Bernie Sanders plan for a $15 federal minimum wage, like his plan for a universal single-payer health plan, is too “pie in the sky,” according to Hillary Clinton, and many of her supporters, including right here.
They’re not. They’re doable — we just need leaders who fight for them.
BACK in November 2012, when Alterique Hall, an $8-an-hour McDonald’s cashier in New York, joined 200 fast-food workers in the first one-day strike for the Fight for $15 campaign, many scoffed at their demand for $15 an hour as pie in the sky. Frustrated with his meager pay, Mr. Hall said, “It’s time for a change.”
Three and a half years later, that change is starting to arrive. Last Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown of California announced a deal with state lawmakers to raise California’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022 — a move expected to lift pay for five million workers. And late Thursday Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York reached a deal with legislative leaders to adopt a $15 minimum wage in New York City in 2018 and in its suburbs in 2021, with a $12.50 minimum in upstate New York.
www.nytimes.com/...
ADDED: Forgot to mention Seattle, Washington, the first big American city to raise the minimum wage to $15. (Without the sky falling. More recent study here.)
Again: These things are doable. We just need leaders who fight for them. Not people who call them “pie in the sky.”
Fifty-nine percent of Americans, including 84 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of independents, support a $15 minimum wage, according to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan research group. Just 32 percent of Republicans do.
These things are doable. We just need DEMOCRATIC PARTY leaders who fight for them. Not Dems who call them “pie in the sky.”
• Bernie Sanders: “A Living Wage”
• Bernie Sanders: ”Medicare For All”
• Bernie Sanders: “It’s Time to Make College Tuition Free and Debt Free”
• More
These things are doable. We just need DEMOCRATIC PARTY leaders who fight for them.
Update: For all the Dems in the thread using Republican arguments against a $15 minimum wage: they’re fighting right now for a mimimum wage increase in Australia — where the current national minimum wage is $17.29 an hour. (That’s $13.28 US right now, but it was about the same when the Aussie dollar was on par with the US just a few years ago. And trust me — the country hasn’t fallen to pieces.)
And holy shit, this quote:
The minimum wage is still sitting around 40 per cent of what average wage earnings are and if this trend continues we could end up with a US-style working poor in this country.