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Increasing lowest wages harms poor
September 2004 · Craig Garthwaite · Los Angeles Daily News
“One thing I learned about America,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told the Republican National Convention last week, “is that if you work hard and play by the rules, this country is truly open to you. You can achieve anything.” Schwarzenegger should keep those words in mind as he considers a bill – now sitting on his desk – to increase California’s minimum wage to $7.75 an hour. The… -
Better Ways to Help Those Earning Little
September 2004 · Craig Garthwaite · Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The annual Labor Day lament that minimum wage employees have gone too long without a pay hike misses a crucial reality: low-wage earners don’t need federal legislation to get a raise. Through hard work, improving their skills and demonstrating their value to employers, the majority of minimum wage employees quickly earn their own pay increases. Nearly two-thirds of minimum wage earners who remain in the work force… -
Making More Pays Less
July 2004 · Richard V. Burkhauser · New York Times
Ithaca — ALL of us can agree that people who play by the rules and work hard should not live in poverty. On the surface, it would seem that raising the minimum wage paid to workers would help them out. But statistics tell a different story, one that should be considered by state legislators who plan to consider whether to raise the minimum wage in New York… -
Hurting poor in name of helping them
May 2004 · Craig Garthwaite · The Orange County Register
A minimum wage hike is wending its way through the Assembly, and it’s a whopper. There’s hope that sanity will prevail in Sacramento, as it did in March in New Hampshire, where legislators had the good sense to kill a similar effort. If it doesn’t, many low-skilled workers may not last at their jobs long enough to see their wages increase, or be able to find jobs… -
Affleck is ‘Dazed and Confused’ over Kennedy’s minimum-wage bill
May 2004 · Craig Garthwaite · The Hill
The clash over increasing the minimum wage has begun. In one corner stands noted labor economist Ben Affleck, whose credits include such films as “Dazed and Confused.” In the other, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. In 2001, Greenspan told Congress that a minimum-wage increase would destroy jobs. The evidence on that, he said, is overwhelming. In the three intervening years, America has experienced a soft economy and… -
Minimum wage hike won’t help the poor
February 2004 · Craig Garthwaite · Wisconsin State Journal
The nation’s leisure and hospitality industry went on a hiring spree during the last half of last year: about 300,000 new jobs that have been created in every type of service outlet from fast food to four-star dining—in a sector that accounts for just 9 percent of all jobs. The bad news: Wisconsin’s residents are being left out of this long-awaited jobs boom. Wisconsin lost 8,600 such…