海角大神

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has vetoed a bill to increase his state鈥檚 minimum wage to $15 an hour, saying it would hurt small businesses.

The partisan fight in the Garden State marks another step in the country鈥檚 ongoing search to boost opportunities for low-wage workers.

In New Jersey, debate was largely partisan, with a Republican governor offering a strong rebuttal to a Democratic legislature鈥檚 wage proposal on the grounds that the state is still , NJ.com reported.

"All of this sounds great, raising the minimum wage, when you're spending someone else's money," Mr. Christie said, speaking from a Pennington, N.J., grocery store on Tuesday. "It should bother you because when you come into Pennington Quality Market your food is going to be more expensive."聽

Christie also cited threats made by fast food executives that such dramatic wage increases would spur automation and cost jobs altogether.

鈥泪迟鈥檚 聽than it is to hire an employee who鈥檚 inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries,鈥� said Ed Rensi, the former chief executive and president of McDonald鈥檚 USA, in an interview on Fox's 鈥淢ornings with Maria.鈥�

鈥泪迟鈥檚 going to cause a job loss across this country like you鈥檙e not going to believe.鈥澛�

The movement toward raising the minimum wage has received patchy support so far. New York, California, and cities around the country have instituted $15-per-hour minimum wage plans, seen as a dramatic but compassionate experiment to bring relief聽to workers left behind by rising prices and stagnant pay, as Jessica Mendoza reported for 海角大神:

Partly driving the push for a higher wage floor is the argument that raising wages would help 鈥渦ndo all the wage inequality that has happened in the last 45 years,鈥� says David Cooper, a senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal research group based in Washington. Indeed, he notes, factors such as inflation and rising costs of living means that 鈥渋n real terms the average wage peaked more than 40 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 has the same purchasing power as $22.41 would today,鈥� as聽.

In these places, where the economy has seen more growth, lawmakers looking to equalize the gains see it as a risk worth taking.

鈥淚f California does this and its economy continues to thrive, then it could potentially shift the norms around minimum wage policy,鈥� Mr. Cooper told the Monitor.

But states such as Alabama, Idaho, and North Carolina have kept their wages at the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour, even lower than New Jersey, which in 2013.

Some worry this inconsistency will stoke inequality among the various states, but others say the creative solutions the individual states will develop can help point to solutions in a complicated problem that still lacks a template for success.

鈥淚 think there鈥檚 something very positive about states being able to experiment and go beyond what the country has, to see on a smaller scale how something works,鈥� Chris Tilly, the director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the Monitor. 鈥淥n some level, you could view the states as laboratories of democracy, and hope that the country as a whole draws some lessons.鈥�

This report contains material from the Associated Press.