California will raise its minimum wage to $10/hour, leading the way again
by David Atkins
Let the sunshine in:
A bill that would boost California's minimum wage to $10 an hour by 2016 won approval by the state Legislature on Thursday and was sent to Gov. Jerry Brown, who said he would sign it.
The measure would raise the current $8 minimum wage to $9 an hour next July 1 and to $10 on Jan. 1, 2016.
The 25% increase would be the first minimum-wage hike in California in five years and would put extra money in the pockets of an estimated 2.4 million Californians.
"This is the time to raise the minimum wage to provide relief for hard-working families," said the bill's author, Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville). About 3 of 5 minimum-wage earners are 26 or older, he stressed
Labor unions lobbied heavily for the bill, both in the Legislature and at the governor's office. Business groups opposed it.
The bill won final passage in the Assembly on Thursday evening by a 51-25 vote. Earlier in the day it received a 26-11 vote of approval by the state Senate.
We live in an era when asset holders take all the gains while wage earners get the shaft. We won't fix our problems until that trend is reversed.
Raising the minimum wage slightly isn't a huge fix, but it's a major step in the right direction. All too often liberals focus on government services and the safety net. Those things are crucially important, to be sure, but they're no substitute for changing the skewed rules that allow the asset class to walk away with all the loot.
National Democrats may still be mired in centrist DLC economic politics. But in places like New York, California and Massachusetts, the progressive economic revival is already well underway not just at a grassroots level, but at an institutional one as well.
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