Thanks to inflation and the rising costs associated with just living here
in the United States, the fight for a $15 an hour minimum wage has been
revised to a number that I think makes a lot more sense $20 an hour.
Now, in fact, there is overwhelming support for
raising the federal minimum wage to that amount, and
that's according to a new study that was done by Data for Progress.
Here's what we know based on the results of this survey,
74% of voters support raising the federal minimum wage to $20 an hour.
That's almost three times the current level of the Abysmal, $7.25 an hour.
>> I'm actually very surprised because that has to include a very significant
number of Republicans or people who say they're independents, but
or conservatives or whatever, and that's really impressive.
You would think based on that, that you might see some politicians actually
campaigning on that and you actually see very few.
Bernie Sanders was just doing some sort of organizing thing for
I think in that case, it was a $17 minimum wage just in the last couple of days.
But how many politicians can you think of that have campaigned on anything
like that?
Some of the Democrats in the last election finally got around to $15 an hour after
mocking anyone who is pushing for that for the last four years or so, but $20, no.
And this is not some fringe thing.
If you're ever led to believe by the news that your economic views are fringe
because you believe things like this, these polls should reassure you that, no,
it's fringe on the news.
It's fringe in the halls of Congress, but it's not fringe amongst regular people,
they know the score.
>> Including Republican voters, I mean, you referenced it but I wanna really
focus and emphasize on that because support is strongest among Democrats.
No surprise, they're Democratic voters, not the politicians.
The politicians are corrupt as hell,
with 89% saying that they favor raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour.
But Independents and Republicans back the idea as well, with 74% of Independents and
60% of Republicans supporting $20 an hour minimum wage, which, by the way,
honestly shouldn't be surprising when you look to red states like Florida, which
passed an increase to their statewide minimum wage through ballot initiatives.
So there's been this interesting disconnect among Republican voters and
the very politicians that they elect,
because while their politicians are working to either privatize or
cut Social Security, the voters actually want a better economic situation,
including increases to the federal minimum wage.
And it's just interesting how that never translates to changes at the ballot box.
But at the same time, I don't really begrudge voters because what
are they gonna vote, they're gonna vote for Democrats.
What have Democrats done?
I mean, have Democrats raised the federal minimum wage?
The last time the federal minimum wage was increased was under the George W Bush
administration.
The changes went into effect in 2009 when Obama became president.
But those were changes that were implemented under Bush and
went into effect under Obama.
>> Well, yeah, and look, there was a vote, thanks to Bernie Sanders,
in the initial few months of Biden's first term, and that didn't work.
The proximal reason is because of Kyyrsten Sinema's thumbs down or whatever.
But if not for her, it's possible that there would have been some other Democrat
that stopped it from happening.
But at the very least, you would hope that in the wake of that,
you would have had every Democrat publicly attacking Kyrsten Sinema for
being against something so reasonable.
This was not $20 an hour that was being voted on,
it was significantly lower and she still opposed it.
And despite the fact that many in the news wouldn't talk about it, and
I don't remember Joe Biden going on a national tour to put pressure on her and
Joe Manchin.
>> No. >> People still.
>> Complimented them, he complimented them.
>> Exactly, he decided that there should be no cost to what they did, and
he made sure as president that there was no high profile,
high level cost to it, no criticism.
I don't even know that they would have cared about that.
But that at least would have been a sign from Joe Biden that he meant when he said
when he said that he was going to get that done as president.
And when they blocked it,
he didn't do anything to make it more likely that it would happen the next time.
>> Yeah, no, you're absolutely right, because he didn't want it.
I think it's pretty clear.
And by the way, look, $15 an hour was what progressives were fighting for in 2016.
Obviously, the cost of living has increased significantly since then.
So if you really look at it, let's go to the research done by MIT in 2021.
That research found that even a $15 an hour minimum wage, more than double
the current minimum wage, isn't a living wage in any state in the US.
Okay, you're barely making enough.
In fact, if you're working a 40 hours a week job with the current
federal minimum wage, you earn about $1,300 a month.
That's it, that's it, $1,300 a month, how are people supposed to live on that?
They can.
So, obviously, the current federal minimum wage isn't enough, even a $15
an hour minimum wage isn't enough, and that's according to researchers at MIT.
And so Congress is not on board, okay?
The push to raise minimum wage was also thwarted in Congress last year as
John alluded to.
And yes, the $15 an hour minimum wage is dead for now,
thanks to Democrats like Manchin and Sinema, who,
of course, Joe Biden continues to give cookies to.
So through the debt ceiling negotiations Senator Joe Manchin,
who torpedoed Biden's agenda, gets a massive handout in the form of fast
tracking a natural gas pipeline that will run through the state of West Virginia.
A project that will benefit him, a project that Manchin has been wanting.
Biden's given it to him.
So you torpedo Biden's agenda and
you get rewarded because Biden never really wanted it, he just didn't.