For some time now I have been saying that the minimum wage should be $10.00. Of course, in that I began saying that several years ago, it should probably be in the $12 to $15 range these days. . . Quebec has been increasing the minimum wage incrementally and it recently increased it to $8.50 per hour, so it is creeping towards where I thought it should be five or six years ago.

Yeah, I think we’re roughly a decade behind where it should be in the U.S. Few people can manage on that sort of money per day. Perhaps no one.

Here’s the thing: more jobs than ever are moving overseas. The reason? Because we pay our workers too much for too little skill. There are plenty of people across the ocean who are highly educated and willing to work at a fraction of American worker’s wage. The suggestion that minimum wage ought to be $12 - 15 per hour is absurd. Raising the minimum wage puts further pressure on small businesses who then respond by cutting health care and other benefits for all of their employees. Other companies outsource, and you can expect to see more and more jobs moving out of the United States in the years to come. I realize this is not “politically correct”, and I expect the backlash. But it needs to be said.

I’m not sure how a hospitality worker’s job could be moved overseas….that’s what most of the minimum wage jobs in this country are.

Unfortunately, Ms. Theologian, it is entirely possible. There are a number of fast food places in Hawaii (I believe I remember it being Hawaii) where all orders are now going through call centers in India. Customers order online before coming, or press order screens when they get there..it is processed through an Indian call center and flashed back to the kitchen area where it is prepared. They haven’t figured out how to get rid of the kitchen workers yet, but I was alarmed to find out they’ve managed to replace the workers out front. Don’t be surprised to find this happening more and more in the coming years.

Maybe “government efficiency” is a total misnomer, but if it worked correctly the minimum wage would actually be a living wage. As it is now, it’s a joke.

As a longtime state legislative leader involved in raising Pennsylvania’s minimum wage since it was stuck at $3.35 in 1987, I completely agree that $6.55 in 2008 is completely inadequate, as is the $7.25 level scheduled in 2009.

Ted Kennedy has introduced legislation in Washington raising the federal minimum wage to $9.50 at the end of 2009, with annual cost of living increases thereafter. I have introduced similar legislation in Pennsylvania.

I urge all who want a reasonable minimum wage as an aid to reducing poverty from the ground up to get behind the Kennedy bill and to push similar legislation in your state. Raising the minimum wage is the only anti-poverty measure that immediately brings new people into the job market and new revenues into governmental coffers and the Social Security system.

Raising the minimum wage increases the value of work, and makes it tougher for the illegal underground economy to recruit helpers for drug dealing and other unsavory activities.

Washington, D.C. and Nevada are already due to hit $8.25 in 2009, and Washington State, now at $8.07, and Oregon, now at $7.95, are due for cost of living increases next year which should bring them both around $8.50 on January 1, 2009.

The public is way ahead of state legislatures and Congress on this issue, and its time for the public to make its views known to members of Congress and state legislatures alike.

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