Nationally in 2009 3.6 million people worked at or below the minimum hourly rate. That’s a large part of the population clinging to or off the side of a financial cliff.
Well November 9th the Vermont Department of Labor announced that the state’s minimum wage will go up on January 1st 2013. From the current rate of $8.46 it will go up fourteen cents to $8.60. For tipped workers the current $4.10 will gain seven cents bringing that to $4.17.The increase is a result from the rate being adjusted to the consumer price index.
Vermont is one of sixteen states with rates higher than the federal minimum of $7.25. Washington State is the highest at $9.06, five states have no minimum rate and the rest of the states are at or below the federal rate.
How far does the minimum go? [after the jump]
Here is some perspective in the form of a chart that shows how many hours per week minimum wage workers would have to work to afford rent and utilities on a modest two bedroom apartment. 
And how about Papa John’s pizza owner John Schattner who is literally at the other end of the minimum wage. Schattner recently said that he feels he just has to make up the costs of the Affordable Care Act by passing them on to his minimum wage employees and his customers.
“I got in a bunch of trouble for this,” he said, referring to the comments he made in August, according to Naples News. “That’s what you do, is you pass on costs. Unfortunately, I don’t think people know what they’re going to pay for this.”
So Papa John Schattner (a Romney supporter and fundraiser) will reduce workers hours and raise his pizza prices too. Must have been a heart wrenching decision for a man worth $402.6 million back in 2006 that lives in a 40,000 sq. ft mega mansion. The place is complete with a 22-car underground parking garage, built-in car wash and motorized turntable to arrange the limousines
Minimum wage, Yah! It really is the least they can do.
You will notice that no one has even tried, in decades, to tie minimum wage to “minimum liveble wage.”
lay off both of them. I cannot in good conscience pass on this draconian increase to my customers. If I did, the plants that I sell will suddenly be too expensive (1.005 a plant versus the old price of $1.00 per plant).
Hell, Congresspeople are your basic ‘unskilled’ labor. How’s come they get paid so much? And they take tips too and don’t declare it. As Harry Dean Stanton put it in Repo: “Find out how much they owe and make them pay.”