Earnings package

• increase minimum wage to $8.40
• expand income tax credits for larger families and for childless workers; and
• fully fund child care assistance

Researchers forecast that enactment of this earnings package would move more than 9 million Americans out of poverty – more than a quarter of Americans currently in poverty. Download PDF

Bring New Hope

An initiative from Milwaukee that combined:

• job counseling services,
• a promise of paid community service jobs if a job was not available in the competitive labor market; and
• wage supplements to ensure earnings brought a household to living wages

This project was launched to demonstrate work-based solutions for poverty. Like the welfare to work pilots Minnesota ran in the early 1990s, the research results showed that when parents work and income increased, children thrived. Download PDF

Make work possible

Increase earnings incentives for those with disabilities: Allow those with disabilities on SSI and MSA to sustain support income when earnings decline – so that individuals are not trading economic security for economic advancement

Stepping stone jobs

The best way to prepare for a job is to have a job. Time-limited and permanent work opportunities available for those whose personal challenges and whose regions make work unavailable in the competitive labor market.

Resurrect the Minnesota Economic Employment Development Act launched in 1983 during a depressed labor market. MEED eventually employed 45,000 Minnesotans primarily in small businesses in the private sector. It increased the number of jobs in the labor market, increased tax revenues and was run with a minimum of red tape. Download PDF

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