Tick, tick, tick, tick...every minute that goes by is another minute workers are being robbed--in particular, those people forced to work for the slave-like minimum wage. And if you looked back just five years, there's a price tag to that robbery: over $300 billion.
My friends over at the truly progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research came up with a terrific running calculator that we should stick on every union website and every progressive site:
This second clock shows how many dollars America's minimum wage workers have lost since July 24, 2009 if the minimum wage had instead been raised to its 1968 level and then kept pace with inflation since then. Every second it shows how much more money they're losing, as long as the federal minimum wage remains below its historical peak.
As I sat down to write this piece, the calculator was ticking towards $301 billion...
The clock easily documents the legalized slavery and legalized robbery millions of workers have to endure.
My only disagreement with CEPR is that the minimum wage hikes should be tied to PRODUCTIVITY not inflation--as I explained here in my argument for a campaign for a $20-an-hour minimum wage.
Either way, though, this tells the story quite well.