Just wanted to post some comments I left on my brother-in-law's LiveJournal page relating to an article he linked to about the State of New York raising it's minimum wage over the next two years.

I am generally supportive of the increase in the minimum wage primarily because it's a good idea, and the government should be obligated to raise it periodically in line with inflation.

That being said, I'm always looking for ways to criticize the NY Times as I am constantly angered at the journalistically lazy people in charge of what used to be my secular bible.

While it is true that a year of working 52 weeks at the current minimum wage will bring you $10,712, it is not below the federal poverty line. One reason is that there's no such thing as the "federal poverty line". Second is that it's just not true regardless of the semantics.

There do exist Federal Poverty Thresholds (maintained by the Census Bureau) and Federal Poverty Guidelines (maintained by the Dept. of Health & Human Services) which are similar but have some technical differences. HHS stresses on their website that:

The poverty guidelines are sometimes loosely referred to as the “federal poverty level” (FPL), but that phrase is ambiguous and should be avoided, especially in situations (e.g., legislative or administrative) where precision is important.

Since the Times hasn't been noted for their precision lately, they invent a new term altogether - the "federal poverty line". I'd love to ask the reporter where they got their facts on the "poverty line".

According to both the "Guidelines" and the "Threshold" the amount used to determine whether an individual has enough income to avoid poverty is approximately $9,300 which is below the annual income earned at the current minimum wage. The new minimum wage of $7.15/hour will lead to an annual income of $14,872 which according to the guidelines/threshholds should almost enough for a family of three to avoid poverty.

I am not sure how things like welfare, food stamps, earned income tax credits, child care credits, etc. are calculated into these equations.