PAY: $15 hourly wage won't help some people
Re: “Minimum wage workers need a raise - to $15” (Your Voice, 7-20).
Writer Jesse Griggs doesn’t have an income problem; he has a budgeting problem. And perhaps a maturity problem, too.
By this point in Griggs’ life, someone should have explained to the young man that paying out more than 25 percent (or so) of his income for housing would be courting financial misery. Yet he unabashedly tells us that he’s paying $750 per month out of his $1,200 take-home pay, then proceeds to blame his employer because he can’t buy food!
Someone (a parent, maybe?) ought to sit Griggs down and explain to him that if he were living in the $450-per-month accommodations he can actually afford, he would be able to eat like a king and would probably have some pocket money left over.
As he lacks even this much financial wisdom, I offer that raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour (or even much higher) is not going to help Griggs escape poverty. Indeed, somebody this bad at managing their money is, perhaps, much better off not having any.
This story was originally published July 21, 2015 at 3:35 PM with the headline "PAY: $15 hourly wage won't help some people."