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Health & Fitness

Six Reasons to Increase the Minimum Wage

Soon after high school in 1979, I was making $8 an hour with health insurance at a silkscreen company. My apartment was $250 a month with utilities included. I owned a great set of wheels that had cost me $1000, and it burned gas at the cost of $1.25 per gallon.

Today at Walmart or McDonalds, employees are making a living wage tailored for the 1970’s. Working full time, but still unable to afford health care and food, workers are encouraged to go to the government for help. We are all paying for what the corporation “fat cats” will not pay.

Asking for $10.10 an hour is unacceptable, compared to the $28 an hour that it would take for the same purchasing power that I had in 1979. Freedom for corporations does not work, since corporations are run by people with the same mentality as slave owners. As an “unskilled” employee today, you are trying to live on pasta, and walking in a really bad set of shoes. The “then-go-work-somewhere-else” philosophy does not work, since all corporations are aware that there are people with the “will work for food” signs. Without bargaining power, workers need to be protected by regulating capitalism.

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Watch the number or carts that constantly role through your local Walmart checkouts, ringing up over 100 million in sales per year, per store. It might be true that increasing the minimum wage will result in increased prices, mainly because fat cats will want to keep their billions growing. An increase to $15 an hour could result in an increase of 15% per item. I believe that the positives do however outweigh this one small negative.

While the economy has improved with rising corporate profits, the minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation. That apartment that I had for $250 a month is now rented by someone paying $1000 a month. Raising the minimum wage is one way to fight against the destructive powers of the 1%. The middle class is being destroyed. Today, a teacher can only afford the lifestyle that a burger-flipper had in the 40’s. While more goods and services are now produced by two-income families, corporate policies have shifted all profits to the 1% in the form of executive salaries and shareholder returns.

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1.      To decrease reliance on food stamps, Social Security Income, and other government assistance programs.

2.       For a positive stimulus to the economy by higher consumer spending, with little or no impact on unemployment.

3.       People that are paid more are people that pay more taxes.

4.       An increase to $10.10 is modest, but would pull an estimated 4.6 million out of the poverty level.

5.       An incentive for increased productivity and reduced labor turn-over costs.

6.       Although most of the 27.8 million working for minimum wage are not teenagers, an increase might get your teenager to move out of the basement and/or could help to pay for a college degree.

 

Don Brown (Author and host of the Greater Reality Show at

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCOoDipiUlQ )

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