$15 Minimum Wage Is Over Due

The pandemic relief bill, known as the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 has passed the Senate we can feel fairly confident that the major points will be there when reconciliation of the House and Senate versions is complete. One aspect that was removed is raising minimum wage. Most Democrats in Congress have recognized that its past time to raise the minimum wage since inflation has eaten away at the buying power of a dollar over the nearly 12 years since it was last adjusted.

You might think that most minimum wage workers are teenagers working after school and summer jobs but you'd be wrong. In reality minimum wage earners average 35 years old, in fact only about 10% teens. 59% are women, 54% are full time employees. Most of them are in fact the frontline workers most at risk of contracting COVID-19 due to their exposure to customers while on the job.

Several groups are pushing for a gradual increase to $15 an hour so that it’s a living wage. $15 sounds like a lot until you start calculating what it costs to live in this country. Even in supposedly low cost of living states like Texas a single person working a 40 hour week needs to earn more than $12 an hour just to rent a one bedroom apartment, and pay for transportation, medical insurance, utilities, food, and clothing. In the San Antonio metro area which includes Seguin, New Braunfels and Boerne it takes almost $13.50 an hour, while that same person living in Corpus Christi needs over $14 an hour, Houston over $14.25 an hour, and Austin over $15 an hour.

If your cousin or brother-in-law tries to argue that minimum wage was never intended as a living wage, it’s just a starting place to get experience, you can let them know they don’t know their history at all. In his 1933 address following the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, President Franklin D. Roosevelt noted 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,” he stated.

As Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren recently put it “When billionaire CEOs skimp on wages and rely on public subsidies to cover their employees’ health care, housing, and food costs, that’s not a free market. That’s a rigged system. We need to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and put power in the hands of working people.” Remember, its companies like Walmart that have high rates of employees on SNAP, Medicaid, and other federal and state benefits that your taxes pay for. Those profitable companies are being subsidized by your tax dollars.

Republicans are trash talking raising minimum wage with poor arguments like the one spouted by South Dakota Senator John Thune. He claims he did just fine just out of high school in 1978 making $6 an hour, except that when you consider inflation since then that’s equal to $24 an hour today. Even when he was making the minimum wage of $2.65 back then its equivalent to $10.90 an hour today.

Minimum wage was always intended to be a living wage and while that varies some from city to city $15 an hour is a reasonable compromise.