Twelve years ago — Yes, 12 years ago!!
That was the last time workers earning minimum wage got a raise. That’s the longest stretch of time that the country’s lowest paid workers have ever gone without an increase in minimum wage. A LOT of promises during that time but NO RESULTS.
There is absolutely no way a reasonable person, or anyone in their right mind, could think that $7.25 is a decent wage for anyone who has to provide for their family. It may have sounded better in 2009, but in today’s society – there is no way anyone could come close to surviving off of that wage. With that wage, even a single person with no one else to provide for would struggle. Americans should demand that Congress raise the minimum wage in an effort to bring people out of poverty.
Consider this — a full-time worker making $7.25 an hour earns about $15,000 a year. That is below the poverty line for a single parent with one child. That’s not even enough to maintain a one-bedroom apartment in a city our size. Workers who have even one child are sinking even farther down into poverty.
Fifteen dollars seems currently to be a hard sell; $10 an hour is a better starting point and would get us closer to the poverty line, but that wage wouldn’t help a single parent. It’s hard to imagine living off of about $21,000 a year. Most of the people reading this would not even be able to afford something as simple as a subscription to a newspaper. Think about decent phone service costing you about 5% of your yearly income. How could you survive?
So let’s all admit the federal minimum wage is way too low. Even so, more discussion is needed, bi-partisan discussion about how to raise the minimum wage to get the most impact to help the most with as little negative impact on business and the economy as possible. Because there can be significant impact on the working class if mandated wage hike is put in place. A better strategy would be to gradually raise the minimum wage.
With that being said … let’s address the elephant in the room. I saw a recent post on a local Facebook page about not being able to find people to work a job. As much as I can understand frustrations the business owner must be experiencing, we also must understand that for once a lot of normally disenfranchised people are making what appears to be nearly $50,000 a year just from unemployment. That may not seem like a lot to some of us – but that is more than some people have ever seen.
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So, what are we stuck with? Kids taking jobs that normally some adults could use as starter positions where they make $7.25 an hour. Companies are OK with this because it helps their bottom line. Customer service is at an all-time low because millennials and their children are now working in the establishments we once loved to visit. And a soon-to-be influx of people will create a tidal wave as they are dumped into the poverty pool.
So, here we are with the potential for the fight of our lives – as the talks continue regarding another stimulus, extending unemployment and increasing minimum wage. Is it possible to do all three?
Anything is possible … the question becomes, is it feasible? Many will argue that it is not – but my argument still stands that if we are to make this – “a more perfect union,” we need to begin by trying to pull people out of poverty and giving them a living wage.
Once we’ve accomplished that, we can focus on moving people back to work as government stops paying the extra unemployment payments people have been receiving during the pandemic – and which many believe have persuaded some workers to not return to jobs that were not paying enough for them to live on.
Then we can focus on even bigger things – like the current attempt to disenfranchise minorities from voting in any upcoming elections. Oops – that’s an article for a different week.
Michael Meyers is a Columnist for The Augusta Press. Reach him at Michael.meyers@theaugustapress.com
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