For 2023 workers in Upstate New York will benefit from the state minimum wage going up from $13.20 per hour to $14.20 per hour. (In the large counties of Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester the State minimum wage is already $15.)

Some leaders in Chautauqua County express serious reservations about this 7.6% increase, while celebrating that senior citizens in Chautauqua County will receive an even larger 8.7% increase in Social Security benefits in 2023.

Those same leaders appear to maintain silence in the face of a federal minimum wage of just $7.25 that Congress has refused to raise since 2009. Adjusted for inflation, that $7.25 in 2009 should be at least $10 nationwide now. (A future essay will analyze how the wealthiest Americans, in contrast, have benefitted from the federal government tax policy since 2009.)

As one who believes in work over welfare, as a Drug Court Judge who urged Drug Court participants to get a job as part of graduation from Drug Court, and as one who agrees with Martin Luther’s view 500 years ago that all honest work is a calling and all callings please God, someone in 21st century America who works full-time should not live in poverty. At $7.25 per hour, a full time worker in a state like Mississippi makes less than $15,000 a year. Shameful.

It is hard to listen to a state legislator making $110,000 per year with great benefits and perks for part time work, object to their constituents working full time at New York’s minimum wage getting a $2,000 increase from $26,400 to $28,400.

The residents of Chautauqua County have sadly been getting relatively poorer over recent years compared to the average New Yorker and the average American. We should celebrate that the increase in New York’s minimum wage will lift up many workers in Chautauqua County.

Some say the increase in the minimum wage to $14.20, on its way to $15 is too much.

I agree that the demand by some over the last 10 years for a $15 minimum wage in America was an arbitrary figure. Why not $14? Why not $13? Why not $12.50?

I agree that while increases in the minimum wage benefit the vast majority of workers, some jