"Had the minimum wage kept pace with labor productivity growth since 1968, this year it would be more than $20 per hour." And it isn't so... I am guessing it's better to just have stores close everywhere in town only because people can't afford it.
~~~~~Gradually raising the minimum wage to $15 would be good for workers, good for businesses, and good for the economy.
We can afford to pay the lowest-paid workers more than they were paid 50 years ago
Raising the national minimum wage is well overdue. Workers today who are paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour are, after adjusting for inflation, paid 29 percent less than their counterparts 50 years ago. This is despite the fact that the economy’s capacity to deliver higher wages has doubled in the last 50 years, as measured by labor productivity, or the amount of output produced by workers. As Figure A shows, had the minimum wage kept pace with labor productivity growth since 1968, this year it would be more than $20 per hour. Today, however, a single parent earning the current federal minimum wage does not earn enough through full-time work to bring his or her family above the federal poverty line.
Neglect has left the minimum wage far below what the economy could afford
Real and nominal values of the federal minimum wage, and value if it had risen with total economy productivity, 1938–2018, and projected values under the Raise the Wage Act of 2019, 2019–2024.
https://www.epi.org/publication/minimum-wage-testimony-feb-2019
~~~~~House passes $15 minimum wage bill.
The House passed a bill Thursday that would raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade -- but there's little chance the measure will be taken up in the Republican-controlled Senate.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/18/politics/minimum-wage-house-vote/index.html
