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President-elect Joe Biden's newly unveiled stimulus plan includes a federal minimum wage increase to $15 an hour, although the measure is likely to face pushback in Congress. Currently set at $7.25 an hour, Biden moved to nearly double the country's minimum wage in his $1.9 trillion economic relief package. The plan would also include the elimination of separate minimum-wage thresholds for workers who receive tips and workers with disabilities — a statement that received wide support due to its inclusivity of all workers. "No one working 40 hours a week should live below the poverty line," Biden said in a...

A new minimum wage increase will take effect in Colorado on New Year’s Day, bringing wages to $12.32 an hour, or $9.30 for tipped workers. The 2.7% statewide increase is based on language in the Colorado Constitution, which mandates annual inflation adjustments based on the consumer price index. Colorado voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2016 enshrining the annual wage increase in the state’s governing document.

Twenty states are raising their minimum wage rates — some by pennies, others by a dollar or more — as part of previously-scheduled efforts to adjust for cost-of-living gains or to ratchet up toward goals like $15-an-hour minimum pay.In New Mexico, the minimum wage will increase to $10.50, up $1.50 from the current $9 wage. And in California, the rate for employers with 26 workers or more will rise from $13 to $14 an hour, the highest state-wide baseline in the country. In Minnesota, the gain is just 8 cents, to a $10.08 hourly rate for large employers.

Despite an unemployment rate of ten percent and about one-third of small businesses already shuttered as a result of his coronavirus lockdowns, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is apparently unsatisfied in his efforts in the state. So he’s decided to go ahead with a planned minimum wage hike.That’s OK. All business people are rich, aren’t they?Reason:The New York Department of Labor announced Wednesday that it will move forward with plans to hike the state’s minimum wage on December 31. Under the state’s phased-in minimum wage increase that started in 2016, businesses in New York City are already required to pay...

A Democratic Georgia state legislator tweeted that she did not know that state laws determine minimum wage requirements across the country. "How does that even work?!" Georgia state Rep. Dar'shun (Klingon name?) Kendrick tweeted Thursday night after President Donald Trump said he prefers to leave minimum wage laws to individual states. Twenty-nine states, as well as four territories and Washington, D.C., have already implemented minimum wages higher than the federally-mandated $7.25 per hour. Georgia is one of 19 states that have not yet raised their hourly minimum pay. After Democratic nominee Joe Biden said he'd raise the federal minimum wage...

China Joe Biden had another gaffe filled day on Friday during his appearances to small groups of supporters in Nevada. Biden was laughed at when he told supporters to sit down on the ground in their safety circle. Then later during a speech to a few supporters in Las Vegas, Nevada Joe Biden called for $15 million minimum wage.

During the second half of the Progressive Era, beginning roughly in 1908, progressive economists and their reform allies achieved many statutory victories, including state laws that regulated working conditions, banned child labor, instituted “mothers’ pensions,” capped working hours and, the sine qua non, fixed minimum wages. … Progressive economists, like their neoclassical critics, believed that binding minimum wages would cause job losses. However, the progressive economists also believed that the job loss induced by minimum wages was a social benefit, as it performed the eugenic service ridding the labor force of the “unemployable.” Sidney and Beatrice Webb (1897 [1920], p....

Most of you are likely familiar with the city of Geneva, Switzerland. It’s famous for being the home of the United Nations and some of the world’s most lucrative (and secretive) banks, as well as the birthplace of the Geneva Convention. One other fact is that it’s among the most expensive places to live on the planet. As a result, it’s rather hard to get along there if you’re not part of the fabulously wealthy set. But now they’ve come up with a solution to that issue and it’s one that was probably predictable given Switzerland’s socialist leanings. They’re...

... Take Mr. Biden’s stance on the federal minimum wage, which he wants to increase to $15 an hour from $7.25. Why transfer income to low-wage workers as opposed to poor people generally? Mr. Biden has ignored the question. But even if you’re laser-focused on raising wages, there are better alternatives. The Earned Income Tax Credit increases after-tax wages and gives businesses an incentive to hire more employees—an incentive the minimum wage gets backward. The EITC also allows workers the flexibility to negotiate with employers, accepting a lower wage in exchange for more-flexible hours or better conditions. The minimum wage...

One of the world’s richest cities is instituting a minimum wage which proponents say is only relatively sumptuous. Geneva, which by most metrics ranks in the top five for the globe’s priciest places to live, has approved a minimum wage which would be considered lavish elsewhere but is intended to just get food on the table for its poorest workers. The Swiss city voted in a two-thirds majority Sunday to introduce a minimum wage of 23 Swiss francs ($25) an hour for a 41-hour workweek, CNBC reported. That adds up to somewhere in the range of $4,100 a month, or...

