Why the minimum wage should matter to you.

Whenever I hear discussion about the minimum wage, I generally hear the same arguments. Those for raising it, tend to argue that one cannot live on minimum wage, and those opposed, tend to argue that people in certain occupations, being unskilled, should not earn a professional level wage, and if the minimum wage were raised, it would lead to increased joblessness, as employers would now have an increased burden from those costs. Also, raising the minimum wage would cause the cost of everything else to go up, since this financial burden would be passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices.

Interesting arguments, but both sides miss the reality of the situation. In a report from the National Employment Law Project that came out in July of '12, the truth of the situation is very well spelled out. While it is true that the minimum wage reached it buying power peak in 1968 (the $1.60 wage was worth about $10.60 in today's dollars),  and today's minimum wage is about 30% less in real buying power, the real problem is the current ratio of low-income workers compared to those that earn a real living wage. Compound that with the fact that low income jobs are the majority of the new ones created, and a pattern emerges that points to the slow recovery, that may not be sustainable, and an economic reality that may, in fact, lead this country further into the third world.

Some things that aren't brought up by these arguments:

• Most minimum wage workers work for large corporations, not small companies. In fact, most small companies pay their front line workers more than minimum wage, it's the mega-corporations that don't.
• Most of these companies with low-wage front line workers, are profitable. Many of them paying their executives bonuses and paying shareholders up to billions of dollars, while their front line workers only get by thanks to public assistance.

I'm not going to argue that some jobs offered by these employers should pay well. I don't believe that a part-time highschooler gathering carts in the parking lot should be getting $20/hr. On the other hand, a corporation that can afford stock buybacks and can afford to pay their executives more in an hour than their front line employees earn in a month, should be able to afford to pay those employees enough that they don't qualify for public assistance.In fact, the numbers suggest this can easily be done by our nation's largest employers, they just choose not to do it.

I care about this because I just don't see a reason that my tax dollars should be used on a person with a full-time job working for a profitable firm. Since that person is working for a profitable outfit, the compensation should be there so he/she is making too much for public assistance, instead of relying on me, and other taxpayers to make up the difference.

If WalMart, the largest employer in the US, paid their workers more,

•  those folks would probably spend the bulk of that increase right back in the store, after all, just about any consumer goods one can get, can be gotten at WalMart. 
• this would result in higher revenues, and more orders which would have the effect of creating more manufacturing jobs to meet the demand
• They would also be able to attract and retain quality employees, not because they have nowhere else to go, but because that is where they prefer to be. 
• WalMart would not need the multimillion ad campaign to offset the recent bad press concerning the compensation of the employees.

These corporations, unfortunately, don't see the error in continuing the practice of paying employees the minimum they can get away with, instead of a reasonable amount they can afford, which is the only reason there is a minimum wage law on the books. It is largely forgotten that before there was a minimum wage law, there were situations were free people didn't get paid by profitable business at all.

Properly compensated, these employees would create a consumer base that would really turn the economy around, bring the US back to being comfortably a first world nation, get people off of public assistance, which would help lower our tax bill, and have more tax payers sharing that bill, and finally create new revenue streams for these companies.