While making sure hard-working New Jerseyans earn enough to support their families is a worthy goal on its own, it’s not just families with low-wage breadwinners who benefit from an adequate minimum wage. We all do.

This is a special year for New Jersey Policy Perspective, as we celebrate 15 years of advancing progressive policy in the Garden State. It was this week back in 1997 (February 27, to be exact) that founder Jon Shure filed the articles of incorporation and officially created NJPP. As the articles state, NJPP’s foremost purpose was – and remains – “to inform people in order to generate intelligent discussion and debate of public policy issues.”

This legislation is one of the most important actions elected officials in Trenton can take to immediately improve the lives of tens of thousands of working families struggling to make ends meet in New Jersey and at the same time improve the state’s economy for every other resident.

In the end, this budget is a dog. The revenue numbers are suspect. The promise of a 10 percent tax cut is false. And the political narrative of a “New Jersey comeback” is just so much fiction.

The recession blew a $2.5 billion hole in the state budget that has never been filled. Now, the governor wants to dig that hole even deeper with an irresponsible gimmick that only benefits the wealthiest 1 percent. Proposing an income tax cut might be good politics, but it’s bad policy for most New Jerseyans.

One of the few references to jobs in Gov. Christie’s State of the State address earlier this week was a claim that his administration’s policies had succeeded in creating 60,000 new private sector jobs in New Jersey. However, monthly unemployment numbers released today by the state cast a dark shadow on the governor’s claim.

The average property tax bill in New Jersey increased by 2.4 percent in 2011, the smallest year-over-year increase in nearly 20 years, according to a special report in Sunday’s Star-Ledger. The piece features solid reporting but its lead conclusion — that the caps imposed on local tax levies are working to rein in property taxes — is a bit too simplistic.

The expansion of the Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit will do little to increase employment in New Jersey, although it will provide sweet deals for corporations.

Tolls on the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike increased by about 50 percent earlier this week. But even with the increase, tolls on New Jersey roads remain among the lowest in the nation on a per-mile basis.

Despite modest private sector gains (mainly in seasonal retail jobs), the Department of Labor reports that the state unemployment rate remained unchanged in November at 9.1 percent — even as the U.S. rate fell for the third month straight, to 8.6 percent.