Elizabeth Warren: Why isn't minimum wage $22 an hour like it used to be?

[SheilaT]

40. Along with a higher minimum wage,

and I agree that about $13.00 right now would be good, there needs to be a maximum wage. Everything above say $5M a year is taxed at a 90% rate. So they do get to keep some of it, but not very much.

When I first entered the work force the minimum wage was $1.25/hour. I could live on that, just barely. Within the year it went to $1.65/hour and I had a little room to breathe. Right now I live in Santa Fe, where the local minimum, intended as a living wage, is $10.29/hour. People here complain that it's too expensive to live here, and I can't figure out why they think that. Perhaps it's that they only compare apartment rents in this city to those in Albuquerque, which do tend to be less. But I moved here several years ago from Overland Park, KS, considered to be a low cost of living place, and I wound up paying in rent exactly what I would have expected to pay back in Kansas.

The real problem is that there is no maximum wage, and those at the top are determined to squeeze out every possible penny for themselves, without any thought at all for those at the bottom. I want to say that no one who is making minimum wage should need other kinds of assistance, although in reality some percentage of those will need extra help. The single mom with two or three kids. I don't especially care why she wound up being the sole support of those kids, but I do want to point out that not a single one of them would have come about without the assistance of some man. Or a person has expensive health needs of some kind. No one should have to forego taking necessary medication for lack of money. And so on.