Minimum Wage And Inflation

Saving and carefully spending money can only take a person so far in achieving financial stability.  The cost of living, as the expenses of things like housing, food, or medicine is called, and the amount of a person's pay are the more crucial factors in actually accumulating enough money for savings to far outweigh expenses.  Money is inevitably secondary to matters of more foundational or abstract substance--but since it is so tied to the likelihood of security beyond the financial kind (economic security in turn frees the typical person to focus more on issues other than just survival, careers, and class structure), since even the more practical aspects of life are still governed by the laws of logic as with all else, and since there are still major moral dimensions to economic systems--it is not as if the increasingly ineffective minimum wage is of no philosophical significance whatsoever.

There is the conservative objection that higher minimum wages mean higher prices at a roughly corresponding rate of increase.  In some circumstances, raising the minimum wage could lead to raised prices or downsizing workforces to make up for the higher pay companies must give their workers, through it is certainly true that there are plenty of employers who might use this as an excuse to oppose higher minimum wages even if they were still perfectly able to pay their employees more, pay their other costs of business, and still make profits.  There is just the unfortunate fact that inflation has already increased prices despite minimum wage staying exactly where it has been for so long.  Conservatism is about maintaining the status quo or slowing most or all change, and so of course conservatives might believe irrelevant or incomplete things when it comes to updating the minimum wage.

Inflation has sharply increased in the past few years, and minimum wage and other wages have in plenty of instances remained right where they were years ago, which is in turn what minimum wage was set at in 2009: a mere $7.25 an hour.  Some employers would perhaps pay less if they were not legally required to at least give this much!  If this amount of money was enough to live on, the fact that it is only $7.25 instead of $10 or $15 dollars or some other random amount is not actually important in itself. Increasing minimum wage just because higher numbers sounds more subjectively attractive is pointless and irrational if maintaining a stable economy is the goal.  Whether even full-time pay at this rate is livable simply has nothing to ultimately do with the amount in the hourly wage itself, but with the prices of other things, or, in other words, with the purchasing power of the wage.

This is why the minimum wage in its current status has been so oppressive in some states over the past few years.  Basic practical necessities and luxuries alike cost more in many cases than they did at the end of 2019 and yet wages--not just minimum wage, but wages as a whole--have reportedly not universally matched this increase in the cost of living.  There are irrational reasons to want the minimum wage increased, of course.  However, none of them are the real reason why the minimum wage needs to be updated.  Inflation sprints forward regardless of whether wages follow, and still there are those who would say no one would want a higher minimum wage for themselves or for the sake of others except out of greed or other stupidity.

If the reason for having a minimum wage in the first place is not about protecting the survivability of workers, then there is no reason to have one other than preference or arbitrary whim.  This is not a logical fact about the historical intentions behind the minimum wage in 1938 America.  No, it is a truth about the very nature of the concept of a minimum wage and how there is only one possibly valid reason for having one.  If there is going to be a minimum wage, the only objectively relevant factor is whether this enables workers to have a minimum level of security that they can actually live because of, and one that, if they so wish, can allow them to actively save for an even better financial position from which they could rest or assist others without jeopardizing their own ability to pay to live.