WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Tuesday night laid out a vision for a society in which everyone has a fair shot at a decent education, adequate health care and a job that pays a living wage.
“It is our generation’s task, then, to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth — a rising, thriving middle class,” said the president in the first State of the Union address of his second term. “It is our unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this country — the idea that if you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead, no matter where you come from, no matter what you look like, or who you love.”
The president’s most notable proposal was to raise the minimum wage from its current $7.25 an hour to $9 an hour. A worker making the minimum wage now earns just $14,500 a year — well below the living wage in many areas. Obama also proposed indexing it to inflation, so that when the cost of living goes up, so do earnings.
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