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  3. The country’s very low minimum wage comes at a high cost. And for taxpayers, it adds up to more than $100 billion a year. Th

The country’s very low minimum wage comes at a high cost. And for taxpayers, it adds up to more than $100 billion a year. Th

admin2022-11-01  30
问题     The country’s very low minimum wage comes at a high cost. And for taxpayers, it adds up to more than $100 billion a year.
    That number comes from a new analysis of safety-net usage by Ken Jacobs of UC Berkeley’s Labor Center. It identifies working families with at least one member who would get a raise if the federal minimum wage were lifted to $15 an hour, and finds that the government spends about $107 billion a year on Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), cash welfare, food stamps, and the earned-income tax credit for those families.
    Raising the minimum wage would not just help them escape poverty. It would also help the government’s bottom line, by freeing up resources to spend on other anti-poverty priorities, such as child care, housing subsidies, and homelessness-prevention initiatives.
    This research comes as the new administration vows to more than double the federal minimum wage, to $15. Last week, President Joe Biden said Democrats’ winning control of the Senate would "raise the odds of prompt action," adding that "no one who works 40 hours a week in America should still live below the poverty line."
    But many do. Pull-time workers making the federal minimum wage bring home just $15,080 a year; all in all, 11 percent of American workers earn poverty wages. This is a straightforward product of federal policies, a chosen technocratic outcome. The federal minimum wage has languished at a measly $7.25 an hour since 2009. That leaves it roughly one-third lower than it was in 1968, in inflation-adjusted terms, despite the fact that the country is now much richer and the economy far bigger. The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that workers earning the minimum wage make $7,000 less each year than their grandparents did half a century ago, in real terms.
    Some argue that the government is subsidizing poverty wages through its working-family benefit programs—padding the bottom lines of fast-food franchises and big-box stores, while also helping financially stressed workers. Jacobs pushed back on that point; the earned-income tax credit does act as a straightforward wage subsidy, he said, but the evidence is unclear when it comes to other programs.
    Still, millions of workers are employed in jobs unremunerative enough that government assistance is necessary just to get by. A low minimum wage—combined with weak mandates for companies to offer benefits and paid leave, and regulations that make unionization difficult— benefits low-wage employers at the expense of both workers and taxpayers.
    To help folks stand on their own two feet, the government can’t just make people work. It has to make work pay. The cost of low wages is too high for the country’s working families. And it’s too high for Uncle Sam as well.
Joe Biden is mentioned to show__________.
选项 A、the fact that the federal minimum wage is currently below $7.50 an hour
B、the government’s resolution to alleviate poverty through lifting the minimum wage
C、the injustice that anyone working 40 hours a week is still in poverty
D、the government’s plan to divert all resources into child care
答案 B
解析 由题干关键词Joe Biden定位至第四段第二句。Joe Biden表示：民主党赢得参议院的控制权将“提高迅速采取行动的可能性”，并补充说， “在美国每周工作40小时的人都不应该生活在贫困线以下。”该句是对第一句的进一步说明。第一句意思是：新一届政府发誓要将联邦最低工资标准提高一倍以上，达到每小时15美元。可见，新一届政府有提高最低工资标准的决心，其目的则是解决贫困问题。第三段最后一句也提到：这也将有助于政府对根本问题的解决，因为这将腾出资源，用于其他扶贫重点项目，如儿童保育、住房补贴和无家可归的预防举措。因此，综上所述，本题答案为选项[B]。
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