Minimum Wage

    It has come to my attention that some people seem to have a rather gross misunderstanding of something critical and important to our Economy. I speak, of course, about minimum wage. I’ve read about many people claiming minimum wage isn’t intended for people to live on, it’s a training wage for those who are coming into the workforce. If minimum wage goes up so will inflation. Raising the minimum wage will hurt business and reduce employment. People just need to go to school and get a better job.

    The problem with the idea that the minimum wage is not intended to be a living wage is that well for one it’s way too low even for an introductory wage. It should, for example, be enough for someone to afford to go to college on that wage, but many colleges in the country would be well out of your reach and you’d still need a student loan. Secondly, if the wage was introductory then after roughly six months to a year, your wage should increase substantially to something that meets the current cost of living in your area, as you are no longer training. Which, of course, does not happen. Many employers raise wages rather slowly and as the minimum wage in some states is far below the cost of living, it can be three to four years before you make something you could see yourself living on.

    Some people have the gall to claim that minimum wages are introductory jobs only, like fast food and retail clerk. Which is just stupid, big fast food chains and retail corporations employ far too much of our workforce for that to even be true. As someone who used to work as a retail sales clerk, because of the slow rate at which pay is raised, I’ve worked with supervisors who made far less than the cost required for them to live on their own. Last time I checked Supervisor wasn’t an introductory position.

    The minimum wage was not designed as an introductory wage, it was designed as the minimum wage someone is capable of living on. For that, it is currently far too low.

    Now, inflation going up because we increase minimum wage may be true. Minimum wage, however, was invented as a method of keeping up with inflation, which has gone way beyond the scope of the current minimum wage. So at this point increasing the minimum wage is the only logical recourse to put things back on track.

    I can’t tell you how much raising the minimum wage will affect all businesses. Some will hurt, but many of the big corporations that are the major employers of low-income and minimum wage workers, would probably be fine, even though they are the ones who fight the increase the hardest.

    If your parents didn’t make enough to put aside a substantial sum to pay for you to go to college, you’ve got to pay it on your own. With many students coming out of college with degrees and nowhere to use them, it can be s risk  to take out a large student loan to make tuition payments. A minimum wage job wouldn’t help you really at all. In most cases, the price of college is higher than it’s ever been. So the “just get an education,” argument falls rather flat in the face of fact.

I, after working for a company for over 6 years was barely able to afford: rent, groceries, and bills. If I had any medical bills, I’d have to cut into my savings to pay them off. I could only take time off to deal with medical issues if I had paid time(vacation/personal) to take it. I had a serious lack of money to invest in school. My mother worked with student loans and was able to keep me informed of how often a student was actually able to pay them back, and how many were going to be paying them for the rest of their life.

    I could have started and ended this whole thing with a statement from Franklin D. Roosevelt on the minimum wage, but I’ll at least end with one.

    “It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt.