Living wages or poverty

I read about so many people who are rich or on salary claiming that a $15 minimum wage is nonsense. This letter is to attempt to educate those people. The federal poverty rate for a family of four is $26k/year. A full=time job is just over 2,000 hours a year, so a $15 minimum wage is just over $30,000 per year. The people who want to re-create the feudal system can’t openly admit why they think anyone with a full-time job should be in poverty.

As for it killing jobs, there are lots of “projections” and “estimates,,” but the folks against a living wage never look at historic analysis. The National Employment Law Project published an analysis of decades of data. The key statement is “The results were clear: these basic economic indicators show no correlation between federal minimum-wage increases and lower employment levels, even in the industries that are most impacted by higher minimum wages. To the contrary, in the substantial majority of instances (68 percent) overall employment increased after a federal minimum-wage increase.”

Anyone against a rise in the minimum wage to provide all people with full-time jobs the money to be above the poverty level must clearly explain why they support poverty.

David Teich

Spokane Valley