It is time to reconfirm our commitment to ensuring that workers can afford a decent standard of living, by substantially increasing the minimum wage. If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation and productivity increases since 1979, it would now be in the range of $9 per hour; if it had kept pace since 1967, it would be much higher. Since government policy has been one of the main causes of growing inequality, it is appropriate to design a government policy to reduce inequality and ensure that all workers get a share of the gains from the growing economy.
Most of the economic gains of the past three decades have gone to the wealthiest segments of the population. From 1979-1998, the inflation-adjusted income of families in the poorest fifth of the population did not improve at all, while incomes for the whole population increased by 20%. Incomes at the very top have increased even faster. As Business Week magazine puts it, "people feel overworked and underpaid, especially in contrast with their CEOs, who now make nearly 500 times the average employee's wages." The net financial wealth of the top one percent of households now equals the combined wealth of the bottom 95 percent of American households.
This has not been an accidental outcome of patterns of economic growth, but instead the result of deliberate government policies that have had the effect of redistributing income upwards. Such policies include the erosion of workers' rights to organize unions and bargain collectively, and the pursuit of free-trade agreements that put corporate interests above the interests of workers, putting U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with the lowest-paid workers anywhere in the world, including child laborers.
Income inequality is also the result of erosion in the minimum wage. The buying power of the minimum wage has fallen by more than 20% since a peak in 1979, even as productivity has increased by more than 35%. A recent study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition shows that nowhere in the United States is a modest one-bedroom apartment "affordable" for a single, minimum-wage worker, and in most places two minimum-wage workers together would have to pay more than they could afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment.
Increasing the minimum wage is good for the economy. Moving working families out of poverty will improve children's health and education, helping to build a strong future. And recent research shows that increasing the minimum wage does not tend to increase unemployment. In 1967, when the minimum wage peaked in real purchasing power, unemployment was at 3.8%, and remained low the next year. If the minimum wage had kept up with increases in productivity since 1967, it would now be around $11 per hour.
We should:
The Tompkins County Green Party is a member of the Tompkins County Living Wage Coalition
Source: Ralph Nader's 2000 campaign
