It's the least we can do

I found an interesting discussion on social media this past weekend. After a segment on the All in with Chris Hayes show discussing the fast food worker protests over increasing the minimum wage, the response came swiftly. Many questioned the sanity of a worker who had been working at an establishment for 15 years at near minimum wage. Others questioned the ambition of the worker or ability to improve themselves. Still others offered tales of how they scraped by and worker their way to a better life, offering no sympathy for those that cannot today. Many people defended those who cannot break the cycle of low-income employment, citing lack of ability to schedule interviews or even attend school with the schedule their employers require.

At the core of these arguments comes the idea of opportunity. If one wants to "get ahead" a college education is the best opportunity to make that happen. The question then becomes, can a person get ahead on a minimum wage job?

The answer is, without significant help.....no.

To see how drastically things have changed since many people were able to work their way through school in the 60s and 70s, I offer this comparison. (Full disclosure, the calculations and research are all mine, but the idea came from an article I read about a month ago that I can no longer find. My apologies to that author for not citing their work.)

In 1970, the federal minimum wage was $1.45 an hour. (I am fairly certain my dad made that pumping gas in his second job that he would work after teaching all day.) A single person, with no other family obligations, working 50 hours a week during the summer and 20 hours a week during the school year could make - after deductions - about $1,818 per year at that wage. At the time, the average four-year, state school tuition+room+board rate was $1,287. That means the student could attend college, live on campus, and have about $500 left over to figure out where to live and eat during the summer. Given the reports of my older relatives living on Chef-Boy-Ardee, it seems likely that someone could survive on that and get that college education.

Today, the federal minimum wage sits at $7.25 an hour. A single person, with no other family obligations, working that same balance of hours as their 1970s counterpart, would clear around $9,090 over the course of the year. Today's average tuition+room+board for a four-year, state university sits somewhere between $15,000 and $19,000. At a time when the difference in incomes between going to college and not going to college mean more than ever, when union membership - the sure ticket to the middle class for the blue-collar worker - continues to drop, the minimum wage worker has the almost impossible task of working to get themselves by. Telling them to work 80 hours a week in the summer and 50 hours a week in the school year will still not get them close to their 1970s counterpart, and will jeopardize their ability to successfully complete their degree. A comparable minimum wage in this "work hard to improve yourself" example would be around $17.75 per hour to give today's ambitious worker the same chance they would have had a generation ago.

It all comes down to equality of opportunity. There are some who could live at home and forego the expense of living on campus, but they must have someone who would support them. On the other side, there are some who have families to support while making this Herculean effort. They can only dream that they will be able to make that happen. No matter what the racial, class, or social background...no matter what support system a person has...the keys to a better future must be equally available. If we want to provide the same opportunity to this generation as we did a generation ago, if we want people today to achieve the same or better quality of life than the previous generation, we must look at the social equity that our systems create. When there is none, as exemplified by the current minimum wage, we must rectify that.

It is absolutely the least we can do.