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new Bloomberg News report, which generally is thought of as a business and pro-business publication, shows that there is no increase in unemployment even if the minimum wage is doubled.
The Seattle suburb of SeaTac, Washington where the international airport is located decided in November to raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour. That was an increase in the minimum wage by 60 percent. Although individual businesses and business associations worked to defeat the increase in the minimum wage, there was no decrease in employment. Instead businesses found other ways to offset the wage increase, including by adding an insignificant increase or "'living-wage surcharge' to prices."
The report from this publication is powerful ammunition for us and our movement for economic justice in the struggle to follow the President's call to raise the federal minimum wage.
In fact, Seattle Democratic Mayor Ed Murray is now calling for an increase in the Seattle minimum wage to $15 an hour.
The mayor made the point Dr. Richard Levins and I made in our book Getting America Back to Work: "we can't rebuild this economy if it's just people who buy 94-foot yachts and play in the derivatives. You build an economy when a middle class is buying microwaves or flat screen TV's, or the next set of clothes for their kids."
The state of Washington originally raised their minimum wage in 1998 and indexed it to increases in the cost of living. Since then the Washington State minimum wage has risen to $9.32, the highest minimum wage in the country. Meanwhile the state has been one of the leaders in job growth, proving what the majority of research has shown--that increases in the minimum wage lead to more job creation by strengthening consumer demand and buying power at the bottom of the economy.
Raising the minimum wage is something Congress could do right to decrease poverty, make a dent in inequality, and help drive the economy out of the ditch.
Message to the radical right: Ayn Rand's Atlases and job creators don't create new jobs. They shrugged a long time ago, privatizing all they want, and destroying the middle class and democracy.
Artist: William B. Rembert