Middle Class America « Chantal Saunders' Blog
LIVING WAGE
12/6/2009
I have been thinking alot about Middle Class America and it’s importance in American culture. I have some issues with the constant repeal of living wage debate in our legislative bodies. Living wage is the idea that the minimum wage should be one that actually covers basic needs or that a single person can actually live on… not a bad thing. The problem, some business or economic intellectuals argue, is that increasing minimum wages creates increases in consumer prices, creating an unending cycle. This is absolutely flawed. If a business lobbies the government to “say” it can’t afford to raise the smallest wage earner and then in the board room, votes to inflate the highest wage earner, they are self serving and full of shit. By their logic, the cost of executive wage increases also gets added to the consumer price as well, and clearly they haven’t been affraid to do that over the last several years! Welcome to the industrial revolution.
So I got to thinking about how in my Oct 2008 post below, and in all my calculations, I never looked at minimum wage as any guidepost for the average household financials.
Here are the numbers, assuming full time (50 weeks/yr of 40 hrs/week) for two workers in the minimum wage household…
Year    Min. Wage $/hr      Median Income     2 Earner Min Wage Income    1968           $1.60                     $7,740.00                       $6,400.00                   2008          $6.55                    $50,233.00                     $26,200.00
I think the numbers speak for themselves. In 1968 a min. wage household almost made the median income, in 2008 they make about half the median income! A living wage, suggested at $11, would bring a two earner min. wage household to $44,000 a year…better. As a small business owner I refuse to pay people minimum wage as it currently stands (7.25/hr), I know that’s not enough in my community. Minimum wage was introduced in 1938 for good reason, because businesses asking people to work without proper compensation is tantamount to slavery. People who can, must work… business paying a wage that does not sustain living is wrong. Minimum wage must be in place to insure civility, the Fair Labor Act also outlawed child labor, thankfully. Businesses must not be allowed to run rough-shod over their workers…the very resource of their incoming funds! Clearly in the other direction (think UAW union), workers will try to negotiate to be paid for doing nothing. Both the worker and business sides have valid points to make, both sides also have abusive extremes. At the end of the day, the govenment should always be there to stand up for the balance of both, and it should base it’s position at the very least on the true cost of basic living!
...by Chantal Saunders