November 2013

Could Minimum Wage Increase Boom Or Bust Economy

This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I’m Michel Martin. Coming up, we’re often told we need to forgive and forget when someone has hurt us, but that’s easier said than done. It turns out that researchers have actually been studying how it is done. Frederic Luskin directs Stanford’s Forgiveness Project and he’ll share some of his findings in just a few minutes.

But first we want to talk about something canada goose clearance sale that canada goose clearance has been, let’s say, particularly unforgiving to many of us in this country. We are talking about the state of the economy. Gas prices have been on a steady march upward. Groceries have been also. The federal government is fast approaching a series of automatic spending cuts that’s known as sequestration.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We know our economy is stronger when we reward an honest day’s work with honest wages. buy canada goose jacket cheap But today a fulltime worker making the canada goose coats minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. Even with the tax relief we’ve put in place. A family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong.

MARTIN: Of course, the president is a Democrat. House Speaker John Boehner, who leads the Republican House had a very different take. Here he is.

canadian goose jacket HOUSE SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: When canada goose you raise the price of employment, guess what happens? You get less of it. At a time when the American people are still asking the question where are the jobs, why would we want to make it harder for small employers to hire people? canadian goose jacket

MARTIN: We wanted buy canada goose jacket to talk more about this so we’ve called back two of the people we like to turn to, to explain things like this. NPR’s senior business editor Marilyn Geewax is with us. Hi, Marilyn.

Canada canada goose coats on sale Goose Jackets MARILYN GEEWAX, BYLINE: Hi, Michel. Canada Goose Jackets

uk canada goose MARTIN: Thanks for coming. And Sudeep Reddy is also back with us. He’s an economics reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much for coming also. uk canada goose

MARTIN: So we just heard John Boehner say that the idea of a minimum wage tax hike is just not on the table. The White House has to know that this would be a very tough fight. So Marilyn, why do you think that the president is focusing on wages in this particular particularly the minimum wage?

canada goose coats on sale GEEWAX: Well, let’s look back on the timeline of this. The last time that Congress voted for a raise in the minimum wage it was the summer of 2007 and that was just before the Great Recession began. So since that canada goose deals time we’ve been dealing with this terrible recession, the very slow recovery. And nobody really wanted to bring up wages. The focus was on saving the banks, getting corporations back in better shape. canada goose coats on sale

canada goose clearance But here we are now. It’s almost six years later. Actually, corporations, most of them, have been exceeding their earnings forecast. The stock market is back, basically, to where it was in the summer of 2007. Banks have the healthiest balance sheets they’ve seen in a long time. So the president brought this up in a way to change the conversation. canada goose clearance

canada goose uk black friday What’s the one thing that hasn’t come back? And that’s workers’ wages. So we’re seeing a lot of evidence that there’s this growing income gap. A study by the congressional budget office now, that’s a congressional office so it’s bipartisan and it’s pretty respected they looked at wages from 1979 through 2007 what happened over the long term. And that data shows us where the top one percent of earners’ household incomes have just about tripled. canada goose uk black friday

cheap Canada Goose But for people who are in the bottom 20 percent, wages are only up about 18 percent after you adjust for inflation. So that’s really a big difference. And the president canadian goose jacket wants to focus https://www.canadagoosejacketsoutsale.com on that. cheap Canada Goose

MARTIN: So you think it’s less you’re saying it’s less of a legislative fight than it’s really more of a jawbone. He’s trying to get this issue back in front of.

GEEWAX: It’s the thing that’s really lagging. And I’ll tell you, it’s affecting business canada goose outlet owners because Canada Goose sale companies like Wal Mart, Family Dollar, Burger King, they’re seeing that their customers just don’t have very much money. So even some businesses are sort of recognizing that a real problem for the economy right now is this lagging demand, because so many workers have not really seen any raises.

Canada Goose Online MARTIN: Sudeep, could you talk about that for a minute? And, you know, we’ve asked you this question before but I think, you know, it’s important to ask again. Could you just truth squad this for a minute? I mean, these just seem to be the Canada Goose Outlet two pillar, you know, polar opposite sort of positions on this. So what cheap Canada Goose does the data show about rises in the minimum wage? And what do business leaders think about it? Canada Goose Online

buy canada goose jacket REDDY: Well, there is certainly no dispute that we have more income inequality today than we had 30 years ago, and that the problem is getting worse instead of better. And there’s also no dispute when economists look at this that when you raise the minimum wage you raise the wages of the lowest income workers in society. That’s the purpose of the minimum wage and it does that. buy canada goose jacket

Canada Goose online And there’s really no question about that. The dispute comes around employment and what does this do to Canada Goose Parka overall employment for those workers and for other workers. And that’s where there’s this very wide range of opinion. Some economists have looked at it and said say that this will actually reduce employment because it will lead businesses to hire fewer workers if they have to pay the higher wage. Canada Goose online

canada goose store And it will lead businesses to consider other measures like higher productivity, whatever you can use however you can use technology to substitute for labor in any kind of these processes. There’s a whole other set of economic studies that looks at this and actually finds that Canada Goose Jackets employment does go up as a result of this. And there’s. canada goose store

canada goose black friday sale REDDY: One way it would work is by raising the wages and giving people more money to spend. You actually find that people who are in the lower wage groups spend almost all of their money. You’re living paycheck to paycheck. You’re boosting the economy. In some sense it can end up being a redistribution. In certain cases you have, higher wage workers in a company might get fewer increases canada goose black friday sale and some of those would go to lower wage workers. canada goose black friday sale

But that’s part of the purpose here, is to address income inequality.

uk canada goose outlet MARTIN: What do business people say, privately, to you? Because I know reporters talk to particularly, you know, there’s economists and no disrespect to them, but, you know, researchers, but then there’s the people who are actually kind of in the world of employing people. What do they say to you privately? uk canada goose outlet

REDDY: You’ve got different groups. A lot of the employers you talk to these days say, well, of course we want our workers to have higher wages. You want your workers to be able to survive off the wage they’re earning. And a lot of companies are not paying the minimum wage. They’re paying something above that. The concern comes from the lowest end the service industries, hospitality. Whether those are areas that can really absorb some kind of an increase.

And they may have to pass on some of that cost to their customers but that has been an effect of the minimum wage all along. And this is, barring other solutions that you’ve got to deal with a problem like this, this is one that tends to work, politically, to deal with this.

Canada Goose sale MARTIN: We’re talking with Sudeep Reddy he’s an economics reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Marilyn Geewax, NPR’s senior business editor. We’re talking about all the things that are working on the economy right now. Now let’s talk about those drastic cuts to federal spending across the board, automatic Canada Goose online spending cuts scheduled to go into effect on March 1st if the president and the congress don’t agree on a strategy to reduce the deficit. Canada Goose sale

canada goose coats Sudeep, I was asking you about what business leaders think about this. What does the public think about this canada goose coats.