Justifying the Minimum Wage

President Obama has been touring the country trying to garner public support for his push to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10/hour and peg it to inflation.  He issued an executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors; now he wants to extend the increase nationally.  The tour is an attempt to simultaneously get the public to pressure their federal representatives to vote this way while encouraging states to increase their own minimum wage laws.

His most recent speech took place on March 5, 2014 at Central Connecticut State University. One line from this speech bothered me:

"...what we also believe is that nobody who works full-time should ever have to raise a family in poverty.  That violates a basic sense of who we are."

To me, poverty means the state of existence where one is incapable of providing the necessary means of one's own existence according to the standards naturally established in the society in which one finds oneself, and where the shortcoming occurs either due to hardship, lack of effort, or opportunity.

To go a little deeper, human beings can only continue to exist if they have the necessary means of providing their own sustenance and shelter. At the most basic level, a Native American living in pre-colonial America lived off of the land, didn't own property, and required very little to survive. Today, that person can still exist in such a manner but most of us would consider that an unacceptable and poverty-stricken state of existence because the standard of living has changed over time.

Notice I say the standard of living has changed and I did not say it has increased. I say this because our sense of what is an acceptable standard of living is relative to what is happening around us right now. We no longer think of living in the woods in a hut without running water, electricity, or health insurance as an acceptable lifestyle even though on a welfare check that kind of existence would be much better than the life of a pre-colonial Native American.

Today, we have an expectation that every person in the US should be able to live in a shelter with at least a small amount of money to purchase bare necessities. Even the most conservative among us agree to this in principle by the laws which are not only NOT repealed, but continue to be funded. These programs are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, welfare, food stamps, freecare (health), etc.

I was bothered by the line in Obama's speech because if you take his message to the extreme he is really saying that any person who performs any work for 40 hours per week should be given the amount of money deemed by society to be at or above a basic standard of existence.

This is an excellent question for all of us - Do we believe that every person born in this country deserves to make at least $11,670 regardless of the quality or need for the work they are doing?  The figure is based on 100 percent federal poverty level figures for an individual in 2014 in Washington DC and the 48 contiguous states in the US. link: http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines

As of this date Americans have said "yes."  We have agreed that if a person cannot work because of an injury or illness or they cheat the system they will be paid a welfare check equal to $11,670 per year.  We have also agreed that if you are employed full time you will be paid at least $15,080.  This is based on the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr.

Is it possible to support a minimum wage and at the same time agree with Obama's statement that any work for 40 hours should be at or above poverty?