The Minimum Wage Is A Poverty Wage

I've posted this map before, but it deserves to be repeated. By comparing the amount of hours a person making minimum wage would have to work to afford a two-bedroom apartment, we can see just what a pitifully small wage the minimum wage really is.

For example, a minimum wage worker would have to work 88 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom apartment here in Texas (and that doesn't even begin to include food, clothing, transportation, and all other living expenses). No one, not even a single person, can live decently on minimum wage -- and that is just wrong, since no one who works hard at a full-time job should have to live in poverty.

To hear the Republicans talk, you would think raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would be some fantastically high wage that no business could afford. The truth is far different. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would still leave it less than half of the median wage in the United States (only about $21,000 a year). It would still be a very low salary, and far from an unreasonable one.