California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

A Tree Planting Alternative for the Jobless

by John Lawrence

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) proposes a Job Guarantee (JG) program that would employ the unemployed instead of just paying them unemployment insurance. This would be an automatic program whose numbers would very according to those employed in the private sector. When the private sector is supplying lots of jobs, the number in the JG would diminish and vice versa. So why not employ all those in the JG planting trees? This in no way competes with the private sector and doesn't require training or any skills whatsoever. The homeless could do it; the prison population could do it. The unemployed could do it. The pay would provide an automatic minimum wage, and the economy would be fully employed. There would be no wage inflation because people in the JG would not be competing for jobs with people employed in the private sector. When the private sector needed more workers, they could hire them out of the JG. Because these workers are employed, their work skills will not diminish like those sitting idle doing nothing but collecting unemployment insurance.

Conventional economic theory is based on the Philips curve which predicts that there must be a certain number of unemployed people in order to tamp down inflation. The inflation rate is contained based on the misery of the necessary number of unemployed people who are historically from minority communities. MMT replaces the Philips curve with an analysis that predicts that inflation can be contained and a full employment economy can be achieved because JG workers are not competing with those employed in the private sector, and, therefore, there is no wage inflation. Those workers are available for hiring out of the JG by offering them slightly more than the minimum wage which is set automatically by the government by the pay offered to those in the JG which would be a living wage, in other words enough so that they are above the poverty level. Therefore, a number of birds are killed with one stone. 1) The minimum wage is automatically set at the Federal level. 2) The unemployment compensation program and the money budgeted for it can be eliminated. 3) A full employment economy is achieved. 4) Climate change is addressed. 5) People's job related skills are not diminished as they would be if they were sitting idle.

This is from the Modern Monetary Network:

"A government job guarantee is a proposed program where the government would provide a job with a basic wage and benefits package to anyone willing and ready to work. The job guarantee is one component of an overall program to stabilize an economy. The job guarantee is financially feasible when a sovereign government’s currency uses a floating exchange rate.

"The job guarantee provides a floor for wages and benefits, creating a buffer stock of labor. The program is intended to “hire off the bottom,” i.e. those with less qualifications or skills. A job guarantee program hires people who otherwise cannot find employment. Once implemented, a job guarantee would be a permanent program, operating during good times and recessions alike.

"In times of recession, private sector employers typically lay off workers. This swells the ranks of the unemployed. Laid off workers cannot spend money, and this hurts the economy. With a job guarantee in place, laid off workers could take a job guarantee job. This would increase the size of the job guarantee workforce during recessions, and at the same time inject more money into the economy, helping to take the edge off of the recession. As the economy recovered, people would leave their job guarantee jobs and go to better-paying private sector jobs. As the number of people in the job guarantee workforce diminished, government spending would also fall.

"The job guarantee would also serve as a mechanism to ensure price stability within the economy by fixing the price of employed labor.

"The concept of a job guarantee dates back to at least the New Deal of the Roosevelt Administration. There were several programs that had job guarantee attributes, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). After the Second World War, many industrialized economies embraced full employment. For example, Australia had an implicit buffer stock of jobs that were always available, both in the private and public sectors. Hyman Minsky also conceptualized an Employer of Last Resort (ELR) program during the 1960s. Most recently, L. Randall Wray, William Mitchell, and Warren Mosler have proposed a job guarantee program in conjunction with their work in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)."

So why not address climate change this way? There are never enough trees on planet earth, Workers in the Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) will never run out of work. The state governments will never have to pay unemployment compensation again, and the private sector will have a buffer stock of already employed working people to choose from when their needs arise for an increased work force. In effect the Federal government will take over the responsibility for unemployment insurance relieving the states of this burden.

Off the Top of My Head

A Job Guarantee Would Win Over Trump Voters and Also Address Black Lives Matter

by John Lawrence, February 14, 2021

Joe Biden can win over disgruntled Trump voters with a job guarantee. There has been a lot of research indicating that, if government were the Employer of Last Resort (ELR) at say a wage of $15.00 an hour, this would save money on unemployment as well as setting a minimum wage. It's also the minimum wage called for in Biden's COVID relief bill. Robert Reich, Clinton's labor secretary says:

"[G]ive Republicans and independents every incentive to abandon the Trump cult.

