It's no secret that the minimum wage has less buying power than it used to have. Forty-five years ago, in 1968, the minimum wage wage only $1.60 an hour -- but that $1.60 an hour would purchase the same amount of goods/services that $10.77 an hour would purchase today. Unfortunately, the current minimum wage is only $7.25 an hour. That means the minimum wage has lost about 1/3 of the buying power (32.68%) that it had in 1968 -- and a minimum wage worker today can only purchase 2/3 of what a minimum wage worker could buy forty-five years ago. The reason for this loss is that Congress has failed to raise the minimum wage as much as inflation has climbed.The president has proposed raising the minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. That wouldn't make up the difference between 1968 and today, but it still would be a big help to many low-wage workers. Some Democrats and Independents in Congress would like to raise it more -- to at least $10.00 an hour. That would be even better, and it would be good for business also, because it would give millions of people more money to spend in those businesses (and that money would be spent, since low-wage workers still wouldn't have "extra" money -- money that could be saved).
But a raising of the minimum wage is not likely to happen. That is because the Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, are against any raise. In fact, a considerable number of them would like to abolish the minimum wage (allowing desperate workers to be abused even worse than they already are). They claim raising the minimum wage would hurt businesses and cause them to lay off workers. That is not true, as many studies have shown, but then truth is not a Republican value.
The American people know the truth though. They believe the minimum wage should be raised, and that would be beneficial to not only low-wage workers, but to our entire economy. The charts above show this. They were made with information from a recent Gallup Poll (taken on November 5th and 6th of 1,040 nationwide adults, with a margin of error of 4 points).
Note that all political groups of voters would support raising the minimum wage to at least $9.00 an hour (including a majority of Republican voters) -- and some other polls have shown a substantial majority would support raising it to $10.00 an hour. Even better, significant majorities would support attaching the minimum wage to the rate of inflation -- so the buying power of that wage wouldn't immediately start being eaten away by rising inflation. The only group that would not give majority support to that is GOP voters, but even among them about 43% would support it.
This means that congressional Republicans are once again opposing a measure supported by a substantial majority of the general public (just like on Social Security, Medicare, immigration reform, background checks for gun buyers, and other issues). Frankly, I don't understand why anyone would vote for a Republican, considering their opposition to anything that would help ordinary Americans.
