A Stitch in Haste

"It is a moral outrage that millions of Americans who work full time still live in poverty."
--Representative George Miller (D-CA)

Except for one small detail: it's not millions --

[A]bout 18 percent of the 12 million workers who were paid an hourly wage rate between the federal minimum wage of $5.15 and $7.24 were in families that had a total cash income below the federal poverty threshold in 2004.

Eighteen percent of 12 million is 2.16 million. And that's not even how many workers make the current minimum wage -- it's those who make up to the proposed minimum wage. So Representative Miller's outrage is mostly a figment of his political imagination.

The statistics regarding the minimum wage are not disputed. Ignored, yes, but not disputed. It is mostly teenagers, retirees and very recent immigrants, all of whom are typically seeking to supplement family income, not support a family outright.

And in any case, at least some of those workers will lose their jobs when the surplus unemployment created by a raised minimum wage price floor kicks in. "Outrage" indeed.

More:

Had all of the workers in that wage range, instead, received $7.25 per hour, they would have gotten about $11 billion in additional wages in that year. About 15 percent of those additional wages ($1.6 billion) would have been received by workers in poor families.

An anti-poverty program in which only 15% of the benefit actually trickles down to the working poor is a pretty good definition of "failure."

I'm also guessing that this estimate ignores the increased unemployment that would result from raising the wage floor and also ignores taxes. So we are in fact talking about an increased net wage bill (i.e., a "social benefit") of far less than $1.6 billion annually -- which, in federal budget terms, is puny anyway.

So why not just have the government give the working poor an additional $1.6 billion directly, in the form of increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit? Why pass the burden on to the private employers who are actually making these jobs possible in the first place? Does an extra $1.6 billion mean more to the federal government or the corner bodega?

Finally, it bears repeating: Who is primarily responsible for creating a social infrastructure, especially a public school network, that perpetually generates "millions" of ultra-unskilled workers in the first place, year after impoverished year?

Hint: That also wasn't the corner bodega.