Time to raise the minimum wage

Illustration for Bloomberg News by Rand Renfrow: $15 Minimum Wage

Robert Reich put it succinctly at his Facebook site [links added here]:

Nick Hanauer, one of the nation’s most successful businessmen, proposed yesterday that the minimum wage be raised to $15 an hour. But wouldn’t that cause employers not to hire workers who were “worth” less, and thereby lead to higher unemployment? No, says Hanauer. By putting more money into the hands of more people, it would stimulate more buying — which would generate more jobs than any jobs that might be lost. Hanauer understands that the basic reason the economy is still limping along is workers are consumers, and workers continue to get shafted, which means consumers lack the purchasing power to get the economy off the ground. A minimum wage of $15 an hour, combined with basic worker standards such as paid sick leave and a minimum of 3 weeks paid vacation per year, should all be in a national campaign for better jobs and a better economy in the 2014 election.

That’s the case, in brief.

Last March Reich said raising the minimum wage to $9/hour was a “no brainer.”

Alas, he didn’t account enough for the anti-brain lobby.

What do you think?

More:

• Hanauer’s column at Bloomberg, “The Capitalist’s Case for a $15 Minimum Wage”
• The minimum-wage stimulus (blogs.reuters.com)
• The Capitalist’s Case For A $15 Minimum Wage: Bloomberg View (liamrobert.com)
• View: Raise Minimum Wage to $15 (drudge.com)
• Why Minimum Wage Should Be $21.72 An Hour (leftandcenter.com)
• The economic case for increasing the minimum wage (barkingatcars.co.uk)
• $10.10 by 2015: WYO Minimum Wage Campaign (publicnewsservice.org)
• North Idaho Woman Wants To Raise Minimum Wage (khq.com)
• ~24 Year Old Minimum Wage Failure~ (poeticeclipse.wordpress.com)
• ‘Wealthy Capitalist Says Minimum Wage should be $15 Hour’ (thelastofthemillenniums.wordpress.com)

Also good, an update:

• Linda Beale at Angry Bear provides more economics-oriented intellectual heft to the argument, especially with a take-down of profit-healthy companies which are, she said, really just “monopoly rents.”  That’s right, friends:  The crazy right-wingers’ rent-seeking complaint, but explained accurately, without the misdirected anti-socialist invective and spittle.  You can find the column also at A Taxing Matter, which appears to be Beale’s own blog.