Remember when cars cost $3,500 and a house cost $30,000? Inflation raised your pay, the cost of that car, and houses are still just as unaffordable.
Over my many working years I have benefited from the increased minimum wage rates as well as the union won rate increases. I have always been part of the administrative staff and always on a salary. Some were weekly rates, some were monthly rates, and there was once even an annual salary. I receive no overtime pay but my high pay rate is supposedly offset by better pay than the hourly employees. Not true.
Huffington Post reports that 13 States Will Raise Their Minimum Wage For The New Year. It seems like a good idea. After all who could argue with the idea of increasing the pay for those least paid who clearly are in a world of hurt? Many need food stamps and housing subsidies to survive.
Those salaried jobs of mine have not brought me to wealth. So I can relate to the poorest paid.
The problem for me is that a pay hike for everyone still leaves the poorest paid at the bottom of the pyramid. Now they face proportionately higher cost for rent, food, and the other necessities of life. They will be no better off than they had been before the pay increase. Inflation will destroy their gains.
San Francisco is a city with a minimum rate of $10.55 per hour. The new rate in January will be $10.74. The cost of living in San Francisco is 164% of the national average. How has the high minimum rate helped the lowest paid workers? It hasn’t!
Is there a solution? I know of none.
Coast Contact 