Overpass Light Brigade
Well that started off with a bang. As protesters gathered in downtown Milwaukee to protest the GOP’s harmful agenda on wages, immigration and civil rights, the Republican candidates on stage for the presidential debate showed no regard for their concerns.
Right off the bat Neil Cavuto asked the first few candidates about their position on raising the minimum wage to $15 hourly. Of course Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio all said it just won’t happen, that wages are too high and we’ll lose our global competitiveness if workers get a raise.
Here’s the problem with that.
They’re wrong.
First off, they aren’t running for CEO of a company that wants to hire cheap labor. They’re running to be president of all of Americans, not just business owners. So while CEOs may want to drive down wages to boost their profits, that mission actually hurts us as a society.
Think about this. Low-wage workers—actually, low-wage employers—are a burden on society. No, not because these workers are lazy—they are anything but lazy. Rather, it’s because the government has to subsidize low-wage employers because their workers are forced to use the public safety net—Medicaid, food assistance, etc. These folks are literally the working poor, no matter how many hours they work per week.
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How much do these low-wage workers cost taxpayers?
A whopping $153 billion a year, according to a recent study conducted by UC-Berkeley Labor Center. Wisconsin state taxpayers’ cost alone is $705 million annually.
Think about what could happen if employers started raising wages for their lowest paid workers.
More money in people’s pockets to be spent in local shops, stimulating the local economy.
That means at some point employers will hire more people, which creates an upward spiral and less dependency on the safety net. In fact, most mainstream economists agree that contrary to the right wing’s claims, a higher minimum wage won’t lead to more unemployment.
So for all of those budget-cutters who want to slash government spending, raising the minimum wage would be the right thing to do morally, fiscally and ideologically.
There’s a push around the country to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and it’s gaining traction.
But what also needs to happen is raising the wage for tipped workers. The federal minimum wage for these workers is a scant $2.13 hourly, and it hasn’t been raised since 1991. How long ago was that? George H.W. Bush was in office, that’s how long ago it was.
So while Trump, Carson, Rubio and the rest of the bunch can talk about how raising the minimum wage would be disastrous for the country, it would actually be a boon for all of us and a movement that they should join—wholeheartedly. It’s the right thing to do. Period, end of story, end of debate.
Photo credit: Many thanks to the Overpass Light Brigade for the use of their photo and their ongoing great work of speaking truth to power, one letter at a time.
