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.