By Juliana Kaplan
Business Insider, Jan 15, 2021
President-elect Joe Biden's newly unveiled $1.9 trillion stimulus package includes one important economic measure — raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. ...
That means over 20 million workers could get a raise — and a new study finds the pay bump could also be a boon for taxpayers.
The study, which comes from the UC Berkeley Labor Center, found that the country's current low minimum wage costs taxpayers more than $100 billion a year. That's because nearly half of the working families who would benefit from the pay bump rely on at least one safety net program, such as SNAP or Medicaid. ...
"Business owners welcome President-elect Biden's call to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 because they know we can't build a strong economy on a minimum wage that pays workers too little to live on," Holly Sklar, CEO of Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, said in a statement to Insider.
"Businesses depend on customers who make enough to buy what they are selling, from food to clothes to car repairs. We're in the longest period in history without a minimum wage raise, and that's bad for business as well as workers."...
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