Word: wages
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...propose more spending on education, infrastructure and renewable energy, along with tax cuts for the middle class and small businesses. He said he'll also lower property taxes for some low-income seniors and roll back public college tuition hikes Schwarzenegger implemented, while fighting for a minimum-wage hike and offering plans to expand child health-care coverage. "And I'll do what President Clinton did," Angelides added. "I'll balance the budget...
...Those words may have globe-rattling implications. If Shenzhen can leap from assembling basic products with low-wage, poorly skilled labor to nurturing the innovations of lavishly paid talent, it could blaze a trail for the rest of corporate China, which must increasingly develop its own brands, designs and technology to rival those of America, Japan and Europe. It would not be the first time Shenzhen has led the way. The city, located in southern China's Pearl River Delta, has been at the forefront of China's free-market reforms for 25 years. In 1979, late Chinese leader Deng...
...then, do city officials feel a pressing need for a new economic vision? Because Shenzhen is discovering that the same forces of globalization that made it successful can also work against it. As the city prospered, wages went up, along with a host of other expenses. According to Chinese government statistics, the average annual salary in Shenzhen has surged by about 40% since 2000 to more than $4,000 last year. That's twice the average wage in other major cities like Chongqing. Higher costs are undercutting the profit margins of labor-intensive industries that have been the backbone...
...past two years to $250 a month, but that hasn't alleviated a chronic staff shortage. "It's a little harder to find average workers these days, because the development of the interior is getting better," she says. The government has tried solving the problem by raising the minimum wage to attract more workers from outside Shenzhen. After a 13% increase last year, the government recently boosted the minimum wage within the city's special economic zone by 17% to more than $100 a month?the highest minimum wage in China...
...keen observer of the living-wage battle has been David Coss, mayor of Santa Fe, N.M., which mandated a living wage in 2004. "We were also told the sky was going to fall," he says, "but all we've seen is strong growth." With the city's $9.50 wage floor set to rise to $10.50 in 2008, Target and Sam's Club are thriving. Wal-Mart is even building a superstore. "You're going to see more and more municipalities taking matters into their own hands," Coss says. "Poverty just isn't a necessary ingredient for economic development...