To the Editor:
Two bills in Congress to raise the minimum wage by about 95 cents per year for the next three years are HR1010 and S460. We, the undersigned, urge readers to contact their congressmen and senators to urge passage of these bills.
The minimum wage is now $7.25. If these bills pass, then over the next three years, the minimum wage would increase to $10.10.
Currently, if a worker is able to get 2,000 hours of work per year (in 50 40-hour weeks)—and unfortunately, not all can—he or she earns a yearly gross wage of $14,500, which is below the U.S. Department of Labor threshold of $1,245 per month ($14,940 annually) for receiving food stamps. If this worker’s wages increased by 95 cents an hour, he or she would earn $16,400 and thus would be raised above the poverty guideline.
The poverty guideline for two persons in a household is $15,510. With an increase of 95 cents per hour in wages—a couple, or a single parent with one child—would then be above the poverty level. With a three-person family, it would take a wage of $21,000, or $10.10 per hour, to raise them above the poverty level.
It is difficult to find statistics about the number of minimum wage workers in the Oak Ridge area, but it is safe to say than an increase in the minimum wage of $2.85 per hour over the next three years would increase their discretionary spending and help stimulate the local economy.
If you would like to see fewer people earning a wage that keeps them in poverty and forces reliance on government subsidies, and would like to see more local economic activity, then please urge our senators and congressmen to pass S460/HR1010.
Virginia Jones
Tom Burns
Joan Burns
Joan Cassens
Anne Garcia Garland
Tim Holt
Don Hurtubise
Ellen Smith says
I agree with this letter. This is not just a matter of social justice — it’s vitally important to restore the ability of Americans to participate in the economy.
The U.S. economy no longer meets the needs of an increasingly large number of hard-working American people. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator at http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl , the minimum wage that I got on a summer job back when I was 17 is equivalent to almost $10 now (that’s more than one-third above the current minimum wage of $7.25).
Raising the minimum wage to restore some of the buying power that workers have lost won’t solve all of our economic problems, but it would be an important step forward. For example, raising the bottom rung of the wage ladder should help a lot of people who are above minimum wage, as it would increase the “going rate” for jobs on the next few rungs of the ladder above minimum wage.
Levi D. Smith says
I am so tired of hearing people complain about minimum wage not being a living wage. When I was a teenager, my first job was at Kroger which paid $4.50 an hour. Did I need a wage to support a wife and two kids? Of course not, because I was a kid in high school living with my parents. People wonder why teens can not find a part-time job after school these days. It’s because it’s cheaper for a business to set up a self-checkout lane than it is to pay a kid 10 bucks an hour. If there are adults who can not find a job that pays more than minimum wage, then those people have absolutely no business bringing children into this world. This article did make it easy for me to decide who I will NOT be supporting in upcoming local elections.
Andrew Howe says
The big hurdle I see regarding minimum wag: How will it effect us regarding the global market?
The global economy is truly global now. Other countries pay horribly little money to workers, and thus labor is cheaper there and U.S. companies out-source to take advantage.
If the min wage here goes up, many jobs may be out-sourced. We simply cannot produce goods, and in some cases services, at competitive prices now, let alone if we raise min-wage.
In fact, if we get real bare-bones about it, one could say that the ‘global free market’ should drive our wages down to meet the low wages elsewhere.
I’d think that the majority of min-wage work can’t be farmed out and we’ll see prices go up accordingly in the things we purchase. Essentially, we all end up paying for the increase, which isn’t neccessarily bad. I’m personally happy to pay more for something if a social good comes of it, and do see this as a good. However, it will likely make the U.S. more of a ‘consumer’ of goods than a ‘producer’
I’d think a good way to gauge the effects of raising min wage would be to roll it out gradually over a decade and monitor the effects (as best as one can in such a complex system). Up it by 50 cents a year. That would equate to roughly $1000 per employee more per year – nothing a business wants to hear, but an amount that should be survivable by most.
However, I must admit that raising the cost of crummy junk food would only make me eat it less. Prices go up, buyers go down. Some markets could fall.
All that said, the min wage now IS enough for one to survive on, and enough for a couple to store away $10k per year into savings, if both work and both are frugal as all heck and don’t bring a child into the mix.
Minimum is just barely survivable, without frills, but that’s what you’d expect from something called “minimum”. It’s only what you need to survive. You provide the frills for yourself. Which is actually along the lines of what I think a “fair” country should do. It’s not forcing the rest of us to pay for someone’s luxury items.
I say raise it up yearly and see what breaks. Scraping by with no frills isn’t really humane. Let’s all chip in a bit more.