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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  59
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.
Millions of workers are engaging in jobs characterized by being___
选项 A、rewarding
B、fixed
C、attractive
D、low-paid
答案 D
解析 由题干关键词Millions of workers are engaging in jobs定位至倒数第二段第一句：millions of workers are employed in jobs unremunerative enough that government assistance is necessary just to get by。可见本句的理解主要需要弄明白unremunerative的意思，该词修饰的是jobs，对劳动者们所从事的工作特征进行说明，其后是that引导的结果状语从句：以致必须依靠政府的援助才能勉强维持生计，由此可以推断，这些工作报酬不高，所以需要政府援助，选项[D]与此相符，故为答案。
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