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      The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009. This is indefensible | Hamilton Nolan

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      The minimum wage is a moral issue masquerading as an economic one. Stone-cold capitalism does not demand a minimum wage, any more than it demands child labor laws or workplace safety. Rather, we demand a minimum wage, due to the belief that there must be a floor on human dignity. The public debate on the issue should always happen on those terms, lest we allow it to slide into the insincere wasteland of “What’s best for small business,” where all ideas good for working people go to die.America’s federal minimum wage today sits at $7.25 an hour, unchanged since 2009. In that time we have been through an economic crash, a slow, decade-long recovery and another economic crash, and after all of that it is still legal to pay a full-time employee working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks less than $15,000 a year. Our nation’s billionaires have gained more than a trillion dollars in wealth in the past year, but there are full-time workers who have lived with the same poverty wage since before Barack Obama had any grey hair. Anyone who is not actively trying to raise the minimum wage is asserting that this sickening juxtaposition is OK. It’s not.When the Fight For $15 movement began demanding “$15 and a union” for fast food workers in 2012, it was viewed by even those sympathetic to it as a bit of a pipe dream. Now, as Democrats in Congress work to include a national $15 minimum wage in the pending coronavirus relief bill, that movement’s goals are closer to becoming a reality than they have ever been. Of course, that is not a completely happy story – one reason the number sounds more realistic today is because $15 is not worth what it was in 2012. If you want to grasp how hard the Fight For $15 has been, consider the case of Terrence Wise, its single most famous rank and file leader. He has been profiled in countless media outlets. He has traveled the country for marches and rallies. He has even visited the White House to appear with President Obama. And after all of that, he makes $14 an hour working at McDonald’s. If his movement succeeds, he is still in line for a raise. There is not a billionaire in the world who works as hard as a full-time fast food workerEven if the Democrats succeed on this issue, either in the relief bill or with the standalone “Raise the Wage Act” that has also been introduced in Congress, it could take until 2025 before the $15 minimum wage is fully phased in. Meanwhile, we know that if the minimum wage had kept up with rising worker productivity over the past 50 years, it would be more than $24 an hour today. A victory will not really be a victory. It just puts us less far behind.To the extent that there is any genuine opposition to raising the minimum wage on economic grounds – rather than on the pure winner-take-all greed of the investor class, which is in fact what drives the vast majority of opposition to working people making more money – it is misplaced. Mainstream economists now recognize that raising the minimum wage does not in fact have the automatic job-destroying effect that Econ 101 textbooks assumed. Its biggest effect is making it slightly less miserable to be someone who works a job that society has deemed to be both wholly necessary and also unworthy of respect.It is really not that hard to understand why America has a class war. It is because the rich have chosen it. The rest of us, and in particular the poor, are just being swept along in the storm. No issue crystallizes the many lies behind the class war like minimum wage. It affects not some mythical lazy people without the drive to succeed, but rather the people who work harder than anyone, in the jobs that nobody else wants, but which we all know must get done. There is not a billionaire in the world who works as hard as a full-time fast food worker. The morality tale at the heart of the minimum wage debate is not about a benevolent society deciding how much of a kindly helping hand it will extend to those at the bottom of the economic ladder; it is actually about a merciless, cutthroat society arranged to funnel wealth upwards deciding how far down it can press the weakest parts of the labor force before they break. One thing that all opponents of a higher minimum wage have in common is that they would never dream of valuing their own time as cheaply as they think millions of other, lesser people should be forced to.Democrats must force the $15 wage through Congress while they control it, even if that means they all have to gang up on Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the lunchroom. But even more important, they have to recognize that they have a lot of catching up to do. What morality really demands is not a minimum wage, but a living wage. The Fight For $25 begins on the day after the current battle is won. More

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      Coronavirus sharpens America's already stark economic inequalities

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      [embedded content]
      Walter Almendarez doubts there will be any presents beneath his artificial Christmas tree – not for his daughter, his nephews or anyone else.
      Back in March, Almendarez reread an email over and over again, trying to process the news that he had just been let go from Los Angeles’s Chateau Marmont, where he had worked for over two decades. He was among more than 200 people fired by the swanky hotel in one fell swoop.
      “It was just terrible, the way they did it,” he said.
      Widespread local shutdowns made finding a new job practically impossible, and soon, he used up his 401(k) retirement savings just trying to pay the bills.
      Like Almendarez, tens of millions of people across America are struggling to make ends meet in an economy devastated by the impact of efforts to control the coronavirus pandemic. Yet at the same time millions of other Americans are enjoying an end-of-year spending spree. The National Retail Federation is projecting that holiday sales will jump between 3.6 and 5.2% this year compared with 2019, with consumers collectively spending well over $750bn.
      Those startling discrepancies represent a stark example of how the pandemic has exacerbated America’s already chronic inequalities, amid a widespread awakening to the country’s deep-rooted problems with economic and racial injustice.
      “It is definitely something that has increased disparities between white and Black, between those well-off and less well-off – high wage, low wage. All of those things have been absolutely pulling apart,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
      During the pandemic, 651 billionaires have accrued more than $1tn in additional wealth – enough to send every American a $3,000 check and then some. But so far, that prosperity has not trickled down to 26.1 million US workers, who in November were still wrestling with direct impacts from the economic downturn, including unemployment and drops in pay.
      Those hardships have disproportionately fallen on Black and brown people, who were less likely to be able to work from home even pre-pandemic. In the third quarter of 2020, the unemployment rates for Black people and Latinos were 13.2% and 11.2% respectively, compared with 7.9% for white people.
      The slowdown has also caused a “shecession” for women, especially women of color, who have been overburdened with caretaking responsibilities while simultaneously watching their industries flounder.
      As Americans struggle to pay rent or buy food, “the worst suffering” people can experience “could really be heading for us as we go into the end of the year”, warned Amanda Fischer, policy director at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a research and grant-making non-profit.
      Early into the pandemic, Congress’s Cares Act, which provided $2.2tn in coronavirus aid, proved “one of the most effective anti-poverty tools we’ve seen in American history”, Fischer said. But those provisions were only temporary, and once they vanished, vehicles lined up outside food banks while renters fell months behind on their bills.
      Then, when the US economy started to rebound, it did so through a “K-shaped” recovery, benefiting the rich and leaving behind almost everyone else. The stock market – where about 80% of wealth has historically been owned by the top 10% of households – continued to surge, and CEOs projected widespread confidence in the economy, despite many of them expecting to reduce their workforce and let wages stagnate.
      High earners also fared well, with the employment rate for those making over $60,000 eventually eclipsing what it had been near the beginning of 2020, according to not-for-profit organization Opportunity Insights. More

