Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) of Massachusetts suggested a minimum wage of $22 an hour, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
She presented her views at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Referencing minimum wage in the 1960s, Warren believes money has somehow been lost. According to CSM, “If you took the minimum wage from 1960 and indexed it for workers’ gains in productivity, it would be $22 an hour today”.
In her opinion, employees should be doing better since labor practices have advance over the years.
“What happened to the other $14.75? It sure didn’t go to the worker,” Warren said according to CSM.
Arindrajit Dube, an economist from the University of Massachusetts, Amhearst, said what should have been gains for minimum wage employees, went to into the pockets of corporations and executives.
According to CSM, Dube and Warren were in no way suggesting this be rushed to Congress and passed immediately.
“Rather, the exercise demonstrates how different the growth rates have been for incomes going to those at the bottom of the labor market as compared to the economy as a whole and to those at the top end of the distribution,” Dube said.
If minimum wage were to rise by $14.75, companies and jobs were take a devastating hit. Even raising minimum wage a few dollars higher would not be easy.
However, President Barack Obama has advocated for increasing minimum wage to $9 an hour.
“A minimum wage should be a wage you can live on,” he said at the introduction Thomas Perez, his nominee for secretary of Labor.
Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa believes it should be $1.10 higher at $10.10 an hour.
“We don’t want minimum-wage workers left behind and left out of this recovery,” said Harkin last week according to CSM.
