Minimum Wage Follow-up

Prior to the 2006 elections, I wrote a piece about minimum wage ballot initiatives in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio. (By the way, 87% of readers who responded to a Time poll supported those initiatives, and all of the initiatives ended up passing.) More than six months later, the federal government finally followed the lead of the 33 states that had already bumped up the minimum wage beyond $5.15 by voting to raise the minimum wage nationally for the first time since September 1, 1997. For the millions it affects, the impact of the minimum wage is significant, and the move marks a big step in the storied history of wage floors in the U.S.

Supermarket Science

For the current (June 4, 2007) issue of Time, I wrote a brief item called Supermarket Science, about how grocery stores position their products. Because they face razor-thin profit margins, supermarket chains rely on data-mining experts to figure out the best shelf spot for Heinz Ketchup and most of the other 40,000+ products in a typical grocery store. The item was published alongside a story by my colleague Michael Lemonick called The Ewww Factor. Researchers, it turns out, have recently been considering the question of whether consumers are grossed out when kitty litter or diapers in their shopping carts touch packaged cookies and other food. Covering similar subjects in the past, I've spoken with Paco Underhill, whose books Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping and Call of the Mall: The Geography of Shopping are interesting explorations of similar territory.

Welcome

This is a new site where I'll follow up on articles I've written.