I know there are some (misguided) “middle class” people who also oppose the $15 minimum wage. Relax, calm down, I don’t mean you. Technically. Although why you think I should work at least as hard as you do for far less money, I don’t understand.
Dear (rich) people who oppose even a paltry $15.00 an hour minimum wage:
There are a lot of things that deeply suck about being one of the working poor. I’m sure you’re aware of many of them already; probably some of the big ones like no access to decent health care* or dental care, and toxic pollution in lower-income neighborhoods.
But there’s a few other, smaller things that I would like to let you know about. Not that you care, of course. It’s my own fault for never having any capital gains to not be taxed. (or whatever the hell you top-hat and monacle types squirm out of the most, taxwise.) (and want to be called “geniuses” for doing it, too, instead of the traditional word, which is “criminal.”):
I would like to eat muesli now and again. I’ve had it quite a bit in the past, and I think it’s delicious, also very good for me. No way can I afford things like muesli if I want to eat all week.
I have been wearing the left lens only of a pair of 1-week disposable contact lenses for more than a year. Yes, contact lenses are cheap now. However, the law now requires that you get a brand new fresh prescription for contact lenses every single year. Period. The exam costs about ten times as much as a box of lenses. And no, medicare won’t pay for it, because apparently a refraction exam for contacts is completely different from one for glasses. Yup yup.
I would like for buying a once-a-year little feast for Christmas dinner to maybe not completely cost every single penny I haven’t spent on one or two modest presents for my son and my brother (–And I know my idea of modest and yours are probably reeeeeally different.) Not to mention the utility bills I will have to partially defer til next month, to our further detriment.
And, I would like to see a movie in a theater once in awhile. Just once in awhile. How are you wealthy investors going to make multi-millions on movies if people can’t afford 60-80 bucks for less than 90 minutes’ entertainment?
*Yes, I’m covered under Obamacare. But there isn’t a doctor within fifty miles who is taking new patients.
I expect most of them think you have far too much, not too little. America is built on the belief that the poor are evil and should be punished; I recall how back during Clinton’s “welfare reform” I’d hear people go into a rage over the fact that people on welfare were allowed furniture or heat.
“bad” as in “currently too low for anyone to actually live on”
or “bad” as in “it makes it so that rich pricks have to pay decent wage, and can’t suck the profits out of a business so they can buy more useless crap, and that makes baby Jesus cry”?
Wearing the same contact that long can cause permanent damage, a gradual loss of vision by your cornea (which normally gets it’s oxygen from the air) growing blood vessels to supply oxygen that is blocked by contacts that have been over worn with build up of proteins.
You can get contacts from Canada w/o a script, mailed to you, google it.
I remember a few local news stories about some middle-class suicides and/or murder-suicides in our last depression. I’m very sorry they had to find out the hard way how a $15 an hour job would deplete their life budget and how they had to stand in line for one. I’m also pretty damn sure their friends who didn’t lose their jobs didn’t jump in to help.
The current MW is $7.25/hr. We know that during normal times, small changes (~ 10%) in the MW have little to no measurable impact on unemployment. Upping the MW to $15/hr is a more than doubling of the MW and is not a “small change”. That will very likely have a significant impact on the unemployment rate
No, when the start paying “the help” (I imagine the monocle dropped out of your eye when you uttered this phrase) 15 bucks an hour, the rich will get a little less profit to buy more shiny things. It’s not enough anymore for a CEO to make 45 or 50 million/year. They must have MORE. And if that means screwing “the help” over, well they probably deserve it, the dirty wretches.
We should index it to inflation and let it go at that. The OP didn’t say anything about phasing it in. I’m sure the MW will be at $15 some time in the future. I suspect the OP is thinking short term, but let’s wait until he or she clarifies.