Robert Reich, former United States Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, shared a startling statistic. Jeff Bezos and Elon Mush control more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans – combined. Think about that. These two men have more money than 131,280,000 of our fellow Americans. Shameful when you also consider that both saw their wealth increase during the Covid-19 pandemic when millions of Americans lost their jobs. Jeff Bezos saw his wealth increase by a jaw dropping $637 billion (Source: Business Insider) and Elon Musk added an astounding $140 billion to his net worth in 2020.
What is perhaps most galling is that both have been unwilling to invest in the very people that helped them create and accrue that unfathomable wealth. Jeff Bezos and Amazon sought to prevent unionization of workers and Elon Musk in defiance of a shelter in place order in the state of California ordered production lines to resume at his Tesla factory in May 2020. This caused the spread of Covid-19 among workers who tested positive for the deadly virus.
With the continuing wealth inequity in America, the Republican party and even some Democrats (8 Democrats opposed the federal wage hike – Senators Sinema - AZ, Manchin - WV, Shaheen-NH, Hassan – NH, Coons – DE, Carper – DE and King an Independent from ME) are opposed to increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour nationally.
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that increasing the minimum wage would impact 32 million workers – that is almost 20% of all Americans. Now keep in mind that the last time we saw an increase in the federal minimum wage was in July of 2009. More than 11 years without an increase. In that same time period, we saw the cost of living, driven largely by housing and health care cost increases, go up 20%. This is not a sustainable situation. The massive disparity between the current minimum wage and the cost of living is stark. To note, there is not a single state in the country where the current minimum wage affords the ability to rent a two-bedroom home. Not one state.
While one could argue about the politics of attempting to include the $15 Minimum Wage in the Covid-19 relief package, we should be able to agree that Americans deserve a raise. For those who claim that such a drastic increase would cause job losses - the Congressional Budget offices (CBO) estimates 1.4 million jobs through 2025 as some employers would cut costs to offset the labor increase. This needs to be outweighed by how many Americans would be lifted out of poverty, with less spending on food stamps and child nutrition programs for low-income families. It also begins to address the inequality in wages for African American, Hispanic and Asian and women workers who bear the brunt of the wage gap. Some studies suggest that increasing the minimum wage actually helps small business, Business for a Fair Minimum Wage indicates that much of those wage increases are directly invested back in local communities and businesses.
Isn’t it time we give Americans a much-deserved raise?
Barbara Kittridge is Founder / Partner at Motive LLC, an integrated political agency that brings modern marketing techniques to the political and non-profit worlds.