The Outrageous Truth About A $12 Minimum Wage And Your Grocery Bill

[NHLabor]

Every time I even mention the idea of raising the minimum wage, I am immediately attacked on social media.

Opponents imagine that inflation will skyrocket; some have even claimed that ‘milk will be $10.00 a gallon’ if we raise the minimum wage. Oh, the hysteria. Milk is currently around $3.50 a gallon and that is up 25% from just ten years ago. Is that 25% due to rising wages? Sadly, no – wages in America have declined during that time. Must be some other economic force at work. (Read “Even Dairy Farming has a 1%” here.)

So, what if we raised the floor to a living wage, and paid non-tipped employees a minimum wage of $12.00 per hour? Oh, more hysteria. Opponents claim that will drive our costs up so much we will be unable to eat!

Let’s look at a few facts about minimum wage.

Who gets paid minimum wage? People opposed to raising the wage claim that ‘minimum wage workers are kids in high school; adults do not make minimum wage’. The fact is 25% of minimum wage workers are below the age of 19 – which means that 75% of all minimum wage earners are above the age of 20. That means they’re adults – not high school kids. In fact, almost half of all minimum-wage earners are above the age of 25.

Another fact: under the current minimum wage, a full time worker makes only $15,500 per year – before taxes.

Another fact: 64% of all minimum wage earners are women. Of that a whopping 66% are women above the age of 20.

Another fact: More than a third of minimum wage workers (35.8 percent) are married, and over a quarter (28.0 percent) are parents. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that if Congress raised the minimum wage, it would raise the standard of living for more than 21 million children.


There is more to the story at NH LABOR NEWS

Fact references on NH Labor News post.

[Warpy]

1. Welcome to DU

Slaving away your whole life at minimum wage is the new normal, along with debt peonage for anyone who went into debt for higher education and managed to land a better than minimum wage job.

These are precisely the conditions that have led to most revolutions throughout history: beggaring the vast majority of the population and keeping them slaves to debt.

[NHLabor]

6. I have been a DU Stalker for a while and

Omaha Steve follows my blog and posts many of my posts here. Thanks for all the kind words and K&R!!!

[Teamster Jeff]

2. K&R

[Triana]

3. K & R - Shared, and Welcome to DU!

[Hydra]

4. Welcome to DU!

And keep up the good work

[NHLabor]

8. Thanks

And do not worry, I will not stop until politicians on both sides realize that workers and workers rights should be the most important thing that Congress addresses. Short answer I am not going away soon!

Consider subscribing to our blog via Email at NHlabornews.com

[NHLabor]

9. You are so right!

Have you been reading my yet written follow-up? That is a much harder sell but i will talk about that as well in a follow up soon.

[Omaha Steve]

7. Thank you Matt for posting this!

K&R!

[Sherman A1]

10. K&R

[Babel_17]

11. We're dependent on our minimum wage fellow Americans

Not only do we depend on them but the work involved is anything but a picnic. And now the workers get reminded how little concern there is for them, and their efforts, by a large portion of the country and basically the entire Republican party.

It's an entitlement. The Republicans, and The Chamber of Commerce, and the tax dodging 1%, and the "I've got mine, to hell with everybody else" crowd, feel entitled to benefiting from an impoverished work force that has no redress for their unfair situation.

[cprise]

12. Did you know Canada has price controls

...on products like wheat?

[JBoy]

17. Not so much price controls, but marketing boards

that vary from product to product. Some of these have the end result of limiting prices paid by Canadian consumers (like dairy products). There it takes fixed prices paid to farmers, quotas on production and restriction of imports to result in a price limit to consumers.

Wheat on the other hand only guarantees a fair price to farmers. The Wheat Board then sells the grain on the world market at the prevailing price. If the world price of wheat skyrockets, Canadians will see that cost in their bread.

The whole thing is a complicated patchwork that of course Harper's Conservatives are trying to muck with in order to favour big agribusiness.

[JoeyT]

13. All wages tend to go up when the minimum is raised.

Just as an example: In my field, there are a handful of groups that make a few dollars an hour more than minimum wage for hot, hard, brutal work. If they can make that much anywhere, they're not going to show up. No one is going to tie rebar or build scaffold for 12 bucks an hour when they can make the same thing flipping burgers. So they're going to have to bump their pay up to convince people to show up. When that happens, the skilled trades men and women are going to pitch a fit because starter level is paying a few bucks an hour less than jobs that require five years of experience, are considerably more dangerous, and have a ton more responsibility. So their pay goes up. And on up the chain it goes.

Raising the minimum wage is one of the perfect examples of the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats.

[wis vet69]

15. Sounds to like

you wouldn't want a raise. But I doubt that.

[JoeyT]

19. No, I'd very much take a raise.

That's the point. Everyone's wages go up when the minimum wage is raised. I consider that a good thing.

[Vashta Nerada]

14. Excellent post.

[AmyStrange]

16. The city of SeaTac (here in WA State) is raising minimum wage to $15 an hour soon...

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Here's the negative poop:

http://mynorthwest.com/11/2322267/Employer-says-raising-SeaTac-minimum-wage-to-15-an-hour-would-put-him-out-of-business

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[Mnemosyne]

18. K&R nt