The graph shows our modeling of the net impact of Raise America's Pay (RAMP) over 15 years on compensation growth for the bottom 90 percent of working Americans when compared to the projected effects of five other major proposals. The five alternatives are:  

  1. A minimum wage raise to $15 per hour over five years

  2. A $1.5 trillion infrastructure program lasting six years

  3. A tripling of the Earned Income Tax Credit over five years

  4. A program to increase access to higher education that improves levels of graduation by 25% from both two-year and four-year higher education institutions

  5. An eight-year program that completely eliminates the downward wage effect of firms’ oligopolist market power 

Based on our analysis, RAMP’s re-connection of compensation with business’s and the economy’s growth is transformative in delivering increased pay. Its 15-year impact on pay towers over the impact of all the other proposals—it is five times more effective than any other proposal.  In the medium and long term, we expect the five other proposals, even when taken together, will deliver a 0.6% net annual real compensation increase per year, far beneath the 1.5% net real annual increase projected through RAMP. An approach like RAMP, alone among the proposals, or all of them combined, is able to defeat wage stagnation.

A summary overview of the RAMP proposal, a working paper containing a more detailed description of the RAMP proposal, and supplemental documents addressing a variety of issues about RAMP are available by clicking on 'RAMP Proposal' and 'Supplementary Documents' at the top of this page.