So, yesterday, the city of Chicago passed an ordinance requiring “big box” stores to pay a minimum wage of $10 an hour by 2010, and an additional $3 an hour in benefits. Obviously, the main target of the ordinance is Wal-Mart.

I think these bills are fine. But, it does show the playing field we’re working on and how much ground hard-working people have lost, certainly in the past decade. Joel Rogers, director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, made a stunning calculation that we should all emblazon as tattoos on our foreheads: Had wages tracked productivity as they have over the past 30 years, the minimum wage should be $19.12–which would make it almost 50
percent above today’s median wage–not to mention the pathetic $5.15
current minimum wage or the $10 an hour in this bill.

It seems to me that that is a figure we need to remind people of whenever we are pushing for these kinds of bills