How much does it cost to lift one person out of poverty?

 

If you use more than doubling the minimum wage as the tool, about $760,000.  CBO estimated the Raise the Wage proposal would lead to a rise in business labor cost of $509 billion for those kept on payrolls and a decline in labor income of $175 billion among the 1.7 million that lose their jobs.  Thus, jacking the minimum wage to $15 per hour imposes a total cost of $684 billion on low-paying employers and low-wage workers.  This would lift 900,000 people out of poverty at a cost of $760,000 a head.

So, let’s be glad that the relief package seems to be going forward without this bomb nestled in its details.  Similarly, we should not move forward under "reconciliation" procedures on the extensive reform of the welfare system proposed by Senator Romney.  Minimum wage and welfare reform are topics that must be given the full, in-depth policy analysis and program design that can only be accomplished, however clumsily and with however much infuriating partisan grandstanding, by the regular legislative process. Give them both the whole nine yards—expert commissions, committee hearings, high-level negotiations with OMB and other executive branch players and so on and so on.  Try not to screw up.