Article image   Wages to spend  For the first time since 2007,
Washington is talking seriously about increasing the federal
minimum wage. President Obama favors $10.10 an hour, and the
Congressional Budget Office recently crunched the numbers. The
results gave ammunition to the ayes and nays alike: such an
increase would likely raise wages for 16.5 million Americans,
but at the expense of 500,000 jobs.  Half a million lost jobs is
no small thing. But change comes with costs, and here the
benefits are far greater. Along with the 16.5 million workers
that a $10.10 minimum wage would help directly, the CBO
estimates that another 8 million would reap a spillover effect
on wages. Overall, the change would improve the family incomes
of more than 70 percent of low-wage workers and nudge 900,000
Americans above the poverty line. There’s little question that
increasing the minimum wage would benefit low-income Americans.
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