U.S. Senators Patty Murray and Bernie Sanders published an editorial in The Seattle Times announcing they have joined forces to introduce legislation that would impose a $15 national minimum wage, an increase of 107%.  In arguing their case, Senators Murray and Sanders make several claims that are so patently false or misleading that it requires a multi-blog response. 

This is the second installment of busting some of those minimum wage myths.

In their editorial, Senators Murray and Sanders make the claim that today’s federal minimum wage (which they call a “starvation wage”) “is a major reason why more than 43 million Americans are living in poverty today. People are working, and they’re working hard. But they’re going nowhere in a hurry.”

That makes for a nice sound bite, but it just isn’t true.

The fact is the majority of people living in poverty don’t work.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2015, 24 million of adults age 18-64 between the ages of 18 to 64-year-old lived under the poverty line; about 15 million of them (62%) didn't have a job during the year. Of those that did work, just 2.5 million worked full time (10%) while 7 million worked part time (28%).

So of the working age adults living in poverty, nearly two-thirds do not work.  Of the close to one-third that do work, just 10% work full time.

Low wages aren’t the problem, it’s lack of a job.  The few living in poverty that are working may be “working hard,” as Senators Murray and Sanders lament, but the overwhelming majority of them aren’t working at all.  

Which is why multiple studies examining the effects of minimum wage increases on income and poverty have concluded that past minimum wage hikes have had no effect on poverty.

I won't even delve into the ironic fact that increasing the minimum wage reduces job opportunities and available hours for low-wage workers, thereby decreasing income and increasing poverty.

When Senators Murray and Sanders opine that "a basic principle of American economic life should be that if you work 40 hours or more a week, you do not live in poverty," they should be thrilled that is rarely ever the case.  If an individual works full time, the odds they will live in poverty are quite low.  It's the ones who don't have a job that we need to worry about.

Increasing wages to help people who don’t have job—hardly a sound strategy to "lift workers out of poverty."  A better suggestion comes from economist and commentator Walter Williams, who as one of his five steps to staying out of poverty is to "take a job, any kind of job."