Reply #13: Living Wage, not minimum [View All]

[Mikey929]

Why talk about a minimum wage? Do we talk about minimum health care or minimum environmental protections or minimum civil rights? No! These are rights, people, not suggestions for how to better our world. Rights - by definition - cannot have an acceptable minimum. You either have it or you don't.

So let's say the mimimum wage is raised to $7.00. That's still $14,000 per year, which is poverty, no matter what the government says. So this whole idea of a minimum wage is meaningless. We need to guarantee a wage that ensures a worker can provide for his or her family at a decent level. It doesn't matter if the worker is a college grad designing computers, or the drop-out who cleans the toilets. All work is honorable and deserves just compensation. By agreeing to a minimum wage, we are basically saying that a whole spectrum of workers can be tossed into poverty just because they don't have an education or marketable skills. Is that fair?

Some of these rich business owners need to see that not everyone gets to drive BMW's and live in a mansion. If the workers who make your rich life possible aren't living a comfortable life, then the workers need the government to step in and take corrective action. General Welfare!