When we look at the past 12 years, the minimum wage has not changed even though inflation has increased the value of the dollar by 23.99%. Even when considering the lackluster minimum wage of 2009, we should be getting nearly $9 per hour. This, however, does not give anyone a living wage. Our current rate of $7.25 an hour only gives workers $15,080 a year on a regular 40-hour work week, without taxes. This puts them only $3,000 above the poverty line, and that’s if they don’t have another member of the household to feed.
Eighty-three years ago, Congress, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, implemented the minimum wage in order to combat the unfair working conditions of the time and to recover from the Great Depression. Since then, America has roughly attempted to keep this minimum wage in place, despite the stagnation we have seen as of late.
Recently, we have seen people advocating for raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and I believe we should support them wholeheartedly. Especially during COVID, people need financial relief; if the government is not in place to help their people survive at the very least, then what is it in place for?
President Biden is disappointing us in this respect. He has told the governors of the United States in private, according to sources within the circle, that the minimum wage is not likely to be raised within this span of time. His platform was run on rhetoric of restoring America to unity amidst a global pandemic, yet his actions are not lining up with his words. If he really cared about unity, he would help the people that are in need rather than lowering himself to keep politicians on either side of the aisle happy.
The people deserve to be paid more, because the people, no matter who they may be, at the very least deserve a livelihood when working. In many cases, multi-billion dollar companies lobby against the minimum wage because it will diminish what is already an exorbitant profit, which they are gaining due to unfair labor practices that put the safety of the company above the safety of the worker.
As President Roosevelt once said, “Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, … tell you … that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.”
We deserve a higher minimum wage.
