Minimum Wage – Part III

It seems that I cannot let go of the minimum wage issue.  I wrote about the minimum wage twice – see Minimum Wage  and Minimum Wage – Part II. What is obvious to me, and to anyone else that is paying attention, the campaign for a change in the minimum wage is more of a political football than a real campaign.

Now I am not saying that the desire of certain politicians for advancing the minimum wage is not real.  For instance, I do not question Bernie Sanders’ rather famous call for a $15/hour minimum wage.  This was a major piece of his 2016 campaign and seemed to be a significant contributor to his attraction to his supporters.  But even he admits, somewhat indirectly, that his call was a political move when he admitted that he never expected that he could get a $15/hour minimum wage put into effect.  So, even though I think his concern was real, he was disingenuous about his call for $15/hour.  I wonder how many of his followers realized this?

I am not picking on Bernie Sanders, but merely using him as the most well-known representative of those calling for minimum wage reform.  And, as I have reiterated in my other posts, just raising the minimum wage may not solve a damned thing unless you do more.

Let us get real here.  Setting a dollar figure for minimum wage, putting it into effect, and walking away just ignores the real problem.  It may solve the immediate problem, passing the issue on to the next time it becomes out of hand.

We have to face the issue that, with changes in our society, minimum wage is not merely paid for those jobs that are entry-level, part-time, or secondary in nature as they most often once were.  Whether true or not, that was once the perception.  Now, that is definitely not the case.  Sadly, flipping burgers may be a career, choice or not.

This means we must do something that we have done for other key monetary issues, such as Social Security payments.

We must establish what we think minimum wage to be and then index it.

Here is an example:

1. Let us say that we say that we set the national minimum wage as (and this is arbitrary for this example) the representation of 120% of federal poverty level for 1 person at 40 hours a week.  Keep in mind this can be argued, but whatever is established, everyone will know.
2. Just like, say Social Security, there is an annual review of the poverty level (or whatever the minimum wage is indexed to) and a new minimum wage is reset.
3. Have legislation in place that would allow states, to either establish a fixed minimum wage (as they currently do) or index to local values.

Now I know that this political, but maybe it is a one-time issue – at least for now.  But once it is established, it removes it from a political campaign issue and puts into a people issue.  Then the only thing that we need to revisit is if the index does not work.