(ThyBlackMan.com) A young woman with 3 kids works at your local fast food restaurant on minimum wage. She can barely pay her bills and she has no money for extra anything. She believes she could do much more for her family if she only made $15 an hour. She may even be on welfare, residence assistance, WIC or SNAP/EBT. She may believe she would do better with a higher wage than by receiving all that assistance. Clearly, if her hourly wage goes to $15 an hour, she will lose all entitlement benefits. Plus all the assistance she has been receiving is likely to be of greater financial value than the wage increase to $15 an hour. Now she is at $15 an hour but struggling even more than when she made a much lower minimum wage. This is a sad fact she will discover when she has to pay for absolutely everything.
“MINIMUM” wage is supposed to be just that, a minimum, hence the name. It is not a wage adults are supposed to get comfortable with. It is not supposed to pay all adult bills and expenses as you expand your family and acquire more material things. The minimum wage is an entry level incentive pay that should encourage the employee to rise higher, do better and make more money.
Raising the minimum wage will cause everyone to pay more for everything – including those making the new wages. Why? Because the corporation will not absorb the cost of paying out more money. The corporation will simply raise prices on every product it sells and every service it offers. The corporation will transfer the cost of wage increases onto the backs of the public.
Raising the minimum wage will not help as much as people think because their taxable income will go up. The more you make, the more you should expect the government to 
take. Also, with materialistic values, living beyond your means, poor money management and going into debt for things people cannot afford, the new and higher wages will disappear at least as fast as the low wages for a great many people. And without a plan to save money, any person with any wage will find that money disappearing through holes in their pockets when they didn’t see where it went and don’t know how or why.
Raising the minimum wage will cause more companies to automate, using technology to replace human workers and thus save money. This replacement is already happening at current wages above minimum wage in order for corporations to save money. Fewer tellers at the bank because you can most of your banking online or at the ATM. Fewer cashiers at the grocery store because you can use self checkout. Fewer bookstores because of online Amazon, Nook and Ebay technology and the list goes on. Even private security, for example, can be replaced with video surveillance technology, security gates, coded access keys and non-employee contractors. So you can bet that businesses forced to pay a high ($15) minimum wage will automate even more and hire independent contractors instead of employees. All of this means people will lose their jobs. And those who do not lose their jobs will be forced to do twice the because the employer only chose to keep half the staff.
Any business which values its employees should pay the best possible wages based on the principles of building morale, increasing performance, attracting the best, most dedicated candidates or prospects and doing to others the way they would want someone to do them. I was an employer of 15 people in a small business for several years and I paid well above minimum wage. I also had built in merit or performance wage increases, longevity wage increases, bonuses and wage increases that came with promotions. But the government should not be in the bankbook of the business owner to force me to pay a higher wage.
The government, not having any idea of the business overhead, could easily cause a business to reduce hours, cut staff or take away other benefits in order for the business to be able to afford paying a higher minimum wage. If a business is forced to cut staff, the level of service will decrease. Paying much higher wages all of a sudden would not give many small businesses the time to adapt and would thus drive them out of business. Now those who would get a high minimum wage, in that case, have no jobs at all.
Then how should people survive on low wages? Low wages, as I said earlier, should be an incentive. If you need to make more money, find a higher paying job, enhance your skill set with free classes or even train yourself, go back to school or trade school, start your own business or earn a promotion on your current job. Even fast food restaurants have fast track programs for advancement once you let them know you are interested. Carry yourself on your job in a way that represents the job you want, not the job you have.
The opportunities are there and so are the higher wages, if you are looking for a career instead of just a job. You just have to have a plan to find them, clear and solid career goals and make yourself a valuable asset to a company by upgrading your skill set. Are those careers very competitive? Yes and maybe more than ever before. But people on minimum wage are often job minded instead of being career minded.
If you want to make more money, do your homework. Find out what industries are growing and get the training to enter those industries. College is great but not for everyone. Vocational or trade schools offer all types of training. Stop counting on an employer to do for you the very thing you should be doing for yourself – increasing your wages, controlling your income, determining when and how you rise to the top. That is not the employer’s responsibility. That is not the government’s responsibility. That is your responsibility. YOUR FINANCIAL SECURITY IS UP TO YOU!!!
Staff Writer; Marque-Anthony
