Robert Reich posted this on facebook today:
Business owner Nick Hanauer has a good idea: By executive order the President could raise the salary level at which employers are required to pay employees time-and-a-half for every hour worked beyond 40 hours a week. In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried workers qualified for such overtime pay, and the threshold for receiving it was $69,000 in today’s dollars. But since then the value of the threshold has eroded to $23,660, so just 11 percent of salaried workers now qualify. If Obama raised the threshold back to the same standard we had in 1975, and everyone earning up to $69,000 got overtime pay, Hannauer estimates 10.4 million middle-class Americans would get a raise. Or they'd have more time off, and corporate America would have to hire hundreds of thousands of additional workers to pick up the slack—slashing the unemployment rate and forcing up wages.
The right will react to this like they do to raising the minimum wage – calling it a job killer. But in fact, putting more money into the pockets of more workers gives employers more customers, and thereby an incentive to hire more workers. What do you think of Hannauer's idea?
[emphases mine]
Hard to believe Obama won't hear of this.
If the Democratic establishment believes in supply-side economics, which it appears it does, then it won't touch Hannauer's brilliant plan for an Executive Order that could significantly improve demand.
If they believe in demand-side economics, which they should, then it would be hard to understand why Obama wouldn't do it immediately and get the full benefit to the economy before the '16 election. Every Democrat in D.C. could get behind it, and we could watch reality overcome voodoo.
The disconnect between establishment Dems who tout Obama's legacy on the economy and the voters who stayed home is that 90% have not recovered, and the 1% continues to concentrate income, wealth and power every single day. This move would actual have a significant impact on the expansion of the gap, either slowing it significantly or potentially halting it.
And guess what, small donors and campaign volunteers would actually be in a better position to help...
But is that really what the establishment wants to do, represent the 90%? Or would they rather continue to tell them to stop whining?
Will Obama take the initiative to help the 90%?