$22 Minimum Wage Suggested by Senator Elizabeth Warren If Matched Productivity [VIDEO]

A $22 minimum wage was suggested by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last week if it had kept up with increased rates in worker productivity, citing a recent study.

Warren made this claim during a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions(HELP) hearing.

"If we started in 1960 and we said that as productivity goes up, that is as workers are producing more, then the minimum wage is going to go up the same. And if that were the case then the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour," she said.

Speaking to Dr. Arindrajit Dube, a University of Massachusetts Amherst economics professor, Warren added, "So my question is Mr. Dube, with a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, what happened to the other $14.75? It sure didn't go to the worker."

Dube claimed then stating that if minimum age had kept pace with the rise in income of the top 1 percent of taxpayers that it would have been around $33, before the recent recession, then the current $7.25.

Warren highlighted the results of the recent study, which showed flat minimum wage growth over the past 40-plus years. The Huffington Post reports the study claims that this flat growth coincided with surging inequality across a number of economic indicators.

Warren in fact wasn't trying to actually raise the minimum wage to $22 or $33 an hour, but did argue for the federal minimum wage to rise to more than $10 an hour in gradual increases over the next few years.