Word: minimum
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...summitteered from Tokyo to Moscow, Senate Democrats trapped Dole into procedural back alleys that made him look ineffective at best and hard-hearted at worst. First he was forced to pull back an immigration-reform bill when minority leader Tom Daschle tacked on an amendment that would raise the minimum wage by 90'. Then, just as Dole was preparing to back a token boost in the wage scale, 20 House Republicans bid him up to a full dollar. Dole suddenly seemed behind the curve, a scrooge in springtime. And then, on Thursday, five Republicans abandoned Dole when he tried...
Since its inception in 1938--at two bits an hour--the minimum wage has been attacked by economists and capitalist zealots as a prime example of wrongheaded government meddling. Let the market set wages, they say, not Washington. Yet politicians, including at times none other than Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, have resisted that view. Dole argued in 1974 that "a living wage for a fair day's work is a hallmark of the American economic philosophy." Recently, however, the positions have flipped, with a rising number of economists arguing for a minimum-wage boost--and Dole holding fast against...
...case for increasing the minimum is being built on a group of studies, the most prominent of which is by Princeton economists David Card and Alan Krueger. The two surveyed employment patterns in fast-food restaurants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania cities after the Garden State raised its minimum wage to $5.05, vs. $4.25 for Pennsylvania. Economic theory says that increased labor costs should have forced New Jersey employers to cut jobs or that employers in Pennsylvania should have lifted wages to keep workers from hopping across the river for a raise. But the study found no such evidence...
Such studies have given some economists reason to switch sides in the wage debate. "The negative effects are not significant at the level at which the minimum wage is being raised," contends Joseph Stiglitz, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, who argued against the minimum wage in a textbook he wrote in 1993. Last October about 100 other economists who share his view, including three Nobel laureates, announced their support for President Clinton's plan to raise the wage 90'--from $4.25 to $5.15--over 15 months...
...have to be an economist to know that $5.15 an hour isn't going to move anyone into a higher tax bracket. In fact, without an increase the minimum wage will sink to a 40-year low when adjusted for inflation. Currently, a full-time minimum-wage worker earns $8,500 annually--one third the average U.S. wage. Even with a complement of welfare, food stamps and tax credits, that income falls well below the $15,600 poverty line for a family of four. Administration officials say additional studies show that the 11 million workers who would benefit from...