Taxpayers subsidize businesses paying low wages

I have read letters to the editor about the $15 an hour proposed minimum wage. The doom and gloom reports (most companies will leave California or become bankrupt) are nonsense. Businesses will adjust, raise their prices or cut their costs.

The problem is that businesses have been allowed to avoid adjusting to inflation when it comes to wages. They have had a secure bottom wage price so that they could base their businesses on this false premise.

All the while, minimum wage workers have seen their wage power evaporate to inflation and use government subsidies (subsidized housing, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, food stamps, MediCal) to keep themselves afloat. Businesses are relying upon those subsidies to keep their workers complacent or in some cases from going hungry.

The minimum wage must be tied to inflation or it will fall behind the cost of living. For some reason, adjusting to inflation seems taboo in the U.S. Our highway repair fund is woefully low because of this mentality. Either businesses adjust or the government (taxpayers) picks up the slack.

This story was originally published February 8, 2016 at 7:22 AM with the headline "Taxpayers subsidize businesses paying low wages."