It has been 10 years since Congress raised the minimum wage. Some states have raised their minimum without a federal mandate, but not North Carolina. This 10-year span follows on the heels of a previous 10-year span without a minimum wage increase. Until 1997, the wage was adjusted fairly regularly, even if not fairly regulated. Consider that 1968 was the highpoint for minimum wage earning (adjusted for inflation) and it’s been losing ground ever since.
On July 24, 2009, the minimum wage went from $6.55 to $7.25 per hour, the last step of a process that began with Congress in 2007. If inflation had remained stagnant through this wage stagnation decade, we wouldn’t have a problem. But it hasn’t. Millions of Americans across the country are struggling to get by on $7.25 an hour; not to mention tipped workers trying to make it on just $2.13 an hour. For the past ten years, the minimum wage has increased a grand total of seventy cents. If you’re among the fortunate few who actually work forty hours a week, most work less, for this salary, your weekly wages are only $18 more than they were in 2009 or roughly $121 a month. That won’t make a car payment these days or buy a month’s worth of groceries for a family of four. It won’t buy groceries for me and I live alone.
Scripture has much to say about wage inequity, starting with the basic mandate to pay the worker enough for that worker’s family to have food, clothing, and shelter. The minimum wage no longer provides this moral baseline. And yet, the wealth gap in our nation continues unabated with wealth continuing its upward flow to the few at unprecedented rates.
The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is not a new phenomenon. That’s why the biblical Holiness Code created a system that allows people to acquire wealth through ingenuity and industry, but not to amass wealth in proportions that are unhealthy for a just society. Rest for laborers and livestock are mandated weekly, work 6 days and rest 1 (Exodus 20:8-11) and for land septa-annually, work 6 years and rest 1 (Leviticus 25:3-7)). More importantly, Jubilee occurs every 50 years, allowing not only rest for people, animals, and land, but also a reset for property ownership. This process prevented wealth accumulation in the hands of a few and saved people from falling into a cycle of poverty (Leviticus 25:8–55). The Jubilee Year includes elaborate redistribution requirements with the stated goal of creating an equitable economic system.
While it’s doubtful we’ll pass Jubilee legislation to govern modern economic engines, it’s not too much to expect the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation and the cost of living. Of course, the reticence to do so is tied up in the very inequities that suggest Jubilee necessity. Those who own the most are often the most reluctant to enact equitable compensation guidelines. We hear excuses like: minimum wage jobs are for teenagers entering the workforce or the elderly who want extra spending money in retirement. In reality, teen workers make up only 10% of the minimum wage workforce and most minimum wage jobs held by the elderly are necessary to make ends meet.
And so, we are back to the daily wage mandated as a just wage according to scripture. To help us move toward minimum wage justice consider that since 2009:
- The minimum wage has lost about 9.6% of its purchasing power to inflation.
- Elementary and secondary schools are among the top five minimum wage employers.
- More women than men work for minimum wage.
- 30% of hourly adult workers are “near-minimum-wage,” making less than $10.10 an hour.
Raw capitalism understands that if workers are paid more they will spend more and energize the economy. That should be enough to convince lawmakers to raise the wage. In truth, there is a much more compelling reason. It’s the right thing to do. The Bible tells me so. Here’s hoping we don’t celebrate this anniversary again next year.
Thank you for taking a stand. Please send to our evangelical sisters and brothers, and encourage them to look at morality with a much wider lense when they vote….
Jennifer, The Bible does not tell us to have or raise a minimum wage. It’s great that you have facts and figures on why you believe in and want to have an increase in minimum wage. I respect that. I may even opt in for it. But the Bible is on the side of individual effort for individual reward. In His parable, Jesus says this: Matthew 20:1-16 New International Version (NIV)
The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard
20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Footnotes:
Matthew 20:2 A denarius was the usual daily wage of a day laborer.
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Jesus did the opposite of minimum wage.
Also, consider the parable of the Talents where Jesus exhorts people to take risks and use their gifts for the Kingdom of God, and not bury them in the ground. He also addresses the issue of investing money – if not creatively, at least with the bank.
The Proverbs give us this – Proverbs 6:6-8 English Standard Version (ESV)
6 Go to the ant, O sluggard;
consider her ways, and be wise.
7 Without having any chief,
officer, or ruler,
8 she prepares her bread in summer
and gathers her food in harvest.
People are exhorted to be wise and to work.
Our society takes care of millions of people who physically cannot work. Our welfare system since 1963 has provided 22 Trillion dollars* for welfare to lift people up and out of poverty and has failed miserably. Minimum wage is another form of welfare – it implies to people that minimum wage is as good as it gets.
The Bible is not filled with examples of minimum wage or social justice as you believe it to be or of welfare. It exhorts Christians to get together, pool their resources, and take care of the sick and needy. Your form of justice is to raise an employer’s expenses, which may put him out of business, to accommodate a worker, not the business owner’s goals. Or for the government to raise everyone’s taxes to pay for the needs of an underpaid worker. But the Bible teaches us to work, store up, and harvest. You did that when you went to school and learned and now you reap the benefits of what you sowed.
You are for an increase in the minimum wage. Just say that, don’t put words in the mouth of our Savior. He came to set the captives free. He came that we would have life and have it abundantly if we yoke ourselves with Him. (Not just money…) It is Jesus, not minimum wage, which can save people from a life of poverty. It is Jesus who is the hope of this nation, not welfare. It is Jesus who gives life and freedom and says do not opt in for slavery again. To be tied to a minimum wage job without hope of creating a better future from that job – from learning a skill and then taking that skill on to a higher paying job – to be in the workforce without the Hope of Jesus coming to our aid as He does and will – is all nothing. Jesus is our solution to poverty. His word tells us what to do, but because we don’t want to come together, pool all we have, and give what we have to the poor, we hope for false assurances like minimum wage or welfare.
Where does the Bible tell us what wealth or proportion of wealth is proper for a “just society?” What is a just society?
Sudan, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan? Islam says it is the only just religion. That Islamic society is the only “just society.” No minimum wage will fix that in their eyes. What is a just society to you, Jennifer? And what society has been more just to its fellow man and to the world, if not American society?
Saying that it is shameful not to raise minimum wage is not what Jesus would do. He did not come to shame people. You want the government to raise minimum wage. Make your argument for that, and leave the OT scriptures exhorting jubilee years and Sabbath rest – which the Methodist Church hardly teaches on – out of the equation. It’s OK for you to be pro an increase in minimum wages.
*In his January 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed, “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.” In the 50 years since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs.Sep 15, 2014
The War on Poverty After 50 Years | The Heritage Foundation
https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/the-war-poverty-after-50-years
Ms. Robbins,
Thank you for your detailed response to my editorial about the minimum wage, though I do find it interesting that you cite the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) as an example of “individual effort for individual reward.” One way to read that parable is to understand the vineyard owner paid everyone the exact same amount regardless of hours worked precisely because the owner knew how much money a worker needed to buy food for the workers family for that day. So, there was little individual effort on the worker’s part and great generosity in the form of economic justice on the owner’s part.
I would aver that scripture is replete with examples for us to follow in order to create a more just society for everyone, and it offers small praise for the one who profits at the expense of others, even when such profiteering is legal under the law of the land.
Best, j
Jennifer, Thank you for this gentle and substantive push back to the
argument that Jesus would not suggest a fair minimum wage for the peoples.