23 an hour is almost $48,000 a year. That’s assuming that you get to work a full 40, which most people don’t. And in most states and cities, that still isn’t enough to live on.
If minimum wage had kept up with inflation over the years, we would be at about a $23 minimum wage. So $15 an hour still means American workers are getting robbed.
Also, your remark about paying a kid $23 an hour to push carts doesn’t paint the whole picture. Since the collapse of manufacturing in the US, most of retail is adults with families. It used to be that America made stuff for a living. Now we work retail for a living or work in the service industry.
Those industries used to justify their low wages by saying they were built to employ people who were working for supplemental income (like kids). Now those industries are many people’s only income. If manufacturing is gone away and we refuse to pay people a living wage for retail or service work, where is the middle class supposed to work?
This explains why the middle class has been shrinking. It also explains our deficit. We’ve literally been borrowing money from China to subsidize the former middle class worker because the type of jobs that are left to them don’t pay a living wage.
If you’re willing to go to work for 40 hours a week, you shouldn’t have to have government assistance to live. It’s time to bring dignity back to good honest hard work.