_Brandon Bartlett is a sophomore political science major at MU. He is an opinion columnist who writes about politics for The Maneater._
[A Maneater opinion column](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/opinion/proposed-minimum-wage-increase-not-enough-and-thats-ok) advocating for the proposal to raise the minimum wage, published on September 18, seemed to conform with the opinion of many college students. Of course, voting to give yourself or others a government-mandated raise sounds nice, especially when you’re not the one who has to supply the money for the raises. However, as it turns out, money for a higher minimum wage doesn’t just grow on trees and if Proposition B is passed in November it will not result in higher wages for everyone with a minimum wage job and here’s why.
There isn’t a money tree in the back of every business waiting to be used for payroll. Employee paychecks come out of the profits that the business makes.
You might say that the business owner doesn’t need all of the profits that they are making and that they can give a little more to their employees, but that isn’t really true.
Sure, Walmart Inc. and Amazon have plenty of money to throw around, but a lot of small businesses don’t. According to Business.com, “Many small business owners aren’t keen on a mandated minimum wage raise and say doing so would force them to pass on the rise of labor costs to consumers,” and facesof15.com presents over 100 stories about business owners who are struggling with various forms of minimum wage hikes around the United States. One story states that a coffee shop in New York, was forced to close its doors and leave its 150 employees without jobs after an increase of the minimum wage.
The results of a higher minimum wage do not benefit the employees either. A study by the University of Washington found that after a minimum wage increase to $13.00 per hour in Seattle, “workers clocked 9% fewer hours on average and earned $125 less each month after the increase” according to USA Today.
This has happened all over the country but it seems that proponents of a higher minimum wage have yet to deal with the reality of it all.
This being said, I have a couple questions for proponents of Prop B and anyone who is undecided: First of all, why do we need to implement the minimum wage hikes over the years and finally get to the proposed $12.00 an hour in 2023? If it is such a good idea, without any down sides, then we might as well just immediately make the minimum wage $12.00. Plus, if the reason for raising the minimum wage is to help out families who can hardly afford to buy food then we need to raise the minimum wage now and end their troubles.
And secondly, as the writer of the column stated above said, “This ($12.00) is not enough. In one of the wealthiest societies in the world, a $12 minimum wage is still too low. But still, it’s something.” So how much is enough? Would $15 per hour be the goal? As the column also stated “1974’s minimum wage would come out to a whopping $21.56/hour in 2018,” should we raise it to that? If we want to be fair, maybe we should just tax everyone at 100 percent and then the government can distribute the money to everyone equally.
The socialist movement, which seems to be one of the strongest advocates for an ever increasing minimum wage, obviously does not care about the actual effects of their programs, or they would’ve accepted the facts by now. The end goal is to make everyone equal. It doesn’t matter whether people are equally rich or equally poor, just as long as everyone is equal. Proposition B is bad for Missouri, just as minimum wage hikes have been bad everywhere else.