"White working-class voters without college degrees who now comprise a large portion of it need good jobs and better futures. Many are understandably angry after being left behind in vast enclaves of unemployment and despair. They should not have to depend on Trump’s fact-free fanaticism in order to feel visible and respected.

"A jobs program on the scale necessary to bring many of them around will be expensive but worth the cost, especially when democracy hangs in the balance."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in his last letter requesting support for the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”:

“It was obdurate government callousness to misery that first stoked the flames of rage and frustration. With unemployment a scourge in Negro ghettoes, the government still tinkers with half-hearted measures, refuses still to become employer of last resort. It asks the business community to solve the problems as though its past failures qualified it for success.”

It's clear that an ELT program would solve many problems not the least of which is wooing Trump voters to the Democratic party. Trump's appeal to them was partly that they had been left behind because jobs had been moved to China and Mexico and he was going to bring good paying manufacturing jobs back to America, something he never did or had a clue how to do. The ELR program will act as an automatic stabilizer adding jobs during a recession and eliminating them during an expansion when jobs will shift back to the private sector. All private employers would have to do is pay a wage slightly higher than the program wage of the ELR program which would effectively set the minimum wage. It has been thought that a certain level of unemployment was necessary to fight inflation, but that's not necessarily the case as jobs in the ELR program would not compete with jobs in the private sector. The program wage would be a floor below which wages could not drop.

The so-called "Phillips Curve" maintained that there was a trade-off between employment and inflation, that to achieve lower inflation you had to increase unemployment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines full employment as an economy in which the unemployment rate equals the nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), no cyclical unemployment exists, and GDP is at its [full] potential. The Federal Reserve considers a base unemployment rate (the U-3 rate) of 5.0 to 5.2 percent as “full employment” in the economy. So government economists have been willing to trade off the misery of approximately 16 million unemployed people in order to achieve stable money. Those 16 million are mainly composed of African Americans. However, Modern Monetary Theory claims that this is not necessary. There are other policy tools to fight inflation. Taxes, for example, mainly targeted on the rich. Other countries such as Argentine and India have implemented ELR programs. The money spent would eliminate the need for food stamps, unemployment insurance and other government programs necessary to deal with poverty and homelessness. Anyone wanting a job could have one, and these jobs would be in areas like child and elder care where there is a need for additional workers.

Off the Top of My Head

Contrary to Larry Summers Biden's Relief Bill Will Not Cause Increased Inflation

by John Lawrence, February 8, 2021

Joe Biden's almost $2 trillion pandemic relief deal will not be inflationary despite Larry Summers' opinion. Inflation occurs when there is too much money sloshing around in the economy chasing too few goods, services and human resources. That is not the case here. First of all it will reemploy the unemployed. This is a presently unused resource. Secondly, it will suck up unused or unsold goods and services funding things that are currently unfunded like child care, and thirdly, it will serve to pay off debt and replenish savings. Any money going into savings or paying off debt is not inflationary. It's deflationary in the sense that the banks will lose money due to interest they won't collect if loans are paid off. The middle class that did have savings or credit in many cases has had to use those to survive the pandemic. That's why giving money to higher earning, but not wealthy, families is a good thing. To hear some people talk only money should be given to those who are desperate and living from paycheck to paycheck. Yes, those are the families most in need who should be given money first, but higher earning families who have depleted their savings or gone into debt need to be resuscitated also.

So here is what Larry Summers says about inflation:

"First, while there are enormous uncertainties, there is a chance that macroeconomic stimulus on a scale closer to World War II levels than normal recession levels will set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability. This will be manageable if monetary and fiscal policy can be rapidly adjusted to address the problem. But given the commitments the Fed has made, administration officials’ dismissal of even the possibility of inflation, and the difficulties in mobilizing congressional support for tax increases or spending cuts, there is the risk of inflation expectations rising sharply."