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      The US is on ‘inequality autopilot’ – how can Biden's treasury pick help change course?

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      Teresa Marez has never heard of Janet Yellen, likely to be the next treasury secretary of the United States. But she and millions of other Americans have a lot riding on the decisions Yellen will make if and when she is confirmed next year.The coronavirus has upended Marez’s life. Her savings are almost exhausted and she is worried about her unemployment benefits, which run out next week. “It’s so hard. It’s just such a mess,” said the mother of two in San Antonio, Texas. “We just need Congress to make a decision,” Marez said. “As long as they are in limbo, we are in limbo.”Marez, 45, is one of the millions of Americans still suffering from the economic devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic and whose plight will be the top priority of incoming president Joe Biden and his treasury secretary pick.The situation is dire. About 20 million Americans are currently unemployed. For many hunger has become a major issue. Government figures show that the week before Thanksgiving – America’s biggest feast day – 5.6m households struggled to put enough food on the table. Huge, haunting lines have formed at food banks across the country and years of neglect and underfunding of the systems to help those in need have worsened their plight.Last week Marez spent three and a half hours on hold waiting to speak with someone at a Texas unemployment office to hear whether she would get a new form of unemployment when her existing funds expire. The answer was a noncommittal maybe. “Three and a half hours on hold in mid-morning just to get that answer,” she said.According to the Century Foundation, 12 million Americans will be cut off from their jobless benefits on 26 December. A disproportionate number of those people will be women and Latino, like Marez, or Black and young, the groups hardest hit by the economic downturn. More

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      Fight for $15 minimum wage boosted in Florida but Biden faces tough task

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      It has been a long time coming but Hector Rivera is hopeful that one day soon he will be able to take a day off work. The 61-year-old works as a janitor in Miami, Florida, making just over $9 an hour. Because the pay is so low, Rivera works two janitorial jobs and scrambles to find gig jobs on the weekends in order to cover his rent and bills every month.“Trying to survive on this salary is extremely difficult because I’m constantly looking for more work,” said Rivera, a Dominican and one of the millions of Latino and Black Americans who are disproportionately represented in the low-wage sector.On 3 November Rivera, and the millions of Americans fighting for a raise for low-wage workers, were given a boost when Florida passed a resolution to increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour.Raising the minimum wage was a central plank of Joe Biden’s election campaign and Florida’s vote came even as the state voted for Donald Trump. But while workers and activists are cheering the victory, the road ahead for Biden and a raise in the minimum wage looks tough.It’s been eight years since fast-food workers walked off their jobs in New York City and began calling for a $15 minimum wage. In that time the Fight for $15 movement grew to be the largest protest movement for low-wage workers in US history and has won some important victories.Florida is the first state in the south and the eighth state overall to adopt such a measure. And some big corporations including Amazon, Target and Walt Disney have raised, or promised to raise, their minimum wages to $15.After Biden’s win, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a longtime supporter of the movement, urged the incoming Biden administration to use all the “tools in their toolbox” to push a raise through and Biden has promised to back unions who are also pushing hard for a statewide raise for low-wage workers.Rivera was among the low-wage workers who got involved with a union organizing drive for change at his workplace with Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ. The Florida ballot, known as amendment two, will gradually increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026 from its current minimum wage set at $8.56 an hour.“With amendment two passing, I’ll be able to spend more time with my family,” said Rivera, who recently spent 35 hours working straight without any sleep. “Hopefully now I’ll be able to take a day off,” Rivera added. “The only way we can live a decent life here in Miami is if they raise our wages because everything is expensive. It’s impossible to save money without making more.”A raise has broad support in the US, even in Republican states. Over 60% of Florida voters approved the measure. In Louisiana, another Republican state where the minimum wage is just $7.25 an hour, a Louisiana State University poll 59% of residents support raising it to $15.Nor is there much evidence that a raise would be bad for business. A UC Berkeley report published in July 2019 found even low-wage areas in the US can afford a $15 minimum wage, which would reduce poverty and have no adverse effects, such as job losses. Most economic research on the subject has demonstrated little to no negative consequences to employment while providing positive gains for the low-wage workforce. The last time Florida increased its state minimum wage in 2004, unemployment dropped and 200,000 jobs were added the following year. More

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      Extra $600 in jobless pay offers many a lifeline – but will it be renewed?

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      Republicans, including the president, have opposed the additional funds. But their expiration could bring ‘incredible suffering’ Coronavirus – latest US updates Coronavirus – latest global updates People wait in line to get care packages with food donations from the Food Bank for New York City in Brooklyn on 15 May. Photograph: Alba Vigaray/EPA James Phillips […] More