The minimum wage is pointless if it can’t pull someone out of poverty.
According to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s living wage calculator, a worker needs to make $10.47 an hour in Louisiana to have the minimum living wage. A family of four with two working adults needs to make $13.14 an hour per adult.
The poverty wage threshold is $5 an hour for a single worker and for a family of four with two working adults. The government uses the poverty wage as a threshold to determine eligibility for financial assistance from the federal government.
We have families and single workers living on the brink of poverty across Louisiana. If you condone that lifestyle, then you should stop calling yourself pro-life right now. As one of the richest nations in the history of the world, it’s inexcusable to allow people to live at or near the poverty line.
Many families already are living below the poverty line. A single mom with two children needs to make $23.53 an hour for a living wage in Louisiana, while the poverty line is $9 an hour.
The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour isn’t enough for any demographic to live on. It keeps single mothers in poverty and keeps families with more children near the poverty line.
There’s currently a movement in the U.S. to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour across the board. Proponents say the minimum wage would be about $10.88 if it kept up with inflation from its peak in 1968. They also argue the minimum wage should increase beyond inflation to reflect productivity, which is at its highest point in American history.
Some argue that raising the minimum wage would increase prices and inflation, thus making the raise obsolete.
They’re not wrong about the minimum wage increasing prices. The School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Purdue University estimated that prices would increase by the unsustainable rate of 4.3 percent, assuming corporations passed 100 percent of the cost onto consumers.
So, your $3.99 Big Mac will cost $4.16. You’ll pay an extra 17 cents to increase millions of people’s wages by $7.75. Since most of you college students will go into middle-class jobs that pay far beyond $15 an hour, I’m sure you can afford to pay an extra 4.3 percent price increase.
Some say the minimum wage should be a stepping stone and that we need to keep the minimum wage so low so people have an incentive to work harder.
What a great idea. Let’s give starving people, impoverish wages so they can make more money for corporations, and then — maybe — they can move up the ladder to have a better life for their families.
I understand wanting people to have an incentive to work hard, but that doesn’t justify pitiful wages. If the only way companies can motivate their workers is to pay them poverty-level wages, then they should rethink their business strategy.
The federal minimum wage is too low, and it’s time for an across-the-board increase. If you care about the economic well-being of Americans, support $15 an hour.
Cody Sibley is a 19-year-old mass communication sophomore from Opelousas, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter at @CodySibley.