Summers fails to take into account the deflationary effects of the relief bill. Money going to states and municipalities will actually be deflationary because much of it will be used to pay down debts and loans. Many state budgets are in horrible shape and employees such as police, librarians and firemen have been laid off. People paying back rents and mortgages will have a deflationary effect on the economy. People on the lower end of the economic spectrum who are living paycheck to paycheck will be able to get a little ahead and also save. This will not add a lot to inflation. Also money can always be withdrawn from the economy by taxing the rich, those who actually added to their wealth and income during the pandemic. This is the only reason that taxes might need to be raised because the US government has the ability to spend without raising taxes. The only reason to tax would be to fight inflation and those taxes can be targeted towards wealthier families and individuals. The Federal Reserve has not been able to achieve its target rate of 2% inflation recently despite maintaining almost zero percent interest rates. It wants more money sloshing around in the economy.

There are other ways to suck money out of the economy to offset inflation. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) recommends Medicare for All which would result in much less money spent on health care while providing better health outcomes. This would be deflationary which would counteract any inflationary propensities of government deficit spending. Conventional economic thinking is that there is a tradeoff between unemployment and inflation. The more people unemployed there are, the more inflation is diminished. Therefore, full employment as defined by economists is not really employment where everyone is employed. It is that level of unemployment which just keeps inflation in check. However, according to "The Trade-off between Inflation and Unemployment in an MMT World: An Open Economy Perspective" by Emilio Carnevali and Matteo Deleidi, MMT it is contended that inflation "occurs when the system reaches the point of full utilization of its productive capacity, both in terms of capital utilization and in terms of availability of workers. At this point, the government should curb inflation forces cooling down the effective demand. This is another fundamental task of taxes." As long as there is unused capacity in human or production terms, increased employment will not be inflationary. So Larry summers need not worry that putting all those unemployed people back to work will lead to inflation.

Biden's putting a $15.00 an hour minimum wage in the relief bill is also what MMT advocates in relation to a Federal job guarantee. Real full employment at a minimum wage of $15.00 an hour does not need to be inflationary especially if it is in areas that don't compete with already employed workers. Biden's relief bill will have the effect of putting almost everyone to work with at least an hourly pay of $15.00 an hour. People who are living paycheck to paycheck and employed at $15.00 an hour are not going to contribute to inflation since their demands on the economy are those that can be easily accommodated by existing production and easily increased production. Deficit spending is not a problem. Former Chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan said, "The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default." So the real limit on government spending is inflation which can be controlled by taxes on those sectors of the economy which are not easily upscaled to provide more supply.

There is much unused capacity in the current US economy both in human and material or physical terms. People should be put back to work with a minimum wage of $15.00 per hour. A follow-on bill that would address infrastructure rebuilding and a Green New Deal also needs to be done. Resources may have to be managed by government to control inflation, but the important thing is that work needs to be done in these areas and people need to be put back to work. Inflation can also be offset by the deflationary effect of withdrawing funds form a bloated defense sector.

Off the Top of My Head

Culture Wars: Neither Here Nor There

by John Lawrence, July 4, 2020

So they change a name of  a military base: is one black family any better off? Conservatives love it when the debate is confined to cultural stuff. It doesn't threaten their bank accounts one tiny little bit. But when you get down to anything substantive, anything concrete, like defunding the military-industrial complex and using the money for free public education from pre-school to college, well, wait a minute that's socialism. They already consider public education K-8th socialism. Well what about health care? When you start talking about free health care, or even reasonably priced health care, well that's socialism. Hey let's confine the discussion to whether or not we should allow confederate statues to exist. Taking one down does not make one black family any better off and doesn't threaten the white elite one bit. It doesn't cost them one dollar and it doesn't add one dollar to any black family's income.

So let's talk about concrete issues, ones that could really benefit the hoi polloi and take a few dollars out of wealthy peoples' pockets:

    1. Medicare for All

    2. A Financial Transactions Tax

    3. Forgiveness of student loan debt

    4. A Green New Deal that would create good paying jobs for millions of black, Native American and     Latinx people

    5. Raising the minimum wage to a living wage

    6. A wealth tax

    7. Defunding the military which is the police force of the world and increasing the budget of the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization

Instead of debating these concrete issues conservatives want to argue over symbols. That's where their mentality is at. Don't trample on my flag. Don't trample on my history. Don't burn my flag. None of these symbolic and cultural issues improve the life of any American. They just preserve the status quo and the economic inequality that is only getting worse and which will get worse at a faster rate due to the pandemic. In short the ones mired in these issues know that nothing really will change as long as they can keep the discussion at this level. And those who could profit by changing the system are too often persuaded by those who wouldn't just to argue about symbols. Eliminating all the statues of slaveholders will not change American history one bit and will not make one black person better off.

As long as they don't eliminate the military bases and reduce the inflow of money to the military, the big wigs would be happy to entertain changing the name of Fort Bragg to Fort Rosecrans. General Rosecrans whipped Bragg's ass in Tennesee. As Commander of the Army of the Cumberland, he fought against Confederate General Braxton Bragg at Stones River, and later outmaneuvered him in the brilliant Tullahoma Campaign, driving the Confederates from Middle Tennessee. So it's a logical change of name. But it won't do anything to improve the lives of blacks, native Americans or Latinx. All the government help given to whites like the GI bill after WW II effectively excluded blacks as did all the land given to whites by the Homestead Act. First slavery, then Jim Crow laws served to keep black wealth at a minimum even negative in many cases. Instead of gaining wealth as whites did, they were targeted to be debtors and kept there by PayDay loan operators charging exorbitant rates of interest. Native Americans were gypped out of their lands by Americans not honoring treaties and by outright theft. They were also killed by a pandemic the white man brought with him from Europe. Thus Montezuma's revenge and now maybe COBID will do the same thing to Trump's non-mask wearing base.

So Trump is getting his base excited about cultural issues. It's a total sideshow designed to keep the status quo intact and to let the rich keep on getting richer. The poor, especially blacks, need to be kept in their place. All the progressive legislation designed by Cory Booker to reform the police nationwide will never see the light of day as long as the Senate is controlled by Republicans. He might as well not waste his breath. It's meaningless and never has a chance in hell of passing the Senate and being enacted into law. So why don't the Democrats do something more productive instead of spinning their wheels with great ideas that will never see the light of day.

The Left Is Finally Winning the War of Ideas

Published on Wednesday, December 04, 2019

by Truthdig

Simply take a look at the ideas that are dominating the Democratic presidential race, even though the corporate media has tried to ignore these solutions, attack them, dispute them, and then ignore them all over again.

by Lee Camp

 

19 Comments

Our media is owned and operated by the largest, most aggressive corporations in the world leaving little to no room on the air for the anti-war activists offering free hugs and senseless acts of kindness. But that’s why it’s all the more impressive that in so many areas, we are winning the seemingly endless battle for the mindscape of our country. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Good ideas are like viruses. They grow and spread despite our best efforts to stop them. And yes, our bulbous, awkward species does indeed work very hard to catch and kill good ideas.

At the time I write this column, the first Democratic primaries are approaching with the zest and excitement of an unavoidable bowel movement. Even if you read this a year or two or 10 from now, primaries will still be advancing toward you. As sure as the universe expands, the primaries approach. The moment we finish one election season, another is on the horizon.

This serves two purposes. First, it continuously makes voters think that we matter, that we have a lot of sway over the course this country takes. We don’t. (Well, not as much as we think we do.) And the second purpose is to fill the mainstream media airwaves with vacuous political play-by-play for two straight years. For example, by covering the three-point shift in Pete Buttigieg’s likability amongst Iowans (which matters as much as a three-point shift in the average Iowan’s concern about getting trichinosis from undercooked anchovies), the corporate media cogs can avoid talking about the exploitation of American workers or the massive debt crushing most people or the environmental collapse gripping the planet or the highly advanced, highly illegal surveillance state in which we live.

Our electoral politics is a beautiful smokescreen for the ruling elite.

But no matter what happens in these overtly rigged Democratic National Committee primaries, those of us who care about the world and care about our fellow human beings are winning the war of ideas. Simply take a look at the ideas that are dominating the Democratic presidential race, even though the corporate media has tried to ignore these solutions, attack them, dispute them, and then ignore them all over again.

