By Alex Lloyd Gross
Larry Kudlow, an economic advisor to Donald Trump told reporters this week, that hat he refuses to talk about raising the federal minimum wage above $7.25 per year. In fact, he would like it to be abolished all together. Currently, people who work for this are below the poverty line and have not had a raise in over 10 years. Taxes have constantly gone up for everyone but for those those workers, it eats into their dwindling paycheck even more.
Someone working 40 hours a week is not able to afford rent in an apartment. Anywhere. In fact many of these people are homeless and live in cars. Kudlow is educated and is book smart but “reality stupid”, said many economists and activists who disagree with his position. Many people working for less than $9.00 per hour must work two or more jobs. This falsely inflates job figures. Some people on the internet are even calling him a racist and accusing him of using “White Privilege to keep minorities down”. Kudlow is a TV analyst and was educated at Princeton before they revamped their admissions policy.
Kudlow has never been hungry and not knowing where his next meal will come from, as so many minimum wage earners have. Take the case of Saqueena, who changes soiled bed linen at a hospital, The reason she makes $7.25 per hour is because her employer is NOT allowed to pay her any less. If they could, they would pay as little as possible.. There is a large movement forward in the country to raise the minimum wage and Kudlow is having none of it. He does not want to discuss it. However, if it was up to congress to determine how much he makes, you can bet he will say “more.”
On a televised interview before the election, then candidate Donald Trump said the minimum wage should be about $10.00. To show how out of touch Kudlow is with everyday workers, he is advocating tax cuts which do not get trickled down to minimum wage workers. Kudlow said that the economy in one part of the country is different than in another. That’s true but most educated economists ,and several that are just as educated as Kudlow, if not more, that said that moderate increases, over time will help people, and have a positive effect on the economy.
Locally, New Jersey is $8.60, Delaware is $8.25 and New York is $12.00 Even West Virginia is higher with $8.75 per hour. Pennsylvania workers are stuck at $7.25. Kudlow, and most Pennsylvania lawmakers fail to realize that raising the minimum wage will help boost the economy. A worker would no longer be eligible for SNAP benefits. A worker would have more money to spend and would put it back into the economy. Opponents talk about robots taking over jobs is nothing more than a scare tactic. Automation is going to progress whether the minimum wage is $5.00 per hour or $17.25 per hour. It does not matter.
A very small number of businesses will be negatively affected, compared with the millions of workers that will see a boost to their pay. This announcement comes just days before the mid term elections. Business owners will love it and vote for anyone that lets them keep more money. Workers will not and will vote anyone associated with this out of office. This issue has the power to win or lose an election.