Editor’s Note- Vote Smart is an informational series focused on the upcoming November ballot, and it runs ahead of the Election Day column Mark Your Ballot. Everything on the ballot – propositions, measures and candidates – will be addressed here before being summarized on November 5, 2024.
Raise the minimum wage to $18. It may be obvious, but the law needs to be passed. When people talk about inflation as a major force in their lives, we have to consider that inflation affects everyone. For the people at the bottom rung of earning, the federal minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour; the rate it has stayed at since 2009. The California minimum wage is $16 an hour, per a law from 2016.
If you have never had to live on minimum wage, congratulations. But if you have ever had the financial floor fall out from under you, and you had to take whatever was being offered – that’s the minimum.
The state minimum wage total in to about $33,000 a year, and the average cost of living comes up to about $53,000 a year, according to the Los Angeles Times.
We used to see this as a ‘beginner’ paycheck, but as our society has made it harder to be upwardly mobile, it is permanent paycheck for many people.
Where ever you live in Culver City – but particularly if you live on the south side of town – you are surrounded by chain store retail clerks and fast food employees who have to pay rent and buy groceries like everyone else. Many of them have to come a long way to get here, and that is expensive too.
Requiring a raise in their wages will benefit everyone.
Vote Yes.
Judith Martin-Straw
