increasing-minimum-wage

Exploitation. Now, there__ a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate. 42 It is a word that speaks to the fact that poverty is not just a product of low incomes. It is also a product of extractive markets. Boosting poor people__ incomes by increasing the minimum wage or public benefits, say, is absolutely crucial. But not all of those extra dollars will stay in the pockets of the poor. Wage hikes are tempered if rents rise along with them, just as food stamps are worth less if groceries in the inner city cost more__nd they do, as much as 40 percent more, by one estimate. 43 Poverty is two-faced__ matter of income and expenses, input and output__nd in a world of exploitation, it will not be effectively ameliorated if we ignore this plain fact.