Today, Bill de Blasio began a week-long challenge to demonstrate the need for an increase in New York City’s minimum wage. Each participant in the Workers Rising challenge will have to follow the food and transportation budget of a real-life New Yorker earning $7.25 per hour. De Blasio has $92 to spend for the week.

“We are truly living a Tale of Two Cities, where the fortunate among us are more fortunate than ever before, but hundreds of thousands struggle just to keep their heads above water. We need a real living wage in New York City, and we need an increase in the minimum wage,” said Bill de Blasio. “There is no clearer and more eye-opening way to demonstrate this than to show how impossible it is to get by on just $7.25 an hour in the most expensive city in America. If we as leaders want to represent the people of our city, than we must do what we can to understand the hardships people face, and the urgency in finding ways to lift more New Yorkers out of poverty and into the middle class.”

(YWN Desk – NYC)