Before you answer consider this. (OBTW Not my opinion. A talk show subject)

Raising the minimum wage is just one element of the planned 100 hours blitz of feel-good legislation that is being put in place by the new Democratically controlled Congress, starting with today’s swearing in session. The minimum wage increase, along with most of the Democrats agenda (the rest of which will be listed below), has plenty of popular support among voters. The traditional protests of small businesses that an increase in the minimum wage has disastrous consequences to their bottom lines, forces them to lay off workers and pass on higher costs to the consumer have largely been debunked by economists. Because it’s been over 10 years since an increase in the federal minimum wage, the move by the Democrats has almost universal support and is a major point in their platform.

But is the increase anything more than a symbolic, politically advantageous gesture that has little real-world effect? Most of the working poor earn more than the minimum wage, and most of the 0.6 percent (479,000 in 2005) of America's wage workers earning the minimum wage are not poor. Only one in five workers earning the federal minimum lives in families with earnings below the poverty line. Sixty percent work part time, and their average household income is well over $40,000. (The average and median household incomes are $63,344 and $46,326, respectively.)

Forty percent of American workers are salaried. Of the 75.6 million paid by the hour, 1.9 million earn the federal minimum or less, and of these, more than half are under 25 and more than a quarter are between ages 16 and 19. Many are students or other part-time workers. Sixty percent of those earning the federal minimum or less work in restaurants and bars and earn tips -- often untaxed, perhaps -- in addition to wages. Two-thirds of those earning the federal minimum today will, a year from now, have been promoted and be earning 10 percent more. Raising the minimum wage predictably makes work more attractive relative to school for some teenagers and raises the dropout rate. Two scholars report that in states that allow people to leave school before 18, a 10 percent increase in the state minimum wage caused teenage school enrollment to drop 2 percent.

On top of all this, the majority of states have their own minimum wage requirements that far outpace even what the feds plan on instituting, which should be at $7.25 by 2009. Pete is not opposed to hiking the minimum wage, but he does feel we should be realistic about the limitations of the wage. Perhaps a sentimental lift in American workers’ spirits is value enough for lifting a minimum wage which, in reality, won’t do much else for them.

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