The
average income in the United States in 2013 was $42,380 ($20.38 an hour) in 2013. That's nearly $6,000 less than it was in 2010, when it was $48,016 ($23.09 an hour). That means the average American worker has lost a little more than 11% in buying power since 2010.
That would be bad enough, but the truth is that most workers don't make the average wage in this country. Note in the above chart that 62% of Americans work for less than $20 an hour (and $20 an hour doesn't quite equal the average wage, coming only to about $41,600 a year). And nearly 14% of American workers make
less than $10 an hour (or less than $20,600 a year) -- and these wages are before any payroll taxes are taken out. That's less than half of the average wage in the U.S.
This shows the need for the minimum wage (currently at $7.25 an hour, or about $15,080 a year) to be raised as soon as possible. Many of those in Congress want to block a raise in the minimum wage (or even eliminate the minimum wage altogether) -- but they don't have to try to support a family on $15,080 a year before taxes. The majority of them at millionaires (and don't even need the more than $170,000 a year they earn from being in Congress).
Most Americans support raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour -- certainly no exorbitant wage, since it would only amount to about half of the average wage in this country. Most Americans know that it's impossible to support a family (or even an individual) on the current minimum wage, and realize that even a wage of $10.10 an hour would be tough to support a family on (but doable for a frugal household).
Personally, I think it's obscene for the millionaires in Congress to deny hard-working Americans a wage that's just half of the country's average wage, and immoral for them to force millions of full-time workers to work for a wage that keeps them in poverty (the current minimum wage). How can they possibly justify that?
