Day: April 1, 2024

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on April 1, 2024. By Marc Stier, Executive Director, Pennsylvania Policy Center I took my first regular paid job as a hotel bellhop in 1966 when I was eleven. It was hard work—in many ways harder than anything I do today. People came to stay for a week or three and that meant a summer of schlepping heavy bags, sometimes up two flights of stairs. The tips were sometimes good and sometimes not. The minimum wage in 1968 was $1.60. But when I got my first paycheck, I was astounded to see that my pay rate was only eighty cents per hour. This made no sense to me, so I went to speak to my boss. I said, “Mom, why am I only getting paid half of the minimum wage?” She explained the tipped minimum wage to me that day and ever since I’ve… Continue reading

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on April 1, 2024.  By Marc Stier, Executive Director, Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center As I documented in a previous blog post, there is no question that the minimum wage is worth less than what it was at an earlier time in our history, even though we are a far more prosperous country today than in the past. And yet large numbers of people—more than 21% of all workers in Pennsylvania—earn less than $15 per hour or just above it. And that’s why we need a minimum wage. It is one of the critical policies that, like the right to form unions, the social safety net, and a tax system that asks the rich to pay at a higher rate than the poor, ensures we have an economy that works for all of us, not just the wealthy owners of huge corporations. We show… Continue reading