CBO weighs in on minimum wage
The Congressional Budget Office agrees with me that the minimum wage isn’t particularly effective as a poverty-fighting tool. Here’s a key calculation: If you raised all workers earning between $5.15 and $7.24 an hour up to the Democrats’ proposed minimum wage of $7.25, they’d get $11 billion of additional wages (based on 2004 income figures). Only $1.6 billion of that, or 15 percent, would have gone to workers in families that are below the poverty line. More than twice as much — 36 percent of the total — would go to families earning at least three times as much as the official poverty line. An expansion of the earned income tax credit, the CBO concludes, would be much more effective at putting cash into poor people’s pockets.
My most recent column on the subject is here.
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David Nicklaus has covered St. Louis business for more than 25 years. His column appears three days a week on the Post-Dispatch business page. 
Apparently the CBO is just another bunch of hard-rearted Republican economists. It’s obvious to all “caring” people — and the politicians who want theri votes — that raising the minimum wage will benefit everyone who is poor.