Raise the Minimum Wage

Working for Change

In this print edition...

• Working for Change, by Tony Pecinovsky
• Vote NO to Save Civil Rights in Michigan, by Clara West
• How Cuba Survived, by Rémy Herrera
• What's Wrong with Globalization?, by Erwin Marquit
• Current Letters (updated 8-25-06)
• Current Poetry (updated 8-25-06)

Five dollars and fifteen cents, the federal minimum wage (FMW), doesn’t buy much these days. With $5.15 you can almost buy two gallons of gas, almost go to the movies, or almost buy two burgers and a soda – at McDonald’s.

A group of wealthy out-of-state businessmen have financed a ballot initiative to turn back the clock on civil rights in Michigan. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to force the people of Michigan to vote on their divisive views this November 7th and misleadingly called their campaign the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.

From an economic point of view, Cuba’s growth performance from 1959 to 1989 was far from bad – despite strong external pressure, especially from the US embargo. Between 1959 and 1989, the Cuban economy recorded an average growth rate in its annual gross domestic product (GDP) of almost 5 percent.

Globalization, as the term is generally used, refers to the extension of the production and distribution of goods and services on a vastly greater international scale than ever before.