Today's minimum wage is 22 percent below its late 1960s peak, after adjusting for inflation. Raising it to the $10-an-hour range would help to offset some of the unfavorable trends facing low-wage workers, including stagnant or falling real wages and inadequate bargaining power that leaves them solidly on the "have-not" side of the inequality divide.
For too many American women, the dream of "having it all" has morphed into "just hanging on." This is not about handouts. This is about smart economic policy. Working women are the core of our economy. Leave them out and you don't have a robust economy. Lead with them and you do.
What makes a job meaningless? After more than 40 years of research, we know that people struggle to find meaning when they lack autonomy, variety, challenge, performance feedback, and the chance to work on a whole product or service from start to finish.
Many women attending did so, not as delegates but as staffers or spouses of the delegates. Sadly this year among the 2,500 delegates, only 16 percent were female, down from 17 percent in 2013 -- its highest ever. Yet, despite this, there was a real feeling that it was time to get serious about ensuring that 50 percent of the world's population get their fair share of the world's resources.
