According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the state with the highest minimum wage in the country is Washington, where workers earn at least $7.35 per hour. Oregon comes in second, with wages of $7.25.
As of July 2004 in Sonoma, Calif., workers must be paid $11.70 with health benefits, or $13.20 without health benefits, according to the Boston-based Living Wage Resource Center. Meanwhile, workers in Oklahoma employed at companies with annual gross sales less than $100,000 can be paid as little as $2 per hour, according to the Labor Department.
Unfortunately, though many states have adjusted the minimum wage to better suit standards of living, the federal minimum remains a paltry $5.15 per hour, and Indiana is among the many states that resist raising the minimum wage above the federal level.
Compare this mentality with that of neighboring Illinois, where college students working the same kinds of jobs like those many students at Ball State University have earn an hourly wage of $6.50.
While many students at Ball State might drool at the idea of making $7.35 an hour in Washington, even that is not a living wage, the Living Wage Resource Center's Web site said. According to the Web site, a living wage would range from $8 per hour for a single parent with one child to $20 or more per hour for two parents with two children, depending on the city and the cost of living there.
Though $5.15 an hour might be adequate for college or high school students who only want to buy school supplies or little extras, it is not necessarily adequate for somebody who is trying to support a family. While many attempts to raise the federal minimum wage have been made, they have been successfully defeated in Congress, and the only real success in raising the minimum wage has been at the state and municipal levels.
The old rags-to-riches myth of the Andrew Carnegies and Sam Waltons of the world pulling themselves up by their bootstraps may be applicable in many cases, but while that myth contains a grain of truth, it is not universally true.
Of the 160,291 single-mother households in Indiana, 50,000 were subsisting below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 1999 figures. The poverty line for last year, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, was a household income of $12, 490 for a family of two, with a $3,180 increment for each additional member of the household -- while working 40 hours per week at $5.15 an hour yields an annual income of only $10,000. This creates a poverty trap for many minimum wage earners: There are ways out of those kinds of conditions, but going to school won't make things much easier if you're already raising one or more children. Meanwhile, finding a better-paying job or getting a promotion might be impossible, especially if you're living in a town with a depressed economy and you're lucky to be working at all.
I admit that I'm fortunate enough not to be living in poverty, though I have before. I find it obscene that despite the annually rising poverty line, the minimum wage in Indiana remains at $5.15, to say nothing of states such as Kansas and Ohio, whose minimum wages are still well below the federal level ($2.65 and $4.25, respectively).
While there may be reasonable economic arguments against raising the minimum wage, I can't think of any moral arguments against it.
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