Free Republic

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn says he will live on $79 this week.. in a showcase for his call to raise the state’s minimum wage to a nice round ten dollars per hour… and he thinks that will help his campaign. Now, we can certainly grant that it’s a clever bit of showmanship – a governor being paid $177,000/year can hire an accountant to estimate the after-tax, after-housing funds of a “typical minimum wage worker” and then profess to be living on that amount for a week. He can hope that it showcases the need he imagines for poor people to...

President Barack Obama says he’ll press Congress to raise the minimum wage in the same way he courted his wife — never taking no for an answer. Obama brought a buoyant Labor Day message to Wisconsin, telling union members on Monday that he sees, quote, “engines are revving a little louder” in an economy coming back from a near-depression five years ago. Now, he says, quote, “America deserves a raise.” He promises his administration will keep pushing for one. Obama told the crowd to great applause that he would join a union for job security.

Op-Ed Hiking L.A.'s Minimum Wage Is A No-Brainer Minimum wage Fast food workers protest low pay, demanding a $15/hour minimum wage outside during a two-day nationwide strike. (Los Angeles Times) By ELI BROAD Raising the minimum wage isn't just good for workers: It's good for business Could you support your family in Los Angeles on the current minimum wage? Raising L.A.'s minimum wage will be a win all around Of all major cities in the country, Los Angeles has the highest percentage of population living in poverty. After decades of slow job growth and stagnant wages, 28% of Angelenos —...

By REBECCA KAPLAN CBS NEWS September 1, 2014 At Labor Day Event, Obama Pushes GOP To Raise Minimum Wage In the spirit of Labor Day, Obama promotes boosting minimum wage President Obama used a Labor Day event to tout economic gains and chide Republicans for not joining him in promoting policies he says will help working Americans, his latest push on a campaign-year issues that Democrats hope will boost their support at the polls this fall. Mr. Obama traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin Monday to speak at Laborfest, an event he visited in 2008 during his first presidential campaign. Despite a...

MILWAUKEE (AP) - President Barack Obama renewed his push for Congress to raise the minimum wage Monday in a buoyant accounting of the economy's "revving" performance, delivered on behalf of Democrats opening their fall campaigns for the midterm congressional elections. "America deserves a raise," he told a union crowd in Milwaukee, vowing to keep a hard sell on Congress in much the way he once courted his wife. "I just wore her down," he cracked. Timing his push to Labor Day, the traditional start of the autumn campaign, Obama aggressively drew attention to recent economic gains, setting aside past caution...

McDonald’s, Wendy’s and other fast-food restaurants are expected to be targeted with acts of civil disobedience that could lead to arrests Thursday as labor organizers escalate their campaign to unionize the industry’s workers. Kendall Fells, an organizing director for Fast Food Forward, said in an interview that workers in a couple of dozen cities were trained to peacefully engage in civil disobedience ahead of this week’s planned protests. Fells declined to say what exactly is in store for the protests in around 150 U.S. cities. But workers involved in the movement recently cited sit-ins as an example of strategies they...

President Barack Obama renewed his push for Congress to raise the minimum wage Monday in a buoyant accounting of the economy’s “revving” performance, delivered on behalf of Democrats opening their fall campaigns for the midterm congressional elections. “America deserves a raise,” he told a union crowd in Milwaukee, vowing to keep a hard sell on Congress in much the way he once courted his wife. “I just wore her down,” he cracked. Timing his push to Labor Day, the traditional start of the autumn campaign, Obama aggressively drew attention to recent economic gains, setting aside past caution on that subject....

President Barack Obama is asking Americans this Labor Day to think about the rights and benefits that people often take for granted. […] Obama says to strengthen the modern middle class, the U.S. must raise its minimum wage. He says states and businesses have raised wages already and Congress should, too. …

The misguided attempt to increase the minimum wage can almost be passed off as institutionalized economic illiteracy. Many people, however, have argued that it’s more than simple ignorance that drives the Left to ignore fiscal sanity and push for a $15 per hour burger-flipping wage. Well, if the latest attempt to institute mandated-minimum-pay illustrates anything, it shows that the Left isn’t that fond of the effort/reward relationship of hard work. Labor groups are now aiming to snuff out the system of tipping servers because… well… because it’s “unfair”.There is a movement to bump the minimum wage for tipped servers (often...

One of the dividing lines between liberals and conservatives has always been the understanding of how economics works. Conservatives know how economics works; the force of supply and demand as well the true value of work. Liberals are like children who see the last twenty dollar bill in their mom’s wallet and say “Yippee, we’re rich! Let’s go to McDonald’s.” Last week the child-like liberals dropped their “I’m-so-intelligent-because-I’m-on-television” masks and let us see how dumb they really are. Led down the path of stupid is as stupid says, Savannah Guthrie reported that a Minnesota restaurant has added a new line...

A Minnesota café is stirring up controversy by adding a 35¢ “minimum wage fee.” Minnesota implemented a minimum wage hike from $7.25 to $8 on Aug. 1, so Oasis Café owner Craig Beemer calculated what it would cost per ticket to accommodate the increase. …

This is currently the most-read story on the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s web site: “Stillwater cafe faces heat for adding ‘minimum wage fee’ to tab.” Minnesota’s Democratic legislature recently voted to raise the state’s minimum wage to $8 an hour, 75 cents more than the federal level. Naturally, that increase is leading to higher prices: A small cafe in Stillwater has thrown itself into the big battle over Minnesota’s minimum wage increases, inundating the cafe with dozens of phone calls and online comments this week after it tacked on a 35-cent fee to meal tabs. Oasis Cafe owner Craig Beemer said...

A small cafe in Stillwater has thrown itself into the big battle over Minnesota’s minimum wage increases, inundating the cafe with dozens of phone calls and online comments this week after it tacked on a 35-cent fee to meal tabs. Oasis Cafe owner Craig Beemer said the fee is needed to offset the 75-cent wage hike that took effect Aug. 1, the first time Minnesota’s minimum wage has increased in a decade. Even with only half a dozen servers, Beemer says it will cost him $10,000 more a year to pay servers $8 an hour instead of the federal rate...

Some have said that we are living in a post-industrial era, while others have said that we are living in a post-racial era. But growing evidence suggests that we are living in a post-thinking era. Many people in Europe and the Western Hemisphere are staging angry protests against Israel's military action in Gaza. One of the talking points against Israel is that far more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli military attacks than the number of Israeli civilians killed by the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel that started this latest military conflict. Are these protesters aware that vastly more...

McDonald's is coming under intensifying pressure for labor practices at its U.S. restaurants. The National Labor Relations Board said Tuesday that the world's biggest hamburger chain could be named as a joint employer in several complaints regarding worker rights at franchise-owned restaurants. The decision is pivotal because it could expose McDonald's Corp. to liability for management practices in those locations. It also comes as protests for higher pay have captured national attention, with labor groups calling for pay of $15 an hour and the right to unionize. Organizers had been pushing to get McDonald's named as a joint employer at...

Progressive group Think Progress has been putting on a bit of poverty theater over on Twitter. If you look up #livethewage you’ll find a number of progressive Congressmen pretending to live on $77 worth of groceries for an entire week. It’s all theater, meant to shock people into supporting an increased minimum wage. Thus sardines and saltine crackers are a regular purchase, for no other reason than they’re meant to shock us. In reality, these Congressmen shock us by their inability to budget or shop sales. In one case, Rep. Barbara Lee budgeted $5 for toothpaste. My wife can buy...

VILLA PARK, Ill. — Comparing their campaign to the civil rights movement, fast food workers from across the country voted today to escalate their efforts for $15-an-hour pay and union membership to include nonviolent civil disobedience. More than 1,300 workers gathered in a convention in center in suburban Chicago to discuss the future of a campaign that has spread to dozens of cities in less than two years. Wearing T-shirts that said “Fight for $15” and “We Are Worth More,” the workers cheered loudly and said they would win if they stuck together. “People are just fed up,” said Cindy...

Last weekend, Governor Palin gave a measured and thoughtful speech at the Western Conservative Summit, speaking primarily in the tone of the “forgotten man”–”the hard working middle class man who can’t catch a break”. She also used a masterful analogy of the “calloused hand that built America”. What a stark contrast between an open hand calloused from hard work and the clenched fist of socialism. What a stark contrast, too, between Governor Palin’s speech that hit a tone that resonates with middle class America and the tonedeafness and lack of self-awareness of Washington. Take, for example, the Left’s newest pivot...

But the state-by-state hiring data, released Friday by the Labor Department, provides ammunition to those who disagree. Economists who support a higher minimum say the figures are encouraging, though they acknowledge they don't establish a cause and effect. There are many possible reasons hiring might accelerate in a particular state. "It raises serious questions about the claims that a raise in the minimum wage is a jobs disaster," said John Schmitt, a senior economist at the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research. The job data "isn't definitive," he added, but is "probably a reasonable first cut at what's going...