Consider. In a world in which everyone is expected to raise rates to compensate for inflation, who are then left as the only victims of inflation? Who then must make do with less purchasing power each quarter?
Those minimum wage workers. Who alone in the United States have no right to seek more inflated dollars for their services without shrill screams of "Socialism!" coming from everyone else who's compensation goes up quarterly!
Now I can hear some on the Right crying out! He can "just" educate himself more if he wants more money! Or learn new and better skills! Uh huh. But how come no one else has to? When the government's percent of our inflated wages means they get more dollars than before, this is not for them providing new services. It's openly acknowledged that they simply need more of those dollars to get the exact same things they need!
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| "If I really wanted a decent wage, I'd have got a law degree." |
Same with the corporations. If a loaf of bread is a dollar now, where it was 50 cents 20 years ago, this is not for the bread being twice as good, but for the natural reason of "it costs more of those dollars to make it." The price going up is only reflecting that each dollar does not buy as much! Store costs go up - their prices go up! Fair is fair, huh?
But why then must minimum wage workers need to offer a better product - their labor - in order to have their purchasing power remain the same? Because when they ask for a "raise", what they're really asking for is that you stop cutting their purchasing power!
Not so that they can buy more, not so they can buy luxuries, but just so they can buy the same minimal amount of stuff they always bought!
And that's the great secret about minimum wage, that even those on the Left don't know. That in seeking a "raise", they're really just asking that they get paid the same consistently! That they're really just asking that we STOP CUTTING THEIR PAY!
No one else sees their costs go up and then still sells their services at the same rate, waiting years before making an adjustment!
But the poor are required to. Take the person who earns $7.25 in 2009 - that being the last time Federal minimum wage was raised. $7.25 times 40 hours times four weeks - which he's unlikely to get but that's another story - adds up to $1,160. Which after taxes is going to be - well, less than $1,000 per month, but let's go with the even number.
This minimum wage - in laughable theory - is to be the "minimum" that a citizen would need to live. It is below the poverty line for a family of four, so not only is this to be the minimum to live off of, it is the minimum for just one solitary person to live off of.
I would enjoy seeing the budget that any reading this could come up with for how to spend that lavish $1,000 per month on all that most would regard as needful to live in this day and age. Especially given that even in the over-sized cow town that I write from, in the relatively inexpensive heartland, an even semi-decent apartment is going to run $500 to $600. Mostly not including utilities.
But yeah, get back to me sometime with how that $1,000 can cover that $500 a month apartment, the $100 in utilities, the $75 in auto insurance, $50 in phone, the $200 in food, the $75 in gasoline, the - oops, guess that's it. Better never change the oil or get a flat or want to save or care to ever advance.
Okay, so that's 2009. And according to the Social Security Administration that deals in cost of living adjustments, 2010 looked the same, so I guess Joe Minimum is safe that year, basking in the security of just the stuff I listed and nothing more.
But in the time period from 2009 to 2016, the cost of living has been adjusted here and there, now and then. A percent here, three percent there, another percent or two elsewhere. Roughly 9% worth total, and you'll forgive me if I round to 10% to keep it even - we had assumed $1,000 when we should have gone with $928, so what of it?
So that $1,000 per month, as pathetically inadequate as it was in 2009 is now only $900 per month. In terms of purchasing power, that is. It's not uniform across the board. Things like gas and beef have gone up far more than 9%, his rent may possibly have stayed the same, assuming a rather lackadaisical landlord. But on average, he now has $900 for all practical purposes, in a nation in which we had flat out declared that one needed at least $1,000 per month to live, and that as far back as two Presidential administrations ago.
The minimum wager is then asking for two things. That at the least the numerical wage go up so he can simply stay even with such little purchasing power as he had when Barack Obama was the first African American President to be sworn in. And that it go up a bit more, so as to reflect what "minimum wage" is supposed to be. And as there is no world in which the "minimum" can be had on $1,000 per month, that means higher than even the rise in inflation.
But instead he is told to shut up and quit being greedy when he complains of this. When he mentions that his rent, his bread, his utilities and everything else in his simple life are now to cost more, and so he must make do with less.
Can he find an even smaller apartment in an even worse neighborhood? Can he eat less or swallow his pride and apply for Food Stamps? Can he drive less - or go without a car? He never had renter's insurance or life insurance or any private health insurance - but can he now skimp on the legally required auto insurance and just drive so carefully as to never get pulled over? Has he got a second job, the lazy bum? Does he need anything other than the bare minimum to get to walk to work and not collapse at the fry station?
Nope. Or so too many conservatives who imagine they know and understand economic theory say.
And the saddest are those reading this who are now thinking, "Hey, it's not that bad, most of them have iPhones and a computer and an Xbox! That's not that poor!"
Uh huh. You who eat out at least 1/5th of the nights each month, who don't need Food Stamps, who can heat at 70 degrees instead of "55 and wear two sweaters", who don't know the sick fear of a flat tire that is beyond your ability to fix at even the comparatively low price of $40 used, really? Really?
You want to go there?
Yeah. They usually have an iPhone - kind of - as Walmart sells cheap knock offs and phone plans are pretty inexpensive nowadays - and without that phone there can be no calls for extra hours, which are essential if you hadn't noticed! And they have some cheap TV and game box, more often than not gifts. What else are they going to do for entertainment, take a cruise? Fly to Rome? Drive even to Chicago to see their folks once a year?
When they ask then for minimum wage to be raised, they are doing nothing more than everyone else in the nation. They are noting that the same dollars they earned last year do not buy the same amount this year, and thus they wish more of those dollars.
Your President does. Congress does. Every CEO, stockholder, middle manager and skilled craftsman does. Certainly every utility company, landlord and grocer does.
They want more and they get more - by "right", so they calmly say. And true enough. It's right to not want less pay for the same work. Unless you're poor, then some idiot radio talk show host will bugle, "Hur dur, hows about we jest raise it to fifty then? Huh? Huh?" as if he's made any kind of insightful point.
But never - and I do mean never - is anyone, even on the farthest Left, asking for fifty or anything close to being above this hypothetical "market rate". A market rate that is itself influenced by the artificially LOW minimum wage, and that would be higher if it hadn't been set so low!
Want to end this issue? The right thing - the fair thing - the "not socialist but just common sense" thing, would be to raise it up to a given amount yet again. But for a hoot, it should be raised to what it really takes to live a minimal life, yes, even for just one person. A budget should be done listing out everything our nation believes a single citizen needs, and what that cost is, and then the actual wage based on that. And yeah, I'm good with it varying by region to reflect that it costs more to live in Brooklyn than Peoria.
And having done that decent thing, to finally tie that real minimum wage to the cost of living so that each quarter as inflation goes up, so does their minimum wage.
Then it really is a minimum wage, as it never drops below that minimum that we say they have to have to live. Look at it from their perspective. We flat out lied in 2009 and said that $7.25 was the minimum it took to live - then we let it go down even more each year, for years, and we've still done nothing about it!
Let minimum wage stay at what the real minimum level is found to be by it going up as the cost of staying alive goes up! Trust me, I swear that no poor person will get to buy a yacht (or a car less than seven years old) with this plan, it just means that they can buy the same amount of Top Ramen this year as they did last year!
Is it too much to ask? Really?
