In this video, famed economist Robert Reich takes a pen to paper and brilliantly lays out how a $15 minimum wage would be an amazing thing for America, not only for the workers but for the businesses as well.
“A basic moral principle that the majority of Americans, be they Democrats, Republicans or Independents can agree on is the idea that nobody who works full time should be in poverty, nor should their families. But in recent years, we’ve seen a growth in the number of working poor, people working fulltime- sometimes sixty or more hours a week- for such low wages that they remain impoverished.”
He then explains in two minutes how the minimum wage has failed to keep up with inflation, how money in breadwinner’s pockets creates demand for goods and services, which creates more jobs. He cites the success of Seattle and San Francisco in raising their wages and the recent cursory attempts at responding to the massive outcry by corporations like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s as a sign of success and the hopes of more to come.
Watch it here, courtesy of MoveOn.org: