Case for Raising Minimum Wage

We have been a part of minimum wage debate for quite sometime now. There are some who oppose raising it and some who pray day and night that it would be raised. Well I belong to the second group; I want the Federal Government to raise the minimum wage.

I make a dollar more than the minimum wage and I know that if the minimum is raised I will be making more than $6.15 and hour; I am using simple reasoning here. Well you may say what difference does a dollar make? You are right, a dollar does not make any difference, if you have debts that are more then you could make in two years, if you have a family to take care of, if you have to pay from you own pocket for every medication, a dollar extra does not help. Still we are asking for raise, hoping that that extra dollar might make some difference.

Let me show you my little math. I work 30 hour week, on $6.15 an hour. In a month I make $738, before taxes. After taxes it is around $620 with that I have to pay my rent, interest on my debt, phone, grocery, bus fare. I save nothing, sometime run late on paying bills because of some unexpected expense. In middle of all this, my parents back in Nepal expect me help them with my brother’s education. There are millions of Americans facing this very same situation, living pay check to pay check, no insurance, no savings and no job security. We the people who work and pay taxes, we have to suffer because of lack of attention from the Government, state and federal. There is no policy or a plan to help people like us, we are shown big dreams, big promises, but at the end we just disappear. This is nation of rich people and we simply cease to matter.

The case of minimum wage is important because we, the poor want the Government to take steps to at least show that we matter, that we are not forgotten. More than the extra dollar, it is the quest for justice for the working poor.

I know many states have minimum wage higher than the Federal minimum, but still there are many who still have the minimum as $5.15.What about people in those states? Why this difference? Is there any difference between a person in
California
and Indiana..? Agreed that cost of living is higher in
California
than in
Indiana
, but is the pay difference fair?
Indiana
is not as industrialized as
California
or does not make as much money as
California
. People here have less opportunity than in
California
and the rate of poverty is higher, in comparison. Still you pay us less? In this nation we have the strange system of paying the poor less and the rich get more. No wonder why the gap between rich and poor is growing every year. This disparity makes raising the minimum wage even more important and urgent, I hope and pray that the Government is listening.