Hardworking Marylanders Can't Live on $10,700 per Year!
Progressive Maryland passes statewide Minimum Wage Increase!
February, 2006 - Hardworking Marylanders finally get a long overdue raise as the minimum wage is increased by a full dollar in Maryland, from $5.15 to $6.15 per hour.
Fight Poverty Now! Click here to tell your lawmakers to raise the Federal Minimum Wage.
For almost 70 years, the government has made a basic promise to Americans – that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can live the American Dream – you can raise a family and not live in poverty.
Elected leaders of both parties say we want to reward hard work and discourage dependence on social programs. But for decades, the federal government has not kept that promise. If the federal minimum wage had been indexed to inflation in 1968, it would be over $9.00/hour now. Worse, Congress hasn’t raised the minimum wage since 1997, so the gains from that increase have long since been wiped out by inflation.
Clearly, the federal government needs to raise wages. But we can’t hold our breath waiting for Congress.
So states must act. That’s why Progressive Maryland and Del. Herman Taylor led the drive to enact a statewide Living Wage bill last year. And that’s why PM worked with Senate President Mike Miller and Chairman Dereck Davis to raise the minimum wage in our own state, passing the bill in 2005, and overriding the governor's veto in 2006.
$5.15 per hour works out to only $10,700 per year for a full-time worker. A family cannot live on that in
There are common myths about the minimum wage that special interests will propagate in an effort to thwart this commonsense bill. In particular, the special interests will use the same tired refrain we hear every year a minimum wage increase is proposed in Congress - that a minimum wage hike will result in massive layoffs and hurt the people the bill is intended to help.
In fact, an exhaustive empirical 2005 study done by the Economic Policy Institute concludes: "[H]igh state minimum wages fail to correlate to poor labor market outcomes, let alone have a causal relationship. Similarly, the pattern in job growth by state shows little relation to whether a state has a minimum wage…five states with minimum wages above the federal rate have seen job growth while the nation is still in the hole. An additional two states,
Besides EPI’s research on state-level minimum wage, there is 50 years of experience at the federal level. This is a very modest bill, affecting only 3% of the
Raising the minimum wage will help tens of thousands of 
hardworking Marylanders come closer to making ends meet. And it has enormous popular support. A January 2004 poll by the
Minimum wage is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue. It’s not a liberal issue or a conservative issue. Raising the minimum wage is an American issue. Americans believe that a hard day’s work ought to earn a family-supporting wage. Click here to tell Congress and the White House to embrace this quintessentially American value. Thanks for making Maryland and America fairer, stronger, and freer.
Fight Poverty Now! Click hereto tell your lawmakers to raise the Federal Minimum Wage.
