July, 24 2014, 11:00am EDT
Pay-Cut Clock Documents Billions of Dollars Lost by Minimum-Wage Workers
Today, on the fifth anniversary of the last increase in the minimum wage, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) debuts a pay-cut clock to show how much, down to the second, minimum-wage workers continue to lose as long as the wage remains frozen at its current level.
WASHINGTON
Today, on the fifth anniversary of the last increase in the minimum wage, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) debuts a pay-cut clock to show how much, down to the second, minimum-wage workers continue to lose as long as the wage remains frozen at its current level.
The minimum wage was last raised in 2009, when it went from $6.55 to $7.25 per hour. While this was a much needed increase in pay for millions of minimum-wage and low-wage workers, inflation has eroded the purchasing power of the minimum wage since then. This essentially amounts to a continual pay cut for millions of workers. To document the dollar amount of this pay cut, each second, CEPR's "Minimum-Wage Workers Pay-Cut Clock" updates the total cumulative amount minimum wage workers in the U.S. have lost since the last increase in the minimum wage. Currently that amount is over $6 billion and climbing.
Even when raised to $7.25, the current minimum wage fell below its inflation-adjusted 1968 level, the historic high for the minimum wage. To illustrate just how low today's minimum wage is, the clock also shows and updates the cumulative dollars lost by minimum wage workers since 2009 if the minimum wage then had been at its inflation-adjusted 1968 level.
The Pay-Cut Clock will be featured in today's press conference held by U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), U.S. Representative George Miller (D-CA), and U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) commemorating the anniversary.
Christine Owen, the Executive Director of the National Unemployment Law Project and a speaker at the press conference, said of the pay-cut clock and the minimum wage, "This 'pay-cut clock' shows just how much congressional failure to raise the minimum wage is costing America's working families and the economy overall. With millions of workers losing billions in pay since 2009--and hundreds of billions of dollars since the high water mark for the minimum wage in 1968--, it's no wonder families are falling farther behind and income inequality has exploded even as corporate profits and CEO compensation soar. Corporate chieftains and elected officials would never countenance this gutting of pay for the highly compensated. That they find it acceptable for workers at the bottom of the pay scale is indefensible."
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) was established in 1999 to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives. In order for citizens to effectively exercise their voices in a democracy, they should be informed about the problems and choices that they face. CEPR is committed to presenting issues in an accurate and understandable manner, so that the public is better prepared to choose among the various policy options.
(202) 293-5380LATEST NEWS
Billionaire Palantir Co-Founder Pushes Return of Public Hangings as Part of 'Masculine Leadership' Initiative
"Immaturity masquerading as strength is the defining personal characteristic of our age," said one critic in response.
Dec 07, 2025
Venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of data platform company Palantir, is calling for the return of public hangings as part of a broader push to restore what he describes as "masculine leadership" to the US.
In a statement posted on X Friday, Lonsdale said that he supported changing the so-called "three strikes" anti-crime law to ensure that anyone who is convicted of three violent crimes gets publicly executed, rather than simply sent to prison for life.
"If I’m in charge later, we won’t just have a three strikes law," he wrote. "We will quickly try and hang men after three violent crimes. And yes, we will do it in public to deter others."
Lonsdale then added that "our society needs balance," and said that "it's time to bring back masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable."
Lonsdale's views on public hangings being necessary to restore "masculine leadership" drew swift criticism.
Gil Durán, a journalist who documents the increasingly authoritarian politics of Silicon Valley in his newsletter "The Nerd Reich," argued in a Saturday post that Lonsdale's call for public hangings showed that US tech elites are "entering a more dangerous and desperate phase of radicalization."
"For months, Peter Thiel guru Curtis Yarvin has been squawking about the need for more severe measures to cement Trump's authoritarian rule," Durán explained. "Peter Thiel is ranting about the Antichrist in a global tour. And now Lonsdale—a Thiel protégé—is fantasizing about a future in which he will have the power to unleash state violence at mass scale."
Taulby Edmondson, an adjunct professor of history, religion, and culture at Virginia Tech, wrote in a post on Bluesky that the rhetoric Lonsdale uses to justify the return of public hangings has even darker intonations than calls for state-backed violence.
"A point of nuance here: 'masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable' is how lynch mobs are described, not state-sanctioned executions," he observed.
Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll argued that Lonsdale's remarks were symbolic of a kind of performative masculinity that has infected US culture.
"Immaturity masquerading as strength is the defining personal characteristic of our age," he wrote.
Tech entrepreneur Anil Dash warned Lonsdale that his call for public hangings could have unintended consequences for members of the Silicon Valley elite.
