Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 18:49:16 -0500
From: mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [WSFA] This is why the middle class =?UTF-8?B?Y2Fu4oCZdCBnZXQgYWhlYWQ=?=
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

And for the SF & techie lists, I certainly think it's relevant, if you're in
IT....

Excerpt:
Hanauer\342\200\231s a billionaire who made his fortune as one of the original
investors in Amazon. The current rules are written to benefit wealthy
capitalists like him, he admits. So, you might ask, why does Hanauer care
about overtime pay for people who make less, much less, than he does?

\342\200\234Ironically,\342\200\235 he writes, when \342\200\234you earn less, and unemployment is high, it
even hurts capitalists like me.\342\200\235 That won\342\200\231t surprise Making Sen$e readers
who\342\200\231ve heard his brand of \342\200\234middle-out economics.\342\200\235 Closing the income gap
wouldn\342\200\231t just benefit the middle class; a stronger middle class is the
source of economic prosperity for everyone, he thinks.
<...>
In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried American workers earned
time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours a week. Not
because capitalists back then were more generous, but because it was the
law. It still is the law, except that the value of the threshold for
overtime pay\342\200\224the salary level at which employers are required to pay
overtime\342\200\224has been allowed to erode to less than the poverty line for a
family of four today. Only workers earning an annual income of under
$23,660 qualify for mandatory overtime. You know many people like that?
Probably not. By 2013, just 11 percent of salaried workers qualified for
overtime pay, according to a report published by the Economic Policy
Institute. And so business owners like me have been able to make the other
89 percent of you work unlimited overtime hours for no additional pay at
all.

In my defense, I\342\200\231m only playing by the rules\342\200\224rules written by and for
wealthy capitalists like me. But the main point is this: These are rules
that President Barack Obama has the power to change with the stroke of a
pen, and with no prior congressional approval. The president could, on his
own, restore federal overtime standards to where they were at their 1975
peak, covering the same 65 percent of salaried workers who were covered 40
years ago. If he did that, about 10.4 million Americans would suddenly be
earning a lot more than they are now. Last March, Obama asked the Labor
Department to update \342\200\234outdated\342\200\235 regulations that mean, as the president
put it in his memo, \342\200\234millions of Americans lack the protections of
overtime and even the right to the minimum wage.\342\200\235 But Obama was not
specific about the changes he wanted to see.

So let me be specific. To get the country back to the same equitable
standards we had in 1975, the Department of Labor would simply have to
raise the overtime threshold to $69,000. In other words, if you earn
$69,000 or less, the law would require that you be paid overtime when you
worked more than 40 hours a week. That\342\200\231s 10.4 million middle-class
Americans with more money in their pockets or more time to spend with
friends and family. And if corporate America didn\342\200\231t want to pay you time
and a half, it would need to hire hundreds of thousands of additional
workers to pick up the slack\342\200\224slashing the unemployment rate and forcing up
wages.
--- end excerpt ---

<http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/middle-class-cant-get-ahead/>

        mark