Millionaire Steve Forbes has a cynical campaign to keep working people down

A minimum wage hike would improve the lives of 30 million working Americans. Forbes wants to falsely spin it as a job killer

Richard L Trumka
theguardian.com, Wednesday 8 January 2014 08.45 EST

What do you give to a man who has everything? A man like publisher Steve Forbes, worth a reported $430m. What do you give him if you're his beloved-but-on-the-ropes Republican Party?

How about a cynical campaign to defeat a US federal minimum wage increase?

That's what Forbes calls for in his column in the 18 November edition of Forbes magazine. To keep from getting "smacked around by President Obama and congressional Democrats", instead of "passively taking a hit", Republicans should gin up their spin machine to portray a minimum wage increase as a job-killer. Hold House hearings, he says, and parade out people who will say they were hurt by the last minimum wage increase.