The Republicans think poor people are lazy, and we're spending too much money on them. But the truth is that poor people want to work just as badly as anyone else does. Most of them are humiliated by having to ask for help. And just as true is the fact that most poor people already work -- at a full-time job or a couple of part-time jobs. They just don't get paid a livable wage (and anyone who thinks they can raise a family, or just support themselves, on the minimum wage has never had to try and do it.Nobody who works hard should have to live in poverty, but millions of workers are doing just that -- and millions more are in serious danger of slipping into poverty. One of the easiest ways to fix this situation is to just raise the minimum wage. The graphic above states that raising the minimum wage would help 15 million workers. I think it would be even more, since those making a wage just above minimum wage would also have their wages raised -- and their would be upward pressure on all wages.
The Republicans will tell you that the minimum wage only affects teenagers. That is not true. The vast majority of minimum wage workers are not teenagers, and 60% of them are women (many of them single mothers. The GOP will also tell you that raising the minimum wage will hurt businesses and make them lay off workers. That's also not true. Many studies have shown that states with a much higher minimum wage than the federal wage of $7.25 an hour actually have healthier economies than the low-wage states, and no jobs were lost by raising the wage. A higher minimum wage will actually be good for businesses, because it will give the masses more money to spend, increasing demand for those products and services of both small and large businesses.
And while the Republicans want to keep the minimum wage at $7.25 (and many of them actually want to abolish it), the American people know better. Several polls have shown that the information in the top graphic is true -- about 4 out of 5 Americans want the minimum wage raised -- and they would support an even higher wage than the president has proposed. While the president has proposed a $9.00 an hour minimum wage, an overwhelming majority of Americans would support raising it to at least $10 an hour (which would just restore the buying power the minimum wage had in 1967).
As for spending too much to help the poor, if the Republicans really believed that they would be in favor of raising the minimum wage -- because that would take more people off of government roles than any other single thing that we could do.
As I said before, no one who works hard should have to live in poverty. That is a matter of economic justice. Labor and capital are equal partners in a free enterprise system, and both should be rewarded equitably for the part they play. The minimum wage should be raised as soon as possible, and it should be raised to at least $10 an hour. It just makes sense.
