Screenshots, links not active. I was looking for something else and saw this. [Colorado District 1 representatives] (Denver)
Why is my representative even talking about this?
Oh. That's right. Marching orders from Party.
On the 'what people think' side, omitted: workers with zero skills, workers entering workforce, leisure and hospitality workers that receive tips, and contrary to the graph provided by Economic Policy Institute, most tend to be young; under 25- 50%, teenage 21%, 3% of total workers over 25 yrs old. Let's not mention persons with criminal records that figure would just mess things, and people with disabilities such that simply cannot perform without constant attention. The graph provided is flatly wrong.
6% of minimum wage earners are women, 3% are men.
11% work less than 35 hrs. week
States with most minimum wage workers: Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, Idaho. Conversely, the states with lowest % of minimum wage workers: Alaska, Oregon, California, Montana, Washington, all under 2%.
The institute that produced the graph states: Raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 would give working families, and the overall economy, a much-needed boost.
Of course it would. It would tend to move minimum wage toward living wage. Insisting on this demonstrates that policies pursued affect job creation so negatively that minimum wage now must be considered living wage for increasing number of workers.
When I worked minimum wage this was an issue then too, apparently a perennial issue as economies grow, and I was all for it. Employers are rich, I'm poor, easy that, just raise it already. But having endured that and grown I can see I really was a crap employee, although I was the best doggone dishwasher that place ever had. I wanted to be cook, and those guys just didn't see my potential. They dismissed all that I had to offer.
From pure economic pov, the correct thing to do is abolish minimum wage altogether. The government has no business in that. But legislators do imagine themselves lords of the economy and by pulling levers this way and that and our allowing it, they make themselves so. Unless stopped. Cries by politicians to raise minimum wage is admission they've messed things so sorely that minimum wage conflates with living wage as must be for the damage they've done. Okay for those who already employed. Not okay for those shut out from employment due directly to this specifically and this type of government meddling.
This subject is a bit boring. Like children arguing over matters long settled, I'd avoid it, but here it is again. Apologies for being so boring, but the subject was delivered from on high, and with no small force. They have to be answered.
