RE: Keep in mind, they talk $14,000 a year as a minimum wage, but with Food Stamps, health care, etc, it is actually nearer %65,000 a year ... thanks to our contributing tax dollar subsidy.
Well that’s PRECISELY the liberal argument FOR the minimum wage.
They cite Walmart, the biggest employer next to the government, which pays an average (not entry level) of $8.80 an hr for non-management jobs.
This qualifies most of their workers for government welfare, such as foodstamps and medicaid.
This means that the cheap prices at Walmart have a hidden tax, the money taxpayers pay to support the below standard wage paid by Walmart.
At new workers orientation, Walmart tells them to apply for welfare to supplement their incomes. This is corporate welfare shifting costs to the public.
So, the liberals argue based on this observation that paying substandard wages costs the taxpayer money thru the welfare programs to which workers are referred.
So the argument goes like this -— Why should the taxpayer subsidize Walmart? Why shouldn’t a fulltime worker make enough, without welfare, to live?
Walmart and other places DO pay more, sometimes much more in places where the cost of living is high and the labor pool is low. Liberal policies of high taxes and regulations are usually the culprits for high cost of living policies (CA) and in this case artifically raising wages just increases the cost of living and thereby increaes the poverty level, not accomplishing anything but inflation and increases in revenue for the gov’t. But it also happens in economic growth (a good thing), which results in the market setting wages higher than minimum wage without gov’t intervention.