One of the topics we were discussing about in class was the minimum wage, when our professor mentioned how there is a man who is going to put forth a vote on the ballot this November for the people to increase the minimum wage for California. This actually interested me quite a bit so I decided to do a bit of research to figure out more information on this subject. I found an article online that tells all about the man behind this measure and why he believes it will be a good idea for the wage to increase.
Behind the measure is a man named Ron Unz. His background is that he is a conservative man who was a software developer, a theoretical physicist from Harvard, and a publisher of the American Conservative magazine. What he wants to put into an effect is establishing the minimum wage at $12 dollars an hour, and to do this he wants to have the people vote on it issue on the ballot this November. He is also doing a great job at convincing both liberals and conservatives to back this issue. Its very interesting to be hearing a conservative talking about and having the position of wanting the wage increased, but his idea behind it has to do with logic.
He takes the standpoint of saying if businesses pay their low wage employees more, it will be taking away from what the taxpayers assist to the low-income people through food stamps, housing aid, Medicaid, etc. Our state has such a high cost of living and if we were to increase the minimum wage to $12 it would essentially be about $9.25 at the federal level if converted for living expense. This would pull a tremendous amount of people out of poverty and our working families would get about $15 billion per year. Also money would be saved for the taxpayers from not paying as much to the programs that assist the poor people. He also has an argument for the rich who might argue against his wanting to raise the wages. Unz says investing $2 million today would raise the annual incomes of low-wage workers by $15 billion. That is a tremendous increase.
I am really interested on how this will all play out and even just with the people involved in agreeing for this cause. I will definitely continue on watching what happens now and in November.
For more information check out this website
or just search around about this topic online