The Bare Minimum

President Obama has proposed increasing the federal minimum wage to $9.00 per hour, up from the current $7.25.  Like many states, Ohio has established its own minimum wage slightly above the federal level.  We're $7.85.

I don't know if it'll go to $9 or not, but the sky-is-falling warnings from the right were immediate and predictable.  John Boehner and others recited the age-old Republican dogma:  Increasing the minimum wage makes it harder for small business to hire.  It makes it harder for unskilled workers to acquire skills.  It costs jobs.  Boehner said, "When you raise the price of employment, you get less of it."

(Orange John makes over $225,000 a year, so the price of his employment is pretty steep.  Can we get less of him, please?) 

Some of the right-wing talk-radio gasbags were fixated on the fact that since the federal minimum wage was established in 1938 (at 25 cents per hour), it has been increased 22 times.  Do you hear me?  TWENTY-TWO times!!!!  I guess their point is that 22 times is somehow "enough", that we oughta be done by now, and that a 23rd increase would plunge us into the pit of economic hell.

What a crock!  For the past 75 years, the GOP has been opposed to the very existence of a minimum wage.  In the recent GOP primaries, Mad Michelle Bachmann was still advocating the complete elimination of the minimum wage.  She claimed such a move would "wipe out unemployment completely because we'd be able offer thousands of jobs at whatever level."  Yeah, like the 25-cents-an-hour level.

The minimum wage has never been enough to actually live on.  It's bare-bones subsistence-level pay.  But without such a mandated bare minimum, many employers would be happy to pay less -- much, much less.  Those who today rail against minimum wage hikes are descended from the Scrooges of the past who swore their enterprises would collapse if child labor and the 16-hour work day were outlawed.  And as I recall, the antebellum Southern slaveholders were not real big on any sort of minimum wage either.

So, as a counter-balance to such purely capitalistic instincts, we have labor laws and we have a minimum wage, and as time marches on the minimum wage must be periodically adjusted upward.  It's happened 22 times so far and we've survived just fine.  The sky has not fallen.

Outside of my other job, for the past ten years I've also served as the volunteer manager for our community swimming pool.  We hire 6 to 8 lifeguards each season, with any rookies starting at minimum.  The more experienced guards are paid more.  In my tenure, we've seen three increases in the minimum wage, and it's not really a big deal.  If we need to make pricing adjustments to cover increased costs, labor or other, we do it, maintain our margins and move forward.  The Republican argument that I will hire a new lifeguard at $8 an hour but won't hire one at $9 is just absurd.

If a small increase in the minimum wage truly spells doom for the future of your business, then I'm afraid your business was doomed already.