Minimum Wage

When the $15 an hour wage idea had started to circulate around the political sphere, me and my parents had had a few conversations about it. They never ended too well, and always ended with one side getting super heated.

My mom owns a business, so her perspective on the matter was widely different from mine. We all generally agree that there are more positives than negatives when it comes to increasing the minimum wage. But my mom argued for those smaller businesses, the ones who don’t have million upon millions of capital that they have access to, is it fair to ask that much out of a business who simply cannot afford to pay their employees that much?

The purpose of the minimum wage when it was created in 1938, was, and I quote from law.cornell.edu. “to stabilize the post-depression economy and protect the workers in the labor force. The minimum wage was designed to create a minimum standard of living to protect the health and well-being of employees.” I don’t think anyone can argue now that the minimum wage we have right now is enough to give anyone a liveable wage. Even if someone is working more than 40 hours every week, it still wouldn’t be nearly enough to pay for housing in most place. Especially since certain areas have different housing costs. California Housing is nowhere close in cost to the cost of North Carolina housing. Of course we aren’t even considering the costs for lights, water, food, gas.

Everything else that you need to y’know. Live in a house.

I basically already asked the question through my mother but I’ll ask it again cause I think its interesting. Is it fair to ask that much out of a business who simply cannot afford to pay their employees that much? (Mom and Pop shops, etc etc.)