Speak Up: Minimum wage reaction, Round 2

The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009. Is it time for an increase? If so, what is an appropriate level? Should it be a living wage or something more modest? Those questions plague policymakers, business owners, employees and others in the nation’s capital and around the country.

• Life is that simple. Even if you are a single parent with no support, no education because you had to leave school to get a job to help support your family when you were younger, and you’re currently struggling to pay the bills, raise children, keep your kids safe because you can only afford housing in a high-crime area. Or if you are an elderly widow, who has never worked because her husband was the provider and suddenly died, leaving you with no savings but a lot of debt. These are only two of the many scenarios people living below the poverty line are in. I know you think you live in the greatest country in the world, and that’s an important hill for you to die on, but if you look at statistics from around the globe, you will see that America is far from being the greatest at anything. I know you are just going to come back with “That’s their own fault,” and in some cases, that might even be true, but are you so selfish that you can’t see beyond yourself to think people shouldn’t have to choose between heat or food? — Julie Penny-Stowell

• Cost of living has risen with or without a rise in wages. Wages have not been keeping up, and at this point, all you are really arguing for is to keep an increasingly growing portion of the population reliant on public assistance by subsidizing both the employees’ costs of living and the employers’ labor costs. And then, I’m betting you get pissed off at your tax dollars being used to help all those “lazy welfare leeches.” It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You don’t want people to earn enough to live without the need for welfare because you have decided that their job is not valued at an amount needed to meet the cost of living, but then you don’t want people with employers not paying a living wage to rely on welfare. Nobody should work any job for 40 hours per week and be paid a wage that is less than the cost of living. No labor should be valued at less than what is needed to live without the use of tax subsidies. We should be penalizing any business that is paying employees at a full-time rate that qualifies for public assistance. Those employers should be funding the welfare costs for their employees, not the taxpayers. It might even encourage employers to raise wages without the need for these stale arguments over minimum-wage laws being trotted back out every few years and leaving people in need stuck waiting for the government to take actions. — Justin Roscoe

• You know the best way out of that racket of fast food? Become an apprentice in one of the many trade unions looking for people. The training is sometimes free, and the money is good. — Charles Lee

• Politicians love policies like the minimum wage because the beneficiaries (in this case, the subgroup of existing workers who can expect an increase) are visible. Whereas the victims of the same policy are invisible. That includes younger or unskilled potential workers who could be productively employed at the old rate but not at the new. The only public relations downside for politicians is there will be, according to the CBO, around 1.4 million jobs eliminated. Also, there is the complication of small- and medium-size businesses that are very vocal. If you are observant, you will find that very large businesses and national chains do not really care about the minimum wage, as they have the option to absorb labor increases by closing the lower-performing stores and laying off the workers employed at these locations en masse. Also, minimum-wage increases can actually help larger corporations by removing pesky smaller competitors, like the local mom and pops in a given community. — Matt Bucher

• If the minimum wage was at the same amount it was in 1967, adjusted for inflation, it would be $24.38/hour. Single mothers of two kids in 1967 could rent an apartment, pay bills and feed their family on minimum wage, which many did. No one can do that today. — Susan Janis