I do not see how increasing the minimum wage can be beneficial to our economic situation. Here is the problem. Minimum wage jobs are not meant for people to earn a living. They are designed for teenagers who live with their parents and do not have large expenses. Minimum wage is fine if you don’t have to pay for food or rent. I’m not saying that the only way to earn a living is to go to college. Spending time learning and applying job skills can lead to promotions, better jobs, or higher wages as skills develop. I think there are a lot of hardworking people who are earning the minimum wage, but they should be earning more. I don’t want to disrespect those people. I don’t think that raising the minimum wage will benefit his position in the least. People who get paid what they are worth and who raise the minimum wage are two different issues.

This is what happened to me when the minimum wage was increased in 2006-2009. I worked in a seasonal management position over the summer during college. When I started, the starting salary was around $ 5 an hour and supervisors made $ 8 an hour. It required experience, as well as a strong work ethic and ability to deal with problems between workers and clients. Programming and finances also participated. For the extra three dollars an hour, it was well worth it for the smart, hardworking individual. Once the minimum wage was raised to $ 7.25, guess how much a starting supervisor with exactly the same skills and responsibilities makes? $ 8.00 per hour. Instead of earning roughly 30% more than the new hire who has no experience and who may or may not (generally didn’t care) that he did well at his job, rookie supervisors earned 9% more than he did. I was promoted again to a position managing 5 different stores and several other locations, a position that had paid $ 10-12 / hour during the starting salary period of $ 5 / hour, for only $ 9 / hour. Was all this extra work worth the extra $ 2 per hour? From an economic point of view, heck no! It paid off for me in terms of gaining work experience, so I did it and made more money than I would have working in a registry with fewer responsibilities; however, it was about 20% more than them rather than twice what they earned. My workload was more than double theirs, which I can honestly say, as I worked my way up from the entry-level position and fully experienced it.

As the minimum wage increases, inflation occurs and the cost of products increases. Companies have to make more money in order to pay their employees more. The inflation rate for products is less than the increase in the minimum wage. I think the reason for this are situations like the one I experienced earlier. The minimum wage went up, so those who worked less made more money. Employers were forced to give most of their workforce a raise whether they deserved it or not, so middle management / middle income jobs that may have been providing a decent living don’t get a raise even if they deserve it. In fact, they took a cut as they brought entry-level positions closer to what they did than before. With the rising cost of goods, these people spend less money and we have another economic downturn on our hands.

Our problem is not the minimum wage! We have a problem with paying people what they are worth. A valued employee who does an excellent job at what he does should receive raises and promotions based on that. We don’t need to reward mediocrity by paying slackers (again, not all minimum wage earners are slackers, but they should get paid more if they aren’t. I’m not talking about those people) more while working people cut corners. Am I worried about hurting the rich? No. I worry about hurting everybody. I don’t think anyone can argue that the above experience describes a wealthy person complaining about having to accept a pay cut. It describes a hard working middle management employee who went from earning a decent amount of money to earning far less than before compared to the lowest earnings in the company while striving to put forth the same effort as before.

Is there a government solution to this problem? It’s probably none other than to stop messing with things. The economic downturn that occurred after the first time the minimum wage was raised is finally somewhat settled, although many people still earn comparatively less than they should. Reframing it will only create more problems. Increasing the minimum wage brings middle-income jobs closer to lower-income ones. It does not generate low-income jobs, and both low-income and middle-income jobs drift further away from high-income jobs. Create a gap that we must close again. This country thrives when we have a strong middle class. This cannot happen if employers cannot reward workers for their contributions. If this continues, mediocrity will prevail and everyone will lose.