Glenn Youngkin Still Hates the Poor
Glenn Youngkin signaled his disdain for the poor again this week, this time in the form of a denial of the need to raise the minimum wage.
According to Youngkin, “the market is working”.
I’m not so sure about that, Glenn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Youngkin
Currently, the annual income needed to afford a one-bedroom rental in Virginia is $43,501 (though this figure comes from September 2022, so it’s highly likely–indeed, virtually guaranteed–that this figure needs to be adjusted upward). The average salary is $38,979–a few grand shy of a living wage.
But that average salary amounts to $18.74 an hour, a full $3.74 more than our target minimum wage.
And the current minimum wage is nearly half that. In May 2021, the minimum wage became $9.50 an hour in Virginia. That means $19,760 annually–not even half the income required to rent a simple one-bedroom apartment. And keep in mind that policymakers had to fight tooth and nail for even that–I am loath to imagine what it would look like if we’d actually let the market “decide”.
So, let’s talk about the proposed minimum wage hike, which would raise the floor to $15 an hour by 2026.
What does $15 an hour net you annually? $31,200. That’s right–even the proposed figure falls over $12,000 short of being a living wage, and that’s without accounting for the fact that the $43,501 figure is already outdated and will become even more so by the time this policy would be enacted.
So, no, Glenn, the market isn’t doing shit. In fact, if we let it, we’d all be drowning in poverty wages, so long as someone gets to come out on top. And that someone is never going to be the worker, never going to be the little guy–it’s always and only gonna be people like Glenn Youngkin and his cronies.
Raising the minimum wage is a no-brainer. In a sane world, it would have been done years ago. $15 an hour hasn’t been a living wage for a decade, so why is even that such a problem?
Thankfully, we finally have some representatives with some sense, and that’s thanks to voters who delivered progressives (or at least progressive-adjacent) majorities in the state legislature. Those representatives are now pushing for measures that conservatives have been stone-walling for decades.
We need to continue to support these measures and push our representatives for more. We made this happen–we can keep it going.