In 2025, the federal minimum wage is officially a “poverty wage.” The annual earnings of a single adult working full-time, year-round at $7.25 an hour now fall below the poverty threshold of $15,650 (established by the Department of Health and Human Services guidelines). The limitations of how the federal government calculates poverty understate how far the minimum wage is from economic security for workers and their families.
Jobs can always be created by lowering interest rates. It’s just not in the hand of the workers to change, neither is minimum wage.
You don’t have to trust anything I said. I am telling you about market mechanisms that you can verify on your own.
You are right that I want to abandon minimum wage, or rather the need for minimum wage. I want the demand for work to rise to the point that workers earn livable wages that are secured by the demand for their work.
You can try to rise minimum wages however much you want. My point is that your time is better spent on rising demand for workers. Marx is telling you how that works. You definitely don’t have to trust me on that.
And do absolutely nothing else.
Congratulations that both parties agree with you that no one should be paid at all.
Congratulations that you acknowledge that rising minimum wage is a dead end.
I recognize that neither party wants to raise it.
Much to the delight of people like you who don’t like worker protections.