The federal minimum wage is officially a poverty wage in 2025

America is rapidly falling behind its peers. Its been well understood that taking care of your people is the key to prosperity, yet politically we seem to be more worried about ensuring the rich live their lives of leisure at the expense of our working class.<p>The bare minimum standard we should hold ourselves to is that a 40 hour work week should be able to put a roof over your head and food on your table. The fact that the minimum wage is continuously supressed is absurd.

Inflation sucks but it is a basic reality. As a request to policy folks out there please consider advocating the minimum wage have some connection to local CPI. A demand for a $xx&#x2F;hr minimum globally is going to be both too high and too low and irrelevant in a few years time either way. This should not be an issue that needs to be relitigated every 5-10 years just to get back to where we started. The minimum should be set to reflect a basic standard of living in a given locale and not an arbitrary number.

The pace with which the cost of living is rising is staggering. Heck, I remember the fight for 15 (referring to the campaign to raise the federal minimum wage to $15&#x2F;h) a decade ago, but I don&#x27;t see how someone could live on that, $2600&#x2F;mo pre-tax income, in most of the country these days either. That&#x27;s like 60%+ of your gross income on rent for a typical 1br across large swaths of the country, no?

Shameful, especially here in Wisconsin where the minimum wage is still set to $7.25&#x2F;hour. And even more shameful the tactics used by gig-companies like Uber and DoorDash to depress their own liabilities, and worker wages, even further down.<p>&quot;No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.&quot; -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

How can anyone justify paying a high school kid who works part time most of the year a living wage. Not every job is meant to be a “living wage”.