Minimum Wage Hike? .... Sounds Like A Plan.

Dear My Darling Public

     I took some time out of my night, which could have been spent on just about anything else, to watch the State of the Union address, and I have to say, I can't argue with at least one issue. The federal minimum wage is not where it needs to be to constitute a living wage. The president suggested raising it to about $10.10, not even what it would be if it truly remained linear with inflation, but don't hold your breath on this one.
     According to the PEW Research Center, roughly 3.55 million hourly workers are federal minimum wage earners or lower. To put that number into perspective, the United States population is 313.9 million people according to the last census. If this makes it look like people making the federal minimum wage make up a tiny part of the population, just remember that the number of employed US citizens is 136,600,000. It is still a smaller portion of the working population, but does that mean that they no longer matter?
     I mean, we're still talking about 3.55 million human beings with mothers, fathers, and in some cases, families of their own. An argument commonly made on the right is that raising the minimum wage would be an infringement upon the rights of business owners because they would have to use more of their profits to pay workers, and this will, in turn, raise the costs of products and services provided by their companies, but this kind of thinking cannot come from a place of experience, given that the federal minimum wage has lagged far behind inflation for quite some time.
     The problem that this issue creates is a one two punch. First, it creates a working poor that absolutely must use federal entitlement programs like snap and medicaid, which are funded through tax payers' dollars. Considering the state of taxes today, just a half step above stealing from the ordinary income earner, raising taxes beyond necessity wouldn't just be devastating for the poor and middle classes. It would absolutely decimate Americans who are unemployed, overwhelmingly through no fault of their own,  who need this coverage, like the modern minimum wage earner, to survive another day. Second, and I would argue most important to those who champion business, it squeezes the buying power out of a large portion of the american consumer base.How could we ever expect to have a perfect "free market economy" if a giant chunk of your working population cannot purchase any goods?
     However, if you, like me, approach this in a more humanitarian manner, then you might take the "don't be such a heartless monster" argument in stride. You see, in the eyes of the free market, you have to "incentivize" the ever living crap out of big businesses in the same way a teacher would gives incentives to a  bunch of kindergartners that need a peace of candy every time they do something positive or answer a question right. It sounds stupid, yes, but it's every bit as much true and raising the minimum wage to $10.10 will not kill the profits of these already over profitable companies.

With Love
Thomas F.