After I blogged yesterday about the shameful fact that the richest country in the world has a minimum wage that 1) hasn’t budged since 1997 and 2) leaves hardworking people and families living in poverty, I came across this fact: 11,600 minimum-wage workers could be paid for an entire year from the Yahoo CEO’s 2004 compensation.
Just think about that for a while. These numbers come from "By the Numbers"–a list put together by Representative Martin Olav Sabo, a Democrat from Minnesota. Sabo’s Income Equity Act of 2005 would limit the tax-deductible salary of a corporation’s CEO to twenty-five times the annual salary of its lowest-paid worker. Currently, that limit is set at $1 million, regardless of the salaries of the workers. There’s a lot more to be done to achieve true economic justice and fairness in this country, but I say this is a proposal that Dems should fight for.
For more on how to make America help the working poor, read this powerful op-ed by former vice presidential candidate John Edwards and John Wilhelm, president of UNITE HERE hotel workers union.
