Federal Minimum Wage Went Up Y'day

Not a whole lot of fanfare was generated y'day when the Federal Minimum Wage was increased...$.70 an hour. It's understandable that not much fanfare was generated. It's not that much of a raise. It's the first such raise, federally mandated,  in over 10 years for the minimum wage paid workers. 10 years without a raise.

And now  the raise is $.70 an hour. For a 40 hour work week that raise adds just under $30.00 a week to the employee's gross pay. After taxes the employee will take home...an extra $18-20 a week.

And it took 10 years,  2 bull markets and recent record profits on wall street before this raise was approved.

From 1997 to 2006, though, Congress voted to allow automatic annual pay raises, er, cost of living increases. I guess cost of living increases only effected them.

I received some emails from services that keep employers up-to-date on these rapid changes. Darkly, I laughed when one email breathlessly asked if I was aware or ready for this change. Here's why:

We don't hire people who will settle for $5.15 an hour.

We can't run a business with people whose skills can settle for $5.15 an hour.

We wouldn't pay people $5.15 an hour. It's an amazingly short-sighted tactic to pay people below subsistence wages. I'm willing to bet if we polled those companies that pay their employees the minimum wage we'll find them the same companies with the highest employee turnover, theft and the highest gap between executive pay and employee pay.

If you need why explained to you...you must be in Congress, maybe.