On Tuesday, President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address, focusing heavily on the issue of income inequality and the minimum wage. Obama proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, up from the current standard of $7.25 per hour, and to tie the minimum wage to a cost-of-living adjustment, meaning that it will rise with inflation over time. Should Congress prove unproductive on the issue, Obama promised to achieve this goal through an executive order. Do you agree with the president's plan to raise the minimum wage, even if it means bypassing Congress entirely?

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Dean Lisa Lynch

As a major employer, the U.S. government helps sets the norms for pay and working conditions across the country. Approximately two million workers are hired through federal contracts. The National Employment Law Project estimates that about 20 percent of these workers have earnings below the poverty line and up to 40 percent earn less than a living wage. One of the myths of minimum wages is that only teenagers receive them. The reality is that the average age of minimum-wage workers is 35, the majority of impacted employees work full time and more than a quarter of minimum wage workers have children. More than two decades of research suggests that modest increases in the minimum wage will have little or no negative impact on jobs. Increasing the wage paid to these workers to $10.10 an hour will have a positive impact on these workers and their families. 

Lisa Lynch is the dean and Maurice P. Hexler Professor of Social and Economic Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

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Prof. Gordon Fellman (SOC)

Republicans in Congress decided to undermine Obama completely from his first day in office. The Tea Party has polarized our politics just about to the breaking point. My thought is that the assumption that rich, white, straight, Christian men can run the country forever is undermined by the demographic realities of our society, and that the Tea Party/Republican refusal to recognize a non-white as president (all that birth certificate nonsense and the insistence that Obama is a Muslim) elided, once he was elected (and re-elected) into a determination to make his presidency fail. This could be seen as a desperate and racist move toward trying to re-establish the hegemony of rich, white, straight, Christian men. If Congress is ideologically determined to do nothing to support anything Obama proposes, using executive orders to bypass Congress seems to me a fitting response. His caving to their intransigence, which he has done more than once, is neither productive nor dignified nor appropriate for leading the country.
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Prof. Gordon Fellman (SOC) is the chair of Peace, Conflict and Coexistence Studies, and professor of SOC 112b: "Social Class and Social Change."
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Aaron Fried '14

President Obama's proposed edict to raise federal employees' minimum wage is merely an executive power grab draped in shoddy economics. While the President and his cronies in the Beltway bleat that their top priority is "jobs, jobs, jobs," this proposal  clearly reveals their commitment to employment as political superficiality. All minimum wage policies increase unemployment by artificially cutting demand for  inexpensive, unskilled workers; this disproportionately harms the poor and uneducated. It is essential, however, to focus on this abusive overreach of executive power. According to Article I of the Constitution, the President does not and must not have the authority to legislate at all, let alone arbitrarily decree prices; he is not a king. The fact that he is unilaterally seizing this power is particularly disturbing, given America's current slide towards an authoritarian police state. Everyone, regardless of political affiliation, ought to oppose this callous usurpation of  the democratic process.

Aaron Fried '14 is Vice President of Brandeis Libertarians and a Columnist for the Justice.

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Avi Snyder '13

Pledging to raise the minimum wage is good politics--but bad policy. A strong body of economic research indicates that a minimum wage hike would modestly increase unemployment by raising the cost of labor and accelerating the trend toward automation of lower-skill work. Raising the minimum wage would also do little alleviating poverty. After all, two-thirds of minimum-wage workers live in families with incomes above 150 percent of the poverty line, and most are not heads of households.President Obama's pledge to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors is more empty symbolism that serious policy reform. If he really wants to get Americans back to work, he should consider lowering the minimum wage for the long-term unemployed, incentivizing employers to hire them. And if the president wants to make work pay, he should work with Congress to follow through on his proposal to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Compared to a minimum wage increase, an EITC expansion would better direct resources to poor families while keeping labor costs down for employers.  

Avi Snyder '13 was President of Brandeis Mock Trial, and interned at the Heritage Foundation's Center for Policy Innovation. He now works in public policy in Washington D.C.

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Katharine Cohen '14

The question as to whether this is constitutional could perhaps be left to judicial review, which keeps a check on executive power. As far as if this is an appropriate time to invoke the power of executive order, it seems as urgent a time as any. We go to war for what we believe are moral reasons, for example when people's lives or freedom are at stake. The war on poverty is a universally understood moral pursuit. The lives of those who live in poverty in the United States are in imminent danger, and therefore I see raising the minimum wage as not only a natural and reasonable response to inflation, but more specifically as vital step in the war on poverty and improving the well-being of all Americans.

Katharine Cohen '14 is the president of the Poverty Action Coalition.

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Christa Caggiano '17
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Our Congress is painfully partisan, and has willfully demonstrated its impotence by being the least productive Congress in the history of our country. So somehow I find myself applauding Obama for promising to use an executive order to remedy the wage gap. Sure, it teeters on the edge of being undemocratic, but in my opinion, having a sort of nebulous democracy that accomplishes something is much better than having a democracy that does not do anything at all. America is facing some serious issues, but as one of the world's wealthiest countries, the prevalence of families living under the poverty line
should not be one of them. Someone needs to at least try to make meaningful change. Obama's efforts to raise the minimum wage is a good place to start.
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Christa Caggiano '17 is a member of Amnesty International. She intends to be a Biological Physics and Art History double major.
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Abe Clark '17
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Only through governmental action can we enforce that Wal-Mart and similar corporations pay their workers enough to avoid the humiliation of turning to governmental assistance; besides improving the lives of millions of hard-working Americans, this will save taxpayers billions of dollars in wasteful spending. That being said, attempting to push any type of minimum-wage increase through America's least productive Congress in history would be futile; after five years of working with Congress, Obama is acutely aware of this fact. Circumventing the needlessly partisan efforts Congress makes to impede progress is both necessary and justifiable for Obama. The president's decision to use the executive order in this regard is well within the reasonable confines of presidential power: Obama has already made 167 executive orders, and his predecessor President George W. Bush made 291. 
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Abe Clark '17 intends to be a Physics and History double major.