This article suggests that a minimum wage hike is essential not just to everyone’s livelihood, but their safety as well…
> If the gap between rich and poor gets too large, and if
> those at the bottom feel they have no meaningful route to
> the riches at the top, then the fabric of society will
> fray, or even come unraveled entirely.
…
> Shortly before I arrived in Brazil, a British tour bus was
> hijacked and robbed in broad daylight on the way from Rio’s
> international airport to a ritzy beach area. While I was
> there, two Supreme Court justices were carjacked on the
> same road.
> Overall, the murder rate in Brazil is five times that of
> New York City.
…
> The New York Times reported recently on a World Bank study
> concluding that if Brazil had the much lower homicide rate
> of Costa Rica, Brazil’s GDP would have been three to eight
> percent higher in the 1990s.
> As one economist explained in the article, “You have money
> spent on guarding stuff rather than making stuff.” And when
> international investors look around the globe, they choose
> safer places.
http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/article/economist/19750
Boosting the minimum wage is just giving a man a fish, though. Let’s teach him how to fish by raising education funding as well.
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