t worth the trouble you had to go through to show up and work. Now, most jobs aren’t worth the hoops you have to jump through to get the damn job. Fuck work! I don’t work anymore, and nobody else should, either. Let employers do the work themselves. It’s about time they did something useful and productive in return for all the money they’re taking out of the economy.
@ 11
@1 ” … up to 1,000,000.”
Nice spin, Bob. The CBO mid-range projection was, as I recall, 500,000.
You are absolutely correct, RR. And so am I, spin or not.
What do those two numbers – half a million and a million – have in common? They both fall within the likely range. I’m no more duty-bound to adhere to the mid-point of that range than Goldy is to mention – and he didn’t mention – that there might be a downside at all.
There have been previous HA exchanges in which it has been argued that the overall benefit to society justifies the job losses to some, and that is fine. However, if one wants to go to an extreme – more than doubling the national minimum wage – then someone making that argument will have to contend with probably at least a couple more million Americans losing jobs at the mid-point of that range, and perhaps several million jobs lost at the upper end.
See @4. Dems already have the liberal vote, as well as the votes of other demographics, locked in. No HA libbie is at risk for defection to the GOP , so ‘bagger @2 can rest easy on that one. Making this $15 argument doesn’t do tons for Dems, and they run a not-insubstantial risk if CBO’s scoring report suddenly spends more time talking about job losses, and there is more publicity of not just the mid-point of the likely range but the upper end as well. Again, CBO – along with the US Senate – has undergone changes at the top.
At SOTU Obama wanted $9/hr and there was some bipartisan background effort in Congress to do something about the wage level. Then it became $10.10 with no opportunity in the Senate for amendments, which killed any chance of an increase at any level. Then Dems had their asses handed to them last November.
With that recent historical background considered, what is the upside to Dems for narrowing the gap between the lowest-paid workers and the middle class? Making the shrinking middle class look more like the lowest employed class by raising the bottom doesn’t help get those lost blue-collar votes back.
RR, you only addressed one small part of what I pointed out @1, which is that when given information regarding the downside of a national minimum wage increase to $10.10/hr, 57% of poll respondents were opposed, and only 34% – barely a third – found the downside acceptable. Please tell me how I spun that.