Going Down the Road

If our so-called national leadership had not lost its shame gene, surely it would be red-faced over its failure to do some little something about the plummeting value of the minimum wage. Today's miserly minimum of $5.15 an hour delivers a sub-subsistence income of $10,700 a year, if you get full-time work. That's gross, in two meanings of the word. Millions of Americans--most of them adults and supporting families--are working either for this wage or are paid just a few coins more and have their poverty pay pegged to this wage floor.