July 1st will be a wonderful day in our beloved District of Columbia. On that day, the minimum wage increases to $15 an hour, the highest in the Nation. Each year thereafter, employees receive a cost of living increase. On this issue, the District is the leader in America, and the City Council that passed this measure a number of years ago deserves our gratitude and praise. Now we just need to reopen the city so these folks can actually work.
To those who say this hurts small business, I say if you can’t afford to pay your employees a decent living wage, you don’t belong in business.
Compare this to nearby Maryland at $10.10 and Virginia at $7.25, which happens to be the Federal minimum wage. Our geniuses in Congress have not raised the Federal minimum wage in ten years — a full decade — and yet they claim to be working for the American people. Luckily, many states and cities have bypassed this inertia and passed their own minimum wage legislation.
So, that’s the good news. The bad news is the District is still one of the most expensive places to live in our country, we have among the highest rents and other associated costs of living, and we still have one of the highest rates of homelessness, ahead of places like Boston and San Francisco. The independent and non-partisan Economic Policy Institute states it costs a family of four living in the District $106,000 a year to make it. So, let’s say there are (hopefully) two adults in the household working full time and earning minimum wage. That’s $58,240 before tax a year, just 55% of what they will need. There is SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and some other modest government relief. And then there are food pantries like ours.
But changing the cycle of poverty is about more than dollars and cents. Here’s just one example. According to Forbes and others, Washington, DC has the third worst public schools in the Nation, ranking 49 of 51. Only Louisiana and New Mexico rank worse. (Massachusetts has the best public schools, Virginia ranks 6th and Maryland 8th.)
Give the kids a good education and you give them a chance to do better than their parents have. It was Aristotle who said, “All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.” True then. True now.
So, congratulations Washington on true leadership on minimum wage. Now fix the schools.
