By the Editorial Board
Kansas City Star, Oct 24, 2018
WATCH VIDEO The Rieger restaurant owner Howard Hanna talks about Missouri minimum wage vote
As long as there has been a minimum wage, which began at 25-cents an hour in 1938, its opponents have been arguing that businesses would fail if we set one at all, or ever raised it.
That has not happened. Instead, a U.S. Census Bureau study published in March found that over two decades, increases benefited most low-income workers, especially in the long term, and improved the economy as a whole without causing job losses. ...
A single person would have to make a little more than $11 an hour just to survive in Kansas City, according to MIT’s living wage calculator. With one child, you’d need to make just over $24 an hour.
That’s why voters in Missouri should by all means vote yes on state ballot Proposition B, which would ever-so-gradually raise the minimum wage, by 85 cents per hour every year until it hits $12 an hour in 2023.
Low-income workers do spend what they make, so this would not only improve the circumstances of roughly a quarter of the state’s workforce, but would boost the state economy, too.
Increases tend to cut turnover, improve productivity, stimulate demand and narrow inequities. ...
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