Jay Newton: Raising minimum wage will improve everyone’s standard of living

To The Daily Sun,

In my last letter, I talked about a living wage, here are some more details. One worker, no children, needs $23.58/hour. A living wage means you get enough money for food, medical, housing, transportation, clothing, internet and mobile while working one full-time job.

I know you may be thinking, “That’s too much, many companies would have to lay people off. Then they would be worse off.” This is unlikely because most businesses need the people they employ and the long-term effect is that most businesses will grow and need more employees.

We will need to phase in the increases over time to prevent inflation and unnecessary job displacement, but we need to start now. The federal minimum wage is no longer a living wage because businesses have, since the 1980s, pushed to end of the cost of living increases mandated by the federal minimum wage law of 1939.

This affects all of us, not just those at the bottom. If you have more skills you may get paid more than the minimum wage but only enough to differentiate your pay from the least skilled people and that’s often still not a living wage or barely above it. This is the main reason why people feel frustrated about the economy. They can never catch up.

Making the minimum wage a living wage will improve everyone’s standard of living.

President Joe Biden believes in raising the minimum wage and increased it for all federal employees to $15 in 2022.

Jay Newton

Gilford