"The Minimum Wage and Economic Growth"

On February 13, 2013 Firedoglake published an editorial “The Minimum Wage and Economic Growth” written by Dean Baker. This editorial starts about Obama calling for a higher minimum wage about $10 an hour to try to come in set by 2015 or 2016 rather than it being 7.25. In the article he talks about how minimum wage and economic growth affect each other over the years, from past decades to now, how minimum kept in pace with inflation. He states how the productivity growth has raised up vs to before but minimum wage not following. For example, in the earlier years of 1947 to 1969 minimum wage and productivity growth stayed at a same pace, now it does not because the cost of everything has raise up. What used to cost $1.00 is now $2 or $3 which means people possibly will not have a larger improvement in living standards since the purchasing power is not constant as in the 1940’s. According to the article if the purchasing power had kept in pace with productivity growth than the minimum could have possibly been around $16.54. If the cost of things was the same today people would be living how the people in the earlier decades lived and there wouldn’t be any decrease in the living standards of people that struggle twice as much. In my opinion once the law passes of a higher minimum wage is it going to be any better? Well of course it is if the productivity growth remains the same things are already very expensive some people need to be stabilized to be able to buy things in an affordable way.

As a reader going through the article I give him credibility to all his points of view, he has statistical evidence to back up his information for example the graph he demonstrates of the real minimum wage and the wage if it was tied to productivity he also shows his references of his data he got. I agree with the author and believe he makes a good informative editorial to his intended audience of the millions of workers who are currently paid at or near minimum wage who deserve a higher income and more knowledge of how our way of living is being affected because honestly that’s what’s happening. With five dollars you could afford purchasing more things, now with five dollars you can count with your fingers how many things you can afford which is not very much.