Some things grow better with age, but the minimum wage is not one of them. For seven years it has languished at $3.35 an hour, and the purchasing power it provides, ravaged by inflation, has dropped steadily: in 1975 dollars, it is worth only $1.55. A breadwinner earning $3.35 an hour would have to work 52 hours a week every week just to clear the $9,044 official poverty level for a family of three.
That situation has outraged labor leaders, who have pressured Congress into considering a major revision of the minimum-wage law. Similar bills, introduced in the Senate by Massachusetts...
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