System in reverse

System in reverse What does Joe Biden’s massive Covid relief package mean for ordinary working class people? Daniel Lazare looks behind the Keynesian promises of jam today and jam tomorrow On March 5, America’s woefully unrepresentative Senate shot down a bid to more than double the minimum wage to $15 an hour by the year 2025. On March 6, however, it approved a Covid-relief bill worth $1.9 trillion, aimed at benefitting the country’s lowest-paid workers. From stinginess to generosity in a single day - what does it all mean? The answer is that, instead of requiring America’s endlessly celebrated small-business class to pay their workers more, the Democrats - who now control America’s upper house by a razor-thin margin - decided it would be easier to shift the weight onto future generations, in the hope that they will be in a better position to pay the debt off by virtue of being richer and more productive. Rather than forcing employers to up the ante now, the idea is to grow the economy in the years to come, so that everyone winds up satisfied.