Now is the worst possible time for a 75% increase in Florida’s minimum wage. Florida’s unemployment rate was 11.3% in July, the latest monthly statistics provided by the Department of Economic Opportunity. According to a Florida State University survey released in June, one-in-six state businesses have closed for good due to COVID-19. The state’s restaurant, retail and tourism industries, which employ an overwhelming number of entry-level workers and operate on razor-thin profit margins, have been hit particularly hard by COVID-19 as people stay home and have less disposable income. Everyone wants to help 'entry-level' employees, but there are better alternatives...

During an interview with the Fox Business Network on Wednesday, President Trump declined to criticize states and the District of Columbia for their recent raises to their local minimum wages, said that he will issue a statement in the next couple of weeks on the minimum wage. Trump also stated that he feels differently from “a lot of people” on the issue of the minimum wage and that includes some members of his own party, and thinks he will “have a very positive statement on minimum wage.”

Sen. Mitt Romney has proposed raising the wages of restaurant employees and other essential workers by $12 an hour through July as a way of raising their compensation above what they could collect in unemployment benefits and other forms of relief. Under the Utah Republican’s Patriot Pay Plan, employers would eat $3 of the increase, with the rest generated from a federal tax credit. For employees earning no more than $50,000 on an annualized basis, employers would get a refundable tax credit equal to $9 an hour, up to a maximum of $1,440 a month per employee.

WASHINGTON - Former Vice President Joe Biden Monday called for an immediate $13 minimum wage increase for essential workers and criticized President Trump for viewing these front-liners as “disposable” amid the coronavirus pandemic. Speaking at a virtual town hall with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the apparent Democratic nominee proposed giving employees required to work through the public health crisis - many of whom are minorities and are working in a “war zone” - a $13 minimum wage increase on top of their current salaries to ensure that they can sustain their families, especially if they were...

If your job is working at a restaurant flipping burgers you may soon find yourself replaced by a robot that works for only $3 an hour. The new robot named Flippy developed by Miso Robotics costs less to employ than a minimum-wage worker. Currently, Miso Robotics charges an up-front fee of between $20,000 and $30,000 to install Flippy into restaurants. The LA Times reports: “As a result, Miso can offer Flippys to fast-food restaurant owners for an estimated $2,000 per month on a subscription basis, breaking down to about $3 per hour. (The actual cost will depend on customers’ specific...

A Vermont bill that proposed increasing the state’s hourly minimum wage was vetoed Feb. 10, 2020, by Gov. Phil Scott (R). The measure (S. 23) proposed raising the minimum wage to $11.75 from $10.96 on Jan. 1, 2021, and to $12.55 on Jan. 1, 2022. Scott, in statement, said an analysis showed that a higher minimum wage would lead to job losses, decreased employee hours, and increased costs for goods and services. To override the veto, a two-thirds majority vote is needed in both legislative chambers, each of which has a Democratic majority.

The introduction of a nationwide minimum wage in Germany has spurred a growth in worker productivity, according to a study published Tuesday. The government in Berlin first established a minimum wage in 2015, requiring firms to pay their employees €8.50 ($9.20) per hour. At the time, around 15% of the German workforce was earning less than that amount. Research by University College London (UCL) and the German Institute for Labor Market Research (AIB) found that the change did not result in higher joblessness among low-wage workers — one of the fears before the policy was rolled out. […] Instead, their...

MESQUITE, Texas — North Texans voting in the second-largest Super Tuesday state in just two weeks arrived at the dirt-floored rodeo arena 13 miles east of Downtown Dallas to hear Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally Friday night.“I have never been to a rodeo in my life but I do work in Washington, DC and I do hear a lot of bullshit,” Sanders told the crowd of nearly 5,000 people before confidently announcing, “We’re gonna win Texas.”Polling released the same day tells a different story. The latest University of Texas/ Texas Tribune poll of Democratic voters in Texas...

This is a new one. The New York Times headline read: "Minimum Wage Raises Could Lower Suicide Rates, Study Says." But there was a subheadline: "It was the latest study to suggest that effects of wage increases reach beyond economic welfare, but some experts pushed back on the findings." Let us "push back." The study was published in January in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The Times article noted that 47,000 Americans committed suicide in 2017 and said: "The new study examined suicide rates from 1990 through 2015 across all 50 states and Washington, and measured how they...

* Fewer suicides occur when minimum wages are higher during periods of elevated unemployment, according to a new study. * Every $1 increase in the minimum wage is associated with a 6% reduction in suicide for high school grads. * Boosting the minimum wage by $1 could have saved 27,550 lives from 1990 to 2015, the study says. Raising the federal minimum wage, which hasn't increased in more than a decade, might accomplish far more than simply offering U.S. workers a boost in pay. New research suggests that lifting the baseline wage could also stop thousands of Americans from killing...