$22 an Hour Minimum Wage?

When Los Angeles, CA high school students heard of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D) of Massachusetts suggestion at a recent hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Labor, and Pensions that the current minimum wage should be $22.00 an hour, the students strongly disagreed.While the students all agreed that minimum wage should be increased, the amount of $22.00 seemed too far fetched for them. Even in a poverty stricken neighborhood, the vast majority of my high school students thought the idea of a $22 an hour minimum wage was ridiculous.

The Senator of Massachusetts based her dollar amount of $22 an hour based on this thought. If you took the minimum wage from 1960 and indexed it for workers’ gains in productivity, it would be $22 an hour today.

In spite of this rational information, my students overwhelmingly disagreed with $22.  Although, many of them experience poverty and have parents who work minimum wage jobs, the amount of $22 still seemed way too much according to my teenagers.

Alexis Whitehead, an eleventh grader at a high school in South Los Angeles, CA says that a $22 an hour minimum wage devalues those with degrees and encourages laziness.

Other students stated that a minimum wage that high, would create a chaotic catastrophe
amongst minimum wage and higher wage workers.  Unless a salary increased is created for all salaries, the increase in money, although lucrative, will represent an injustice in the world.

Hearing the responses from my students surprised me. I thought that many of them would be ready to leave school and go get a minimum wage job immediately if the minimum wage was $22 an hour.  I was wrong.  Even students who sometimes do not turn in their classwork, homework, and other work assigned, still believes in the old adage "Hard Work Pays Off."

A minimum wadge jumping from the nations average of $7.25 to $22.00 an hour is a handout that my teenage students say they do not want.

Perhaps if the minimum wage increased overtime gradually from 1960 to 2013 then the idea of $22.00 an hour would not be so far-fetch.  I know that I am in favor of some type of increase in not only the minimum wage, but an increase in all work wadges.  In California, the cost of living is high, and even with a decent salary, I can see how many people struggle financially.

In the end, it is refreshing to know while we all want to fairly receive an acceptable amount of money for our labor, this want does not over shadow the desire for the amounts to be fair.

When things present themselves as too good to be true, even my high school students know that Senator Elizabeth Warren's purposal of a $22 an hour minimum wage wouldn't come without consequences.

 In the end, my high school teenagers are in favor of working hard, getting an education, and receiving a fair wage that would represent justice for all.

Shira Dillon is a high school teacher in South, Central Los Angeles. Shira has over 15 years experience working with teenagers and is an expert with helping them and their parents deal with teenage issues. Ms. Dillon is the author of the book Sex, Drugs, and Other Elephants: How To Deal With Teenage Issues that share true stories from the authors life, as well as true stories from teenagers and how they deal with their problems. For more information about the book go to www.heyiwantthatbook.blogspot.com  Like my FB page www.facebook.com/ParentsTeachersandTeens to unite with me to help public education become a better institution of learning. Our children need it!