1) Medicare for All

This is the idea that if you’re 5 years old and you break your arm, no matter how little you get paid at your child labor job, you shouldn’t have to fix your broken arm yourself with a papier-mâché cast made from soiled Kleenex and bird poop. Although  Medicare for All was initially put forward by the Green Party and left-wing activists, and now it’s a mainstream discussion. The idea perseveres despite interminable attacks from the moneyed and the well-heeled as they sit neck-deep in mountains of top-shelf health care. (I hear many of them get young blood transfusions just for kicks on the weekend.) The rich continue to espouse one of the worst systems in the developed world, as if it’s somehow justifiable that two-thirds of Americans who declare bankruptcy each year do so partially because of health care costs.

2) The Green New Deal

This is an economic proposal that would give a majority of Americans a job and switch to renewable energy, among other things. Basically it would solve both our fossil fuel death spiral and unemployment problems in one fell swoop. It was put forward initially by the Green Party and left-wing activists, but then it quickly rose to the level of mainstream discussion, resulting in a bill by Congress. This is an impressive feat even though there are criticisms of the Democratic rewriting of the Green New Deal (such as its failure to address the military-industrial complex, which happens to be the largest polluter in the known world, but maybe we’ll find a lost tribe in the Amazon that runs a few hundred thousand warships on diesel and then our Pentagon will drop down to the second biggest polluter).

3) Legalizing Marijuana

If I have to explain what this is to you, then you clearly haven’t turned on a television in the past 50 years nor caught a glimpse of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (the show, the movie, the action figure, the comic book, the video game, the candy or the song). The legalization of cannabis in all its nifty forms has rapidly spread across the country—which is not just crucial to people who have gained tremendous medical benefits from cannabis but also crucial for anybody who needs to get viciously baked in order to watch the impeachment hearings (which is the only legitimate way to watch the impeachment hearings).

Marijuana has become so widely accepted that Joe Biden recently became a laughingstock when he called weed a “gateway drug.” Yes grandpa, the evil weed is a gateway drug, and rock music is the devil’s work, and dancing with a girl before marriage can cause one’s phallus to fall off. … Not to mention, who is Joe Biden to tell us not to get a little loopy at the end of a long day? How many prescription meds must it take that guy to simply put on his pants each morning?

4) $15 Minimum Wage

I don’t have to tell you why this matters. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. You know what you can buy with $7 these days? A Ding-Dong out of the vending machine. So maybe, after a worker has labored for 39 straight hours, he can tether all the Ding-Dong packages together into a rudimentary raft that will allow him to float downriver to somewhere that treats him better. At $7.25 an hour, no one can possibly get by. I did the math: You’d have to work for 3700 years just to afford a ticket to the Mötley Crüe reunion tour. (And they’re not even good. Imagine if you wanted tickets to see someone good.)

5) Distrust of Mainstream Corporate Media

Even if you’re one of these certifiable nut-bags who still turns on CNN or Fox News every day all day, you still understand that you’re not getting the full truth. You might think you’re getting a piece of it, but not all of it. … Also, you should be euthanized.

(Okay, maybe not euthanized, but anyone who leaves cable news on in the background just to feel warm and cozy should at the very least be left on a faraway island to live out their days. If you’re one of them, please stop it. Corporate media crap is not the audio version of your childhood blankey. It’s pathetic PROPAGANDA. … Sorry to yell.)

6) Distrust of U.S.-Backed Coups and War Games

Most Americans are opposed to endless war now. We’re opposed to harming and killing so many millions in the name of propping up our bloated, belligerent empire that eats entire nations and then vomits up new KFC franchise locations. Obviously the growing disgust among most of the country has not managed to stop the bombs from falling, but it’s a start.

I’m sure you don’t have the time to read the entire list of ideas that were once considered far left and are now mainstream vibrant discussions—abolishing ICE, holding police accountable, distrusting the intelligence community AKA the surveillance state, questioning capitalism, ending factory farming, confronting the extreme climate crisis, etc. etc. Sure, our elections are rigged in favor of the two corporate Wall Street-funded parties. And yes, our media is owned and operated by the largest, most aggressive corporations in the world leaving little to no room on the air for the anti-war activists offering free hugs and senseless acts of kindness. But that’s why it’s all the more impressive that in so many areas, we are winning the seemingly endless battle for the mindscape of our country.

Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of the weekly comedy news TV show “Redacted Tonight With Lee Camp” on RT America.

 

CBO Analysis Shows $15 Federal Minimum Wage Would Raise Pay for 27 Million Workers and Lift 1.3 Million Out of Poverty

Published on Tuesday, July 09, 2019

by Common Dreams

"It has been more than 10 years since congress raised the minimum wage—the longest stretch in history. This is a shameful benchmark. Congress should immediately pass the Raise the Wage Act."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

4 Comments

People demonstrate for a higher minimum wage on a National Day of Action in Miami, Florida. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

A Congressional Budget Office analysis published Monday showed that raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 would significantly increase pay for over 27 million workers and lift 1.3 million people—including hundreds of thousands of children—out of poverty.

The CBO also found that more than doubling the federal minimum wage would boost the income of families earning less than three times the poverty rate by nearly $22 billion.

"Every time a minimum wage increase has been proposed, the extreme right wing and their billionaire campaign contributors claim that jobs will be destroyed. They have been proven dead wrong. It is time to raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour."
—Sen. Bernie Sanders

 

While corporate media headlines emphasized the CBO's estimate that a $15 minimum wage could wipe out over a million jobs, economists disputed this finding as overly pessimistic and noted that—even if such a gloomy prediction is accepted—the analysis showed the benefits of a $15 minimum would still far exceed the costs.

"CBO nevertheless substantially overstates the costs," said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). "CBO finds that the policy would lead to a decline in employment of 1.3 million—though in choosing the parameters that resulted in that conclusion it failed to appropriately weight the highest quality studies in the vast academic literature on this issue."

"As a result," Shierholz added, "policymakers must be skeptical of their assessment of the employment impact, given that other careful reviews of the minimum wage literature have shown that the average study finds small-to-no employment effects of minimum wage increases."

As Common Dreams reported last week, a far-reaching study by economists at the University of California, Berkeley found that raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024 would result in "substantial declines in household and child poverty" without any negative impact on employment or hours worked, even in low-wage states.

"It has been more than 10 years since Congress raised the minimum wage—the longest stretch in history," Shierholz said. "This is a shameful benchmark, reducing the living standards of working families in this country and exacerbating poverty and inequality. Congress should immediately pass the Raise the Wage Act and give this country's lowest wage workers a raise."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and the lead sponsor of the Raise the Wage Act in the Senate, echoed Shierholz in a tweet late Monday.

"Every time a minimum wage increase has been proposed, the extreme right-wing and their billionaire campaign contributors claim that jobs will be destroyed," Sanders wrote. "They have been proven dead wrong. It is time to raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour."

Every time a minimum wage increase has been proposed, the extreme right wing and their billionaire campaign contributors claim that jobs will be destroyed.

They have been proven dead wrong. It is time to raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour. https://t.co/4d2WSrdX8u

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 9, 2019

The CBO analysis comes as House Democrats are expected to vote on the Raise the Wage Act as early as this month. If passed, the legislation would phase in a $15 federal minimum wage by 2024 and index it to inflation thereafter.

Though the Raise the Wage Act has over 200 Democratic sponsors in the House and is backed by nearly 75 percent of Democratic voters, so-called moderates have attempted to derail the bill by pushing for a "regional wage" adjusted to local living costs, arguing that a $15 minimum would lead to job losses in low-wage states.

New York Magazine's Eric Levitz argued Monday that the CBO analysis leaves congressional Democrats with no good reason to stop short of a $15 federal minimum wage.

"Given the scale of CBO's projected benefits, and the uncertainty of its findings on a wage hike's potential drawbacks," Levitz wrote, "[House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi's caucus has no substantive excuse for failing to pass the Raise the Wage Act. And given the state of polling on the $15 minimum wage, Democrats don't have any political excuse, either."

---

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.