Sacramento workers want to raise the minimum wage, but will it hurt small businesses? Ann Stevens is quoted in an article about raising the minimum wage.
Sacramento News & Review, April 9, 2015
Imagine you’re a 37-year-old woman, three months pregnant, living
in the Arden-Arcade area, taking the bus to your job at Burger
King, where every week you work 40 hours but only earn $9.25 for
each.
UC Davis economics professor and director of the Center for
Poverty Research Ann Huff Stevens says that when people are
“talking about moving $9 an hour to $15 an hour, we know
virtually nothing” about how that will impact employment or small
businesses. “We really don’t know, and so there’s a risk.”
Her advice for Sacramento would be to carefully raise wages at
the bottom, make small adjustments to the minimum wage, and also
think about using the tax system to benefit low-income workers
(such as lobbying for a statewide earned income tax credit, which
would “effectively be a subsidy for low-income workers.”)
