We love President Obama’s support of the fight for a living wage!
On Wednesday, the President gave a speech about the economy and the Affordable Care Act in which he called income inequality the “defining challenge of our time.” In the speech, delivered in one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in Washington D.C., Obama said,
The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American dream, our way of life and what we stand for around the globe.
The president made it clear that he considers economic inequality and social immobility a major issue in our society, and threw some much needed support behind the living wage movement the day before fast-food workers were set to strike in cities across the U.S. As Ms. covers in our Fall issue, the majority of fast-food workers are women, who often face an impossible struggle to provide basic needs for their families under the current federal minimum wage. The President renewed his call for an increase in the minimum wage, and has indicated that he will back Senate measures aimed at that.
Thank you, President Obama, for standing up for low-wage workers and reaffirming the necessity of discussion about our nation’s drastic income inequality problem.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Chuck Olsen via Creative Commons.
