The median monthly rent in the United States, as of 2023, is $1,348, according to the Census Bureau (assuming Musk and his rodents haven’t been screwing around with the data).

If you had a minimum wage job and devoted your entire paycheck – 100% we’re talking, sans vacation, and assuming no taxes are taken out – you’d be short $108 every month. 

Also: heat, electricity, food, transportation and clothing would have to appear magically, since you’d have no money left for anything besides your landlord.

The national minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. It has not risen in 15-1/2 years. Remember all that inflation everyone complained about the past couple of years? It ain’t because people getting the minimum wage are getting rich – makes you wonder who actually is causing prices to rise.

In fact, they keep falling back, making their lives more difficult. In the process, because people getting the minimum wage aren’t getting raises, it allows employers to limit the raises they give workers making a little bit more. “You should be grateful you’re getting $10 an hour because I could be paying you $7.25” is the attitude we’re looking at here.

Somehow, most politicians forgot that the people doing the least desirable jobs in our country might be well-served getting a little more money for doing them.

Now, to be fair, a majority of states and territories have minimum wage rates above the national mandate – the highest being Washington, D.C.’s $17.50. But a lot of states have minimum wage rates at the national average, below the national average or even no minimum wage at all.

It fails to take into consideration the fact that people have lives outside their jobs. That they’re supporting themselves and want to build the kind of financial foundation that allows them to realize their dreams.

Businesses thinks that’s not their problem. Being successful is. But if a business can’t make it without paying the people powering it a living wage, maybe that business needs to rethink what it’s doing and how.

A living wage in 2025 America being something in the vicinity of $20 an hour.

Oh, my goodness, that’s inflationary. That’s what the conservatives – the so-called “job creators” – will say. But, again, we had inflation without anyone – especially getting in the minimum wage category – a raise. 

Not only should the minimum wage allow people to actually make a living earning it, but it should also be indexed according to inflation. In other words, a rise should come just about every year – not every 15-1/2 and counting.

This is not a radical concept. Twelve states and Washington, D.C., all have annual minimum wage adjustments. Three of those states – Alaska, Missouri and Montana – voted for Trump three months ago. We do it for Social Security – and employers seem to able to pass on price increases whether or not they raise workers’ wages.

Now a lot of you are thinking “With all the crap going on since TrumpMusk took over, it seems like raising the minimum wage is a low priority.”

Stop thinking like that.

We should have learned by now that you can’t beat something with nothing. Since the Reagan years, Democrats have had to come in and clean up messes left by Republican presidents.

Let’s stop doing that. Let’s advance an economic agenda that benefits the people who somehow vote against their interest and see Trump as a hero. Let’s offer a better path, actual help for the problems they need solved.

Americans – especially young people and those working the thankless jobs that pay the least – need to be able to afford to live. A program to raise the minimum wage and provide a universal basic income, as I suggested two weeks ago, might go a long way toward remedying the economic anxiety millions face.

It would have the added benefit of making the heads of Trump and the Republicans who enable him spin.

If you get a chance, call or write your representative, your senator, the White House and tell them Americans need a raise.