This week's question: President Barack Obama has proposed
raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour, up from its current
$7.25 per hour (it's $7.78 per hour in Colorado.)Here's what
members of the EAB think.According to the Labor Department, the
purchasing power of the federal minimum wage, after adjusting
for inflation, has dropped 20 percent since 1967. At some level,
higher minimum wages may cause job losses, but available data
indicate this is unlikely to occur with an increase from $7.25
to $9 (about $18,000 per year). The bad news: making ends meet
is still difficult. The good: such increased wages are spent
locally, and right away. Given the multiplier effect and
velocity of money, positive things happen to an economy when it
is fed from the bottom up. Since states are permitted to set
minimum wages higher than the federal rate, where state
differences are significant they create laboratories at shared
borders. In 2007, while Idaho was content with the federal
minimum wage of $5.15, the state of Washingto