Raising The Minimum Wage

The United States drastically underpays our workforce. Our elected officials are complicit in allowing tax cuts to millionaires, billionaires, and huge corporations while paying our poorest Americans dirt wages. Of the 38 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OCED), the United States ranks 17th, behind countries like Lithuania, Poland, Canada, The United Kingdom, and France.

Our country currently has a minimum wage of $7.25/hour, last raised in 2009. It’s even worse for tipped workers who have a minimum wage of $2.13/hour, last raised in 1991. 

We need to raise the minimum wage to $15.00/hour for non tipped workers, and $11.00/hour for tipped workers. Additionally, we should build in the following escalators:

  • 2030 = $17.50/hr for non-tipped workers, $12.50 for tipped workers

  • 2035 = $ 20/hr for non-tipped workers, $13.50 for tipped workers

  • 2040 =  $25/hr for non-tipped workers, $16 for tipped workers

While there would be some potential downsides to raising the minimum wage included a negative impact on some small businesses, the positives FAR outweigh the negatives. Overnight, millions of workers would immediately have their wages increased. This extra money could be the difference between paying this month's rent, or sleeping in their cars. The difference between being able to buy their family food, or forcing them to go hungry.

Not only would millions immediately lift out of poverty, this money would make its way back into communities. Into local small businesses such as local coffee shops, deli’s restaurants, and other businesses that have been there for decades. It would bring economic opportunities, job opportunities, and reduce crime in the area. Neighborhoods and communities that are now desolate and barren, would see a resurgence. 

Those are the differences this policy would make. Anyone who opposes people being able to feed themselves, or paying their rent, doesn’t deserve to be your representative in Congress. And anyone who hasn’t proposed raising the minimum, doesn’t deserve to be your representative either.