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To Fight Poverty, Raise the Minimum Wage? Or Abolish It?
The minimum wage has stagnated at $7.25 an hour for more than a decade. Is increasing it to $15 the best way to fight poverty?
Wednesday, March 17th, 2021
jane coaston
Today on The Argument, what’s the downside to paying people more? [MUSIC PLAYING] Among the most popular and blunt tools to fight poverty is a minimum wage, but it doesn’t actually do that. Because if you have a full-time job that pays the federal minimum wage of $7.25, you’re only making about $15,000 a year, not enough to rent a one-bedroom apartment in 95% of counties in the United States. Raising the federal minimum to $15 an hour is something progressives have been fighting for for years. They came close this month, but an amendment to raise the minimum wage was ultimately removed from Biden’s COVID relief bill. Is raising the minimum wage or having one at all the right way to battle poverty? I’m Jane Coaston, and I think it’s past ti
Loved ones devastated over death of daughter in crash on Loop 101
Loved ones devastated over death of daughter in crash on Loop 101
PHOENIX - The family of a Mesa woman killed in a crash on the Loop 101 on Feb. 19 is remembering her.
Loved ones of 24-year-old Yarinet Rodriguez are devastated. Knowing the way she passed, it hurts, said Yarinet s sister-in-law, Melisa Gutierrez.
On Feb. 19, Rodriguez was ready to ride her new motorcycle. She was excited because she had just got it. She had just got the plates for it. She was gonna go to work, maybe show it off, said Gutierrez.
I’m Ross Douthat. And this is “The Argument.” [MUSIC PLAYING]
This week, it’s Trump impeachment, the sequel. And then, how should we think about social media banning the president of the United States? The House of Representatives has voted to impeach Donald Trump for the second time, charging him with incitement of insurrection, with 10 Republicans joining their Democratic colleagues in voting to impeach. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he will not use emergency powers to bring the Senate back into session for a trial before January 19, meaning that the trial will take place in a Biden administration. And since it won’t remove Trump from office, the only purpose of a conviction will be to punish the soon to be ex-president and perhaps to bar him from running for president again. And it’s for precisely those purposes, according to our own newspaper’s reporting and others, that McConnell is apparently considering trying to deliver enough Republican votes for
archived recording (joe biden)
archived recording (donald trump)
archived recording (joe biden)
ross douthat
Today, we talk about this week’s violence at the Capitol, the elections in Georgia, and what it all means for this highly unusual transition of power in the White House.
Despite objections from a handful of Republican senators and many more Republicans in the House, Congress has certified Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, but not before the extraordinary spectacle of Congress’s business being suspended for hours after thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol following a rambling and provoking speech by the president, smashing windows, breaking into offices, and posing for photographs on the dais of the Senate. Vice President Mike Pence was evacuated. Lawmakers hid in undisclosed locations. The army deployed the DC National Guard. To discuss these surreal events, Michelle and I are joined by editorial board member Michelle Cottle, a frequent “Argument
michelle goldberg
Right, and as they see it, if George W. Bush was more of an authoritarian menace than Donald Trump, then it makes no sense to form a coalition with the people who supported and enabled George W. Bush to stand against fascism.
ross douthat
Iâve sort of participated in this argument as a weird right of center adjunct to it, right? Because a big swath of my fellow conservatives who didnât vote for Trump agreed with at least some of the fascism discourse, right? Which is one reason why people on the left were so suspicious of it because it was bringing in Bill Kristol, these kind of figures from the Bush era, into the left-wing coalition. And instead of Bill Kristol worrying about Islamofascism in the Middle East, he is worried about it at home, and shouldnât we be skeptical of that and so on? And I was closer to the left position in this, in the sense that I agreed with, for instance, the political theorist Corey Robin wrote a bunch of pieces talking