The Federal minimum wage was last raised in 2009, and as of 2022, remains at a paltry $7.25/hour, which signifies that in absence of a particular State, or county, mandating a higher minimum wage within that locale, that companies are permitted to offer jobs at the wage of $7.25/hour, to anyone that will accept such. In addition, it should be noted, that as low as that minimum wage is, that there are exceptions to the minimum wage law which permits even lower hourly compensation rates to be legal in regards to certain professions, such as for those that are tipped restaurant employees as well as for those employees that are under 20 years of age, amongst other exceptions.
The type of person that has to accept the minimum wage or a wage lower than the oft mentioned $15/hour that many organizations are pushing for as representing a living wage, are the very people that pretty much aren’t in a good position to accept anything other than what is so offered to them as their pay, and the conditions that go along with such. While it is to the credit that some of the largest and most notable corporations in America have raised their starting wage to $15/hour or even more, we still so find, as reported by Oxfam, that “…. 31.9 percent of the U.S. workforce makes sub-$15 an hour wage,” which is a staggeringly high percentage of the American workforce, that clearly are making subsistence wages or worse.
This country has a moral obligation to its own people, to first get its own house in order, and thereby rather than spending billions upon billions of unnecessary dollars, on its “Defense” budget, and further rather than spending billions upon billions of unnecessary dollars on its unneeded space program – it should direct its concentration first and foremost on the very people that it is suppose to provide some semblance of a minimum standard of living to. This thus signifies that the Federal minimum wage needs to be reconfigured to reflect a living wage and further that the current exceptions to not paying that new Federal minimum wage should be few and far between.
While it isn’t easy running any business in America, the fact of the matter is, that every single one of those commercial enterprises has an obligation, in this the richest nation that the world has ever known, of paying to those that they so employ, or engage with, a living wage. We do so note, that the wages and working conditions of American employees would be in a lot better shape and thereby wouldn’t be such a major issue within America, if the power of labor unions hadn’t been completely broken; but indeed, labor unions have been essentially eviscerated in the private enterprise sphere, with only a few notable exceptions. This thus signifies that the Federal government, must itself step in, in order to do the right thing, by making it governmental policy that all those that labor, are entitled to receive in return for a fair day’s work, a fair day’s wage, which is so represented by that which compensates employees fairly, by a living wage.