A new study out of the General Accounting Office (GAO) - arguably the least political part of the executive branch - found that millions of families with a worker earning the federal minimum wage are living in poverty.

About 20% of families with a worker earning the federal minimum wage - $7.25 an hour - are living in poverty. Now, keep in mind, most of those families have somebody else in the family who is not working the minimum wage or have additional wages coming into the household. While household income is just slightly above where it was in 1980, individual incomes are a little more than half what they were in 1980. And it's really simple. You've got multiple people in houses going to work.

So Bernie Sanders has introduced legislation called the "Raise the Wage Act of 2017". It has 30 senate cosponsors and would hike the federal minimum wage to $15 and, most importantly, index it to inflation.

And by the way, that hike would take place over about a 7 year period. It goes up to $15 by 2024. So not a lot of immediate impact, at least on the businesses or the people.

Sanders says:

"The gap between the richest Americans and everyone else is wider than at any time since the 1920s. Instead of giving huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, we must invest in critical programs that help working families make ends meet and lift millions of Americans out of poverty."

Well, if he's talking about raising the minimum wage, I'm all in.

But there's this enormous subsidy...

-Thom

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