"Well, Joe, Mark Zuckerberg has sole control over Facebook, which directly enabled the Rohingya genocide," he wrote. "So let’s have the conversation."
And Columbia Journalism School professor Bill Grueskin noted that Lonsdale has been a major backer of the University of Austin, an unaccredited liberal arts college that has been pitched as an alternative to left-wing university education with the goal of preparing "thoughtful and ethical innovators, builders, leaders, public servants and citizens through open inquiry and civil discourse."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Hegseth Defends Boat Bombings as New Details Further Undermine Administration's Justifications
The boat targeted in the infamous September 2 "double-tap" strike was not even headed for the US, Adm. Frank Bradley revealed to lawmakers.
Dec 07, 2025
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Saturday defended the Trump administration's policy of bombing suspected drug-trafficking vessels even as new details further undermined the administration's stated justifications for the policy.
According to the Guardian, Hegseth told a gathering at the Ronald Reagan presidential library that the boat bombings, which so far have killed at least 87 people, are necessary to protect Americans from illegal drugs being shipped to the US.
"If you’re working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you," Hegseth said. "Let there be no doubt about it."
However, leaked details about a classified briefing delivered to lawmakers last week by Adm. Frank Bradley about a September 2 boat strike cast new doubts on Hegseth's justifications.
CNN reported on Friday that Bradley told lawmakers that the boat taken out by the September 2 attack was not even headed toward the US, but was going "to link up with another, larger vessel that was bound for Suriname," a small nation in the northeast of South America.
While Bradley acknowledged that the boat was not heading toward the US, he told lawmakers that the strike on it was justified because the drugs it was carrying could have theoretically wound up in the US at some point.
Additionally, NBC News reported on Saturday that Bradley told lawmakers that Hegseth had ordered all 11 men who were on the boat targeted by the September 2 strike to be killed because "they were on an internal list of narco-terrorists who US intelligence and military officials determined could be lethally targeted."
This is relevant because the US military launched a second strike during the September 2 operation to kill two men who had survived the initial strike on their vessel, which many legal experts consider to be either a war crime or an act of murder under domestic law.
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, watched video of the September 2 double-tap attack last week, and he described the footage as “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.”
“Any American who sees the video that I saw will see its military attacking shipwrecked sailors,” Himes explained. “Now, there’s a whole set of contextual items that the admiral explained. Yes, they were carrying drugs. They were not in position to continue their mission in any way... People will someday see this video and they will see that that video shows, if you don’t have the broader context, an attack on shipwrecked sailors.”
While there has been much discussion about the legality of the September 2 double-tap strike in recent days, some critics have warned that fixating on this particular aspect of the administration's policy risks taking the focus off the illegality of the boat-bombing campaign as a whole.
Daphne Eviatar, director for security and human rights for Amnesty International USA, said on Friday that the entire boat-bombing campaign has been "illegal under both domestic and international law."
"All of them constitute murder because none of the victims, whether or not they were smuggling illegal narcotics, posed an imminent threat to life," she said. "Congress must take action now to stop the US military from murdering more people in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Leaked Memo Shows Pam Bondi Wants List of 'Domestic Terrorism' Groups Who Express 'Anti-American Sentiment'
"Millions of Americans like you and I could be the target," warned journalist Ken Klippenstein of the new memo.
Dec 07, 2025
A leaked memo written by US Attorney General Pam Bondi directs the Department of Justice to compile a list of potential "domestic terrorism" organizations that espouse "extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment."
The memo, which was obtained by journalist Ken Klippenstein, expands upon National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), a directive signed by President Donald Trump in late September that demanded a "national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts."
The new Bondi memo instructs law enforcement agencies to refer "suspected" domestic terrorism cases to the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), which will then undertake an "exhaustive investigation contemplated by NSPM-7" that will incorporate "a focused strategy to root out all culpable participants—including organizers and funders—in all domestic terrorism activities."
The memo identifies the "domestic terrorism threat" as organizations that use "violence or the threat of violence" to advance political goals such as "opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality."
Commenting on the significance of the memo, Klippenstein criticized mainstream media organizations for largely ignoring the implications of NSPM-7, which was drafted and signed in the wake of the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
"For months, major media outlets have largely blown off the story of NSPM-7, thinking it was all just Trump bluster and too crazy to be serious," he wrote. "But a memo like this one shows you that the administration is absolutely taking this seriously—even if the media are not—and is actively working to operationalize NSPM-7."
Klippenstein also warned that NSPM-7 appeared to be the start of a new "war on terrorism," but "only this time, millions of Americans like you and I could be the target."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular