Whoever said the minimum wage should be a living wage?”
The answer is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when the original minimum-wage law was passed in 1933.
Roosevelt said, “In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.
“By business I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
and that's not the only time he defended the idea. Unemployment would go up 10% easily with a living wage now, but it would eventually level out. The problem is the longer we wait, that 10% increases, which then means a longer time of it leveling out. It's not rocket science lol... I figured that out 20 years ago; I'm only 32.
The answer is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when the original minimum-wage law was passed in 1933.
Roosevelt said, “In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.
“By business I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.