Opinion: Wisconsin! Let’s catch up to the times

With Gov. Evers’ recent budget proposal, it confirmed one thing: those who are staunchly opposed to raising Wisconsin’s current minimum wage, from $7.25 an hour, are backing the wrong horse.

The budget aims to raise the minimum wage to $10.50 an hour by 2023. There is no way that our neighboring states’ cost of living (sans Iowa, a state sitting at the federal minimum, like Wisconsin) exceeds that of Wisconsin. Illinois’ minimum wage sits one dollar above ours, while both Minnesota and Michigan exceed $9 an hour. What makes our state significantly different than our prospering surrounding states?

If legislation were to pass, full-time workers in the “unskilled” tier of the economy would benefit the most, in the short-term. An opposing argument is that small businesses and locally owned franchises would be negatively affected the most, as their prices would increase and their staff sizes would decrease. To counter, consider the following: Gov. Evers’ plan is over four years, which would further allow the inflation boat to dock itself ahead of the present times.

Since the announcement of the proposal – the first portent in a while that suggests the state may be snowballing its minimum wage – a chyron intimating the hourly wages of people I’m close to (as well as my own) has been imaginatively flashing before me. In disbelief, still, am I to think that a part-time radio producer (at a certain station, anyway) gets paid $9 an hour to engineer a show, edit the show down to a podcast, and, in some cases, co-host a program. Yet, here I am, when I am away from Milwaukee, making $10 an hour (plus tips) doing deliveries and prepping sandwiches at a locally owned franchise.

One does not have to profess one’s love of economics to have skepticism with corporate America. At the radio station, which is owned by a broadcasting company that is the second largest radio company in the U.S., one would think, given the technicalities and scope of some tasks, the producer would get paid more. I have not been able to identify the pay of the litany of hosts, but I would have to imagine that the hosts are on a fixed salary. With my delivery job, I can clearly identify who pays me, as the owners are constantly around the workplace, and I see them as wholesome for being so. At the station (where I intern…for free), I cannot identify a person, or a group of people, who pays the producers.

A higher minimum wage rate in the state is necessary, partially due to this sort of dilemma: When there are more rings to jump through, in terms of knowing who pays you, an indication of workplace exploitation could be a perfect corollary. Except in the most outstanding of cases do people aspire to be fast food employees (unless, say, they are anticipating a management position); however, improbable it is not to assume some people want to be sound engineers, or radio co-hosts, when they get older.

Just to pontificate, it seems clear that people who work on behalf of mainly sacrificing their bodies over a long period of time (like a fast food employee) get paid less than those who work on behalf of sacrificing their minds over a long period of time (like a radio producer). It is assumed that the brass of the aforementioned broadcasting company is raking in more than the brass of the sandwich restaurant (sure, there is some variance, given that it is an independently owned franchise, one restaurant in a chain, but those who work in the corporate offices of the sandwich restaurant chain are the ones being considered).

Assuming minimum wage hits $10, the radio producer will get a little more justice and will be, superficially, near the delivery driver. Yes, this is likely an outstanding case, as many delivery drivers get paid a minuscule hourly wage, due to their considered tips. That said, the radio producer toils in more on-the-job training, and, in many cases, has a collegiate education, one that is sorely not free.

Does the sandwich restaurant employee deserve to be getting paid a little more, in an instance isolated away from this juxtaposition? Absolutely. Both can and do serve valuable purposes in society, and those employees should be able to earn a living wage. At least in the restaurant case, the head manager, who is on a fixed salary, can do what the crew member or delivery driver can do.

In the radio station case, the host cannot do everything that the radio producer can do. What is ironic is that the producer can come close to what the host can do. This seems to be an inherent problem, and is why there should be a little justice in a state that has not raised its minimum wage in over 10 years.

For now, much of the aging, uneducated portion of the populace can hardly redeem themselves – for instance, in restaurant operations, minimum wage workers are not primarily teenagers: a portion of adult people are living within the confines of minimum wage. According to a 2016 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, those between the ages of 16 to 19 only occupy 20.6 percent of all workers being paid at or below the federal minimum wage, which, hitherto, is what Wisconsin has settled upon.

Labor done via artificial intelligence is nigh, so, let us cut the lower class a break. In 2019, the only sentient and rational agents who can amend any threshold for a supportive wage is us. Let us, Wisconsin, not be the last state to usurp the current federal minimum wage.