 |
| Image Source: The Socialist |
BrandonTurbeville.com
June 5, 2016
Ever since the minimum wage was enacted in 1938, powerful industry and banking interests have lobbied against it and, logically, against the prospect of ever raising it. The reasoning behind such large corporations and banks’ opposition to the federal minimum wage statutes and the subsequent increase in wage payments is simple enough to understand. However, much of their public crowing over the issue has hidden the greed behind their arguments into carefully crafted propaganda that has unfortunately been eaten up by many members of the general public, themselves suffering under wage stagnation and the prospect of poverty.
Fear over loss of jobs, automation, and reduced profits have all been trotted out as a defense against the raising of the minimum wage and, in some more extreme elements, even against the concept of the minimum wage itself.
One of the more common rebuttals one might be accustomed to hearing from opponents in regards to the minimum wage is that “The minimum wage was never meant to be a living wage. It was originally meant to simply be an entry-level wage.”
In other words, according to these critics, the minimum wage was merely set to establish an entry-level wage so that a worker could gain some experience in a trade, but it was never meant to provide that worker with a livable wage by which he could support himself or a family. Such is the response repeated by many free market proponents and often generally well-meaning people who have been woefully mislead by Wall Street and corporate interests.
The argument, however, no doubt promoted by Wall Street and free-market fetishists, simply does not have any basis in reality. Whatever one may think about the minimum wage, there can be little doubt that the minimum wage was indeed meant to be a living wage. One need only look at the statements of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the father of the American minimum wage, to see such is the case.
