A Variable Minimum Wage?

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Over at the newly-opened TPMCafe, Senator John Edwards is talking about raising the minimum wage. As he should be. We’ve done posts before on why the minimum wage should be raised (here, here) and why it needs to be done in conjunction with the Earned Income Tax Credit (here), but one of Edward’s commenters brings up another very good point: An effective minimum wage would vary from community to community, based on area food and rent costs. That certainly makes sense—a decent living wage in Manhattan, KS, wouldn’t get you very far here in San Francisco—and it doesn’t seem like the implementation should be all that difficult. The danger, of course, is that businesses would start shifting around to avoid high wages, but I’m not sure how big of an effect that would be, since there are certainly other reasons to sit a business in, say, San Francisco besides the minimum wage levels. (Besides, if enough businesses left a given area, rents would go down, so wages would go down and then businesses would move back in…) Something to consider.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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