The Outrageous Truth About A $12 Minimum Wage And Your Grocery Bill

Every time I even mention the idea of raising the minimum wage, I am immediately attacked on social media.

Opponents imagine that inflation will skyrocket; some have even claimed that ‘milk will be $10.00 a gallon’ if we raise the minimum wage.  Oh, the hysteria.  Milk is currently around $3.50 a gallon and that is up 25% from just ten years ago.  Is that 25% due to rising wages? Sadly, no – wages in America have declined during that time.  Must be some other economic force at work.  (Read “Even Dairy Farming has a 1%” here.)

So, what if we raised the floor to a living wage, and paid non-tipped employees a minimum wage of $12.00 per hour?  Oh, more hysteria.  Opponents claim that will drive our costs up so much we will be unable to eat!

Let’s look at a few facts about minimum wage.

Who gets paid minimum wage?  People opposed to raising the wage claim that ‘minimum wage workers are kids in high school; adults do not make minimum wage’.  The fact is 25% of minimum wage workers are below the age of 19 – which means  that 75% of all minimum wage earners are above the age of 20.  That means they’re adults – not high school kids.  In fact, almost half of all minimum-wage earners are above the age of 25.

Another fact: under the current minimum wage, a full time worker makes only $15,500 per year – beforetaxes.

Another fact: 64% of all minimum wage earners are women.  Of that a whopping 66% are women above the age of 20.

Another fact: More than a third of minimum wage workers (35.8 percent) are married, and over a quarter (28.0 percent) are parents.   The Economic Policy Institute estimates that if Congress raised the minimum wage, it would raise the standard of living for more than 21 million children.

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