Most Americans should be getting a pay raise
It amazes me when I hear near- to above-middle-class earners complain about the push to raise the minimum at the federal level, which has stood at $7.25 for almost five years, including during the 2008 recession. These critics look at the $15 an hour that protesting fast-food workers have been asking for and say that's too much for someone at that level of employment. What they're really saying is that $15 an hour is getting too close to what they make and does not properly reflect the gap in education and responsibility between them and a – pardon the expression – hamburger flipper.
They're looking at the issue from the wrong end of the microscope. It's not that fast-food workers are asking for too much for what they do. An annual salary of $16,120 isn't excessive when you consider the price of goods and services in today's world. A worker with a family earning that amount would need another job if he or she were the sole source of income. A young person earning that amount and trying to go to college would have a hard time keeping up with expenses even if he still lives at home.
It's not that lower-paid workers are asking for too much; it's that workers making more are settling for too little. Wages need to be adjusted from the bottom up, with those at the very top income levels – the multimillionaires making dozens of times more than their workers – giving up some cash to compensate. While the federal minimum wage didn't budge, the average pay of CEOs rose 5.5 percent last year to more than $11 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. Yes, the trickle-down theory can work, if it's actually applied. Instead, the average Fortune 500 CEO is making 200 times more than his employees.
New Jersey's minimum wage rose this year, but only from $8.25 an hour to $8.38; with automatic annual increases based on inflation now required by law. Twenty-nine states have raised their minimum wages higher than the federal standard. It's time for Congress to take the bigger leap. Fears that some small businesses will have a hard time paying higher salaries are valid, but that may only be for a period of adjustment until people taking home bigger paychecks begin spending more cash as consumers. It's not just minimum-wage workers who deserve to be paid more, it's almost everyone else.
Harold Jackson is editorial page editor of The Inquirer.