Business owner Nick Hannauer has a good idea: By executive order the President could raise the salary level at which employers are required to pay employees time-and-a-half for every hour worked beyond 40 hours a week. In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried workers qualified for such overtime pay, and the threshold for receiving it was $69,000 in today’s dollars. But since then the value of the threshold has eroded to $23,660, so just 11 percent of salaried workers now qualify. If Obama raised the threshold back to the same standard we had in 1975, and everyone earning up to $69,000 got overtime pay, Hannauer estimates 10.4 million middle-class Americans would get a raise. Or theyd have more time off, and corporate America would have to hire hundreds of thousands of additional workers to pick up the slack—slashing the unemployment rate and forcing up wages. The right will react to this like they do to raising the minimum wage – calling it a job killer. But in fact, putting more money into the pockets of more workers gives employers more customers, and thereby an incentive to hire more workers. What do you think of Hannauers idea?
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 15:15:56 +0000
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