Julius Caesar’s Poverty Program by Dennis Lynn Pettibone

imum wage of the country. It would be the wage paid to the new worker on the least skilled jobs in the country. Workers who had been on the job longer would expect to make more money than the beginner.

Workers on more skilled jobs would demand higher wages for their skills. One of the inherent characteristics of the work force is that there must be a structure of jobs and wages—certain jobs deserve higher pay than others. This difference in wages reflects many factors, including differing levels of skill required to perform different jobs, differences in responsibility, working conditions, etc. Therefore, an increase in the effective minimum rate does much more than merely raise all wages that are below that level. It is not like a staircase in which all wages below a certain point merely step up the stairs to that point—it is more like an escalator in which all of the wages remain on the same steps they were on, and the structure itself is moved upward. Although this structure is usually compressed immediately after any increase in the lowest wage paid, it always reasserts itself before very much time has passed. This has been proven repeatedly with each increase in the minimum wage required by federal legislation since 1938.

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imum wage of the country. It would be the wage paid to the new worker on the least skilled jobs in the country. Workers who had been on the job longer would expect to make more money than the beginner.

Workers on more skilled jobs would demand higher wages for their skills. One of the inherent characteristics of the work force is that there must be a structure of jobs and wages—certain jobs deserve higher pay than others. This difference in wages reflects many factors, including differing levels of skill required to perform different jobs, differences in responsibility, working conditions, etc. Therefore, an increase in the effective minimum rate does much more than merely raise all wages that are below that level. It is not like a staircase in which all wages below a certain point merely step up the stairs to that point—it is more like an escalator in which all of the wages remain on the same steps they were on, and the structure itself is moved upward. Although this structure is usually compressed immediately after any increase in the lowest wage paid, it always reasserts itself before very much time has passed. This has been proven repeatedly with each increase in the minimum wage required by federal legislation since 1938.