FDR and the Minimum Wage

I agree with this quote by FDR when he passed the minimum wage law in 1933. Any company not offering a living wage should not be allowed to exist in the US. My employer certainly doesn't. This is not to say that people should earn money without doing work for it, whether they are on welfare, in prison, or at a job, but that the income that is offered allows them to live a life that is not financially distressing (unless they make it that way through their own bad decisions).

If people cannot maintain a proper standard of living, things naturally go awry. Financial insecurity is one of the main reasons marriages fail, people become (ironically) addicts, abuse occurs and people turn to crime. "Why live an upright life and starve," the logic goes, "when you can earn a lot more committing crimes?" A substandard minimum wage encourages many of the societal ills we face while the top 1% earn ludricrous amounts of money off their labor. Sure, manual labor isn't always difficult but it is all-too-often the backbone of businesses, and they ignore the potential cost of long-term manual labor on a person's physical and mental health, including due to RSIs, workplace accidents/maimings/death, and exposure to dangerous substances. Determining what is going to be enough is based, at least in part, on the cost of living index

The claim that the minimum wage was set up to give teens an entry-level wage into the workplace is nonsense.

There is absolutely no excuse for hundreds of millions in the US, and billions worldwide, to live in substandard and subsistence conditions while a tiny group lives in the lap of luxury. It doesn't matter if it's a democracy, theocracy, monarchy, communist or socialist state - any country or area that doesn't care for the people at the bottom is a place that is, in essence, a place that shouldn't exist.

If you appreciate this article, please 🏅upvote/like👍, 🤩resteem/share and share it to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn and wherever else you can!