$15/Hour Minimum Wage

I get why you are enamored with a candidate who champions a $15/hour minimum wage.  I really do.  After all when you are making crap wages that sounds like a Godsend. 

Let us face it; the world has changed since I was starting out my work life.  Minimum wage jobs were starting jobs or part-time jobs.  Generally, they were jobs you got to add a few bucks to your pocket, an after-school job, or a job to hold you over until you got a “real” job.  The only time that was not the case was when the economy was in the toilet.  Then they were jobs to hold you over until the economy got better.

That was in no small part because there were jobs outside of the service industry that you could get.  Even if you had not actual trade, you could find some kind of job that would pay you for the old “weak mind, strong back”.  Just to name a few that I experienced: mills, factories, warehouses, woods, entry-level trades.  Sadly, most of those jobs are gone.  If you do not have an education, you are generally relegated to the service industry.  And the service industry wage base is predicated on whatever the prevailing minimum wage happens to be.

In today’s world, you have to live on what you can make in a minimum wage world.  Let us face it.  Even in an ideal world, minimum wage is not going to be very attractive.  But right now it is not even at the poverty level in most places.  You cannot pay rent, utilities, and put food on the table for yourself on a minimum wage job.  Let alone having independents.  As for transportation: forget about having any kind of decent personal transportation.  The crappiest, cheapest new car available is around $15K.  Try to wrap your head around how that equates with the current minimum wage.  Hell, even a $15/hour minimum wage means that, if you want your own car, you are going to be driving a POS that is decades old and being held together with baling wire and duct tape.

I see why the dude that promises you a $15/hour minimum wage sound like the hero you have been looking for.  He is answering a basic need you have.  He is dealing with a NOW problem. 

But look behind the curtain.  His promise is for $15/hour in seven years.  Not now.  Not when you need it, but in seven stinking years.  On top of it, he has not come up with any plan to make sure that the $15/hour minimum wage is not wiped out by raising prices.  He has not proposed what is really needed: an indexed wage.  That is a wage tied to an index, such as the poverty level so that no matter what the economy does, your purchasing power is protected.  That is the answer.

Of course, that takes some explaining on his part.  That takes some thought on his part, instead of creating a stinking sound bite.  Most importantly, it takes some understanding on your part so that you do not get shafted even more.  But, I understand.  It sounds so damned good.  Remember however; if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is not true.