All apartments in most metropolitan areas have been picked up by banks in the last twenty years now the tenancy you see are all managed by management companies. These companies have a minimum income requirement of three times the rent. It is rare to get housing without this. So a minimum wage to even approach a livable level needs to be sufficient to get a one bedroom apartment. That would ensure that single parents would be able to have a home appropriate for them.
I also encourage Washington to look at making sure these employees are getting the hours needed to maintain that minimum wage. Many employers are cutting hours to under the Federal minimum for mandatory Affordable Care Act requirements. This puts minimum wage workers into a further bind as they make less money when they work fewer hours. Many are forced to take multiple jobs adding travel time to their work day which can sometimes mean two eight hour shifts back to back. Or even three if your employer decides to make you close one day and open the next.
Doing less would help admittedly. The money will go right back into circulation unlike the trillions the 1% have stashed offshore.
The implications of these fluctuations at the very top can also be seen when we examine trends in real income growth per family between the top 1 percent and the bottom 99 percent in recent years as illustrated on Table 1. From 1993 to 2011, for example, average real incomes per family grew by only 13.1% over this 18 year period (implying an annual growth rate of .69%). However, if one excludes the top 1 percent, average real incomes of the bottom 99% grew only by 5.8% from 1993 to 2011 (implying an annual growth rate of .31%). Top 1 percent incomes grew by 57.5% from 1993 to 2011 (implying a 2.6% annual growth rate). This implies that top 1 percent incomes captured more than half of the overall economic growth of real incomes per family over the period 1993-2011.
We still need to look at taxing the wealthy more than they are.The infrastructure they use like highways and related bridges, causeways, and related structures to transport goods need a severe upgrade. Cutting deductions for those earning a reasonably high income should help tremendously.