Rashida Tlaib’s call for a $20 minimum wage tees up a great question for the next Democratic debates – By Philip Klein (Washington Examiner) / July 22 2019
Rep. Rashida Tlaib says that more than doubling the federal minimum wage is no longer enough and that it should actually be $20 per hour. In the process of doing so, she has stumbled upon a great question for participants in the next round of Democratic presidential debates.
Tlaib made the remarks in a talk with One Fair Wage, and they were captured by Republican opposition group America Rising. In the clip, she says, “By the way, when we started it, it should have been $15. Now I think it should be $20 — make sure America Rising hears that. It should be $20 an hour, $18 to $20 an hour at this point. They say all of this is going to raise the cost, but I can tell you, milk has gone up, eggs has gone up, everything has gone up.”
WATCH: @RashidaTlaib calls for a $20 Minimum Wage. pic.twitter.com/tKsjOXDhIj
— America Rising (@AmericaRising) July 22, 2019
Democratic candidates, including the relative centrist Joe Biden, have come out in favor of a $15 minimum wage. But given how in the previous debate Democrats came out in favor of radical proposals including providing free health insurance to illegal immigrants that had never really been part of the national conversation, it would be interesting to see if any of the candidates would feel the need to join Tlaib’s call for a $20 per hour. If they do not support a $20 minimum wage, it would be interesting to hear all of them articulate on what basis they support a $15 minimum wage while believing a $20 minimum wage would be too high.
A recent study by the Congressional Budget Office found that raising the minimum wage to $15 would increase wages on the surface for the affected population, but as many as 3.7 million fewer people would be employed (or more conservatively, 1.3 million). Furthermore, it predicted the increase would reduce economic output, lower business income, raise prices, and “reduce total real (inflation-adjusted) family income in 2025 by $9 billion.”
Democrats tend to argue only the first part of this case — that it would, on the surface, increase wages. But they tend to neglect the offsetting effects of a wage hike on prices and employment. So is there a level at which Democrats believe the government could set a minimum wage that would be so high that the negative effects would outweigh the positive effects? The new bar set by Tlaib would be a good jumping off point for such a discussion.
