From Steve Beshear spam email I received:
Raising the minimum wage rate is long overdue……
A Beshear/Mongiardo Administration strongly supports an increase in the minimum wage rate and will see to it that any bill that makes its way through the legislative process meets this standard and reflects this priority.
Increasing the minimum wage rate even to $7.25 would not lift families out of poverty. In fact, it is not enough to lift people to self-sufficiency. But it is a step in the right direction.
Well that’s sort of like being in favor of goodness, particularly if someone else is doing the work. If the legislature gets its’ act together and raised the minimum wage by golly Steve and Dan will be in favor of it.
But they are right, a raise in the minimum wage is long overdue, and it’s still not enough.
If Beshear had wanted to call for something to make a difference he would have called for a living wage. A great discussion of what a living wage in Kentucky would be can be found the Kentucky Council of Churches website.
.......”A study by (Diane Pierce and Jennifer Brooks for) Kentucky Youth Advocates found that in 2001 in Fayette County it required an hourly income of $7.44 for a single adult with no children to meet basic needs, $13.46 for a single parent family with one preschooler, $16.43 for a single parent family with one preschooler and one school-aged child, $9.81 per adult for a two working-parent family with one preschooler and one school-aged child, and $9.25 per adult for a two working-parent family with one preschooler and two school-aged children. In the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government custodial workers start at $6.60 an hour, guards begin at $6.97 an hour, cooks start out at $6.97 an hour, and clerical assistants begin at only $7.38 an hour. “
Raising the minimum wage to $7.25, wouldn’t have allowed single person to meet basic needs six years ago, let alone today.
So pardon me if I’m not impressed by the Beshear/Mongiardo half hearted approach to a serious problem.
