On April 4, California become the latest state to pass a bill that will increase the state minimum wage.
Democrats hold a ceremony as great legislative victory.
However the Californian people tragedy can be greater only if Republicans were in office and never pass the bill at all.
Personally when i first heard off the bill, i have to pause in effort to grasp the reality behind this major democratic victory event.
Living in Nevada, I am frequent visitor of California.
Last summer we visited San Francisco for the first time and stayed at Petite Auberge. I book my hotel online and try my best to budget as many vacations days as possible. California seems more expensive then Nevada, but it isn't drastically so different if one take gambling out of equation.
Being economist I instinctively compare prices of good and services, but even as simple visitor it is obvious that $15/H income will get you nowhere in California.
As a matter of fact, $15/H will send you on welfare and qualify your family for food stamps everywhere in America. 
Some will argue instantly that no business owner supposed to pay his labor for family of four expenses.
Why those people expect someone else and not the parents to be able to raise their own children?
It just make no sense, if one isn't a business owner who therefore expect the government to substitute his wage laborers with necessary income to survive and raise a family.
Theres that word again: family.
And i use specifically statistics based on family of four members.
Mother, father, two kids.
Blasphemy to a naked eye.
In this age of sexual liberation when it is nobody business who one love or married, cause love is love, is love, is love, here i am suggesting stereotype known as family of four.
And yes I do.
I don't really care if the mothers name is Jane or John, what i do care is second adult in a role of a parent.
Why?
Cause of the possibility of a second income source and the economic consequences of it?
Maybe.
Let just focus of the logistics of two kids for now.
Ask every economist and he will tell you the same answer is valid not for America, but for every country in the world: demographic simple reproduction require 2.1 kids in order the Nation to maintain its population level.
It is not question of different opinion, it is a fact of nature.
Whether the American business owners want to comply with the scientific fact or they wanna deny it, it is irrelevant.
Every business owner expect the labor to walk through the door and begin his working day with skills and with attitude that will maximize his own profit.
What the business owners don't expect is to pay for the workers family needs.
If the worker has one or two or no children, it is his own private business and completely out of the realm of responsibility of the business owner.
One get paid for the task one perform, not for the consequences of the lifestyle one choses.
I can't even begin to point all the wrongs in the popular belief that permeant the conscience of the whole Nation.
How else can the discrepancy between the official minimum wage and the federal poverty level guidances occur?
Someone, somewhere along the lines of law making and executive decisions know better how 46,5 millions Americans end up on welfare depending on taxpayers to supplement their food needs.
The housing projects, the food stamps, medicaid, soup lines, churches, none of those programs are secrecy. The whole Nation knows about it.
Why we allowed it?
Why the charade of organizations and programs whose existence and purpose is to help the poverty stricken part of the population instead of resolving the issue where it originate: in the working places.
How does the other countries in the world solve this issues?
Some establish minimum wages that represent living wages.
Some countries as Sweden or Switzerland use trade Unions to negotiate the wages and don't even have minimum wage at all.
America choose food stamps, among other taxpayer financed Government programs.
We choose as a Nation to discriminate the poor based of their level of poverty, based of the region they live in. We bundle 50 states with statistical one fit all needs and probably everyone who never need uncle sam help sleeps righteous at night thinking they'd everything in their power to help the needy, the misfortune, the sick, the poor.
From time to time democrats come along and adjust the misery for a dime or two, and life goes on.
Why bother. Theres whole Government department, theres organizations and programs designed and paid to work on the issues, while the Nation moves on.
46,5 Million on food stamps currently in America and only 7.4 Millions are unemployed.
Theres 116 Millions households in America according to the latest census statistics.
Over 20% or 22.4 millions households receive food stamps.
Poverty is romantic only in the movies.
To people or family that live in poverty it is devastating.
What is the solution?
Wages.
It start and end with wages.
Theres no Government program, Govt organization that can help poverty stricken families and individual other then establishing federal living wage standard.
Not a minimum wage.
Living wage standard.
Different economist will fight over the formula.
I have a very simple solution.
GDP per capita.
If that measurement is accepted as standard, it will mean minimum wage of $27.50/h.
We rise and we fall as one nation.
Thats the minimum.
It does not matter if one is married or its single, have one of more children, work as janitor or don't work at all, one deserve to have equal opportunity to procreate and live to his best potential away from the devastating pitfall of poverty.
It start when a Nation decide to rise to the occasion.
No excuses.
No fallacy.
A choice.
We share our prosperity as one Nation.
We live no-one behind.
America do not need another billionaire.
Billionaires do not need another billion in their portfolio.
America need her middle class back on its feet.
Europe is flirting with the same concept under the name of basic income, except to accomplish basic income they intend to use taxes as redistribution.
I dont.
I believe the businesses that are unable to pay living wages shouldn't be in business.
I believe no one should work second job.
I believe our technological and scientific advances create enough wealth to eliminate poverty if not in the world, at least in the richest countries in the world.
There will be economist who disagree.
I expect their opposition.
However, i do not belong to a party, i do not work for anyone.
I am self employed and i am responsible only to my conscience.
Marie
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