So. The Senate shoots down not one, but two proposed increases in the Federal minimum wage. First Teddy Kennedy's proposed $2.10 increase, then the Republican's proposed $1.10 increase. Frankly, I'm not surprised by either vote. The Republicans would NEVER agree to give more money to poor people, and the Democrats were angered by too many "poison pills" that the Republican proposal was saddled with.
Frankly, I'm not sure who to be angry at. On the one hand, Republicans lately are always on the side of business, usually at the expense of employees. But the Democrats seem less interested in actually getting an increase in the minimum wage and more about having it as a campaign issue in '06.
Let's think about the minimum wage for a moment. At the current rate of $5.15 an hour (where it has been since 1996), based on 52 40-hour work weeks, it works out to gross earnings of about $10,700 a year, give or take. Let me try to put that number in perspective:
$10,700 is less than most cars cost today.
$10,700 is about $300 less than Alex Rodriguez makes in one hour.(1)
$10,700 is about $5,000 less than Rush Limbaugh makes in one hour.(2) Rush, by the way, has repeatedly claimed that the majority of Minimum Wage Earners are teenagers working their first jobs. This is a statistic that he pulled right out of his ass--something he seems to do a LOT. In actuality, 72% of M.W.E.'s are adults, and more than half are women.(3)
$10,700 is about how much the War in Iraq costs the U.S. Government every ten seconds!(4)
(Just think about that for a minute: Every ten seconds, the government spends the entire annual wages of a full-time M.W.E. in Iraq. That's 8,640 people every day.)
Of course, none of these figures take into account the fact that by the time you pay taxes and other deductions, take-home pay is about two-thirds of that $10,700.
And let's not forget the most important comparison of all: $10,700 is roughly $6,700 below the official federal poverty line for a family of four.(5)
If you boil all this down, you realize that $10,700 is not a lot of money. It's very hard to live on (I know--I've tried), and there is no way to support a family on it in today's day and age.
The usual argument against raising minimum wage is that it will hurt businesses. Bullshit. There is one basic economic rule that the people who make this argument fail to remember: If people have more money, they will buy more stuff. Businesses will do more business. They will make more money. They can afford to pay their employees even more. Everybody wins.
It's time for the politicians to realize this. I doubt this will ever happen. After all, the average United States Senator makes 10 times more annually than someone on minimum wage. They are so out of touch they wouldn't know what poverty was if it jumped up and bit them on the ass.
Maybe if we forced the Senators and Congressmen to live on minimum wage...
I'm just sayin'!
NOTES:
(1) Figure from salary.com
(2) Ibid.
(3) Figure from Economic Policy Institute
(4) Figure from costofwar.com
(5) Federal Poverty Standard for a Family of Four
Yeah, I know. I'm actually citing my sources. I'm trying to add some small degree of legitimacy to this enterprise. If you have a problem with any of those statistics, take it up with the people who made those sites!
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