The EPI in fact argues that the Earned Income Tax Credit is a much more effective anti-poverty measure than the minimum wage.
“Each one percent increase in a state supplement to the federal EITC reduces poverty rates by one percent,” the report’s authors write. The policy also provides an incentive to seek employment, since the credit is only claimed on earned income.
Currently, the state of New York is debating a minimum wage increase. While Democratic legislators rally public support, study after study indicate that
Jeffrey Furman, Chair of the Board of Directors for Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, contends that the increase is needed to help working class families.
“For the sake of New York’s lowest-paid workers …raising New York’s minimum wage must be the very first order of business,” Furman writes in the Huffington Post.
“When you raise the price of anything, people take less of it, including labor,” Forbes contributor William Dunkelberg counters. ”Workers of all ages that are relatively unskilled are adversely impacted by this policy.”
“The research record still shows that minimum wages pose a tradeoff of higher wages for some against job losses for others,” the EPI report’s authors write “and that policymakers need to bear this tradeoff in mind when making decisions about increasing the minimum wage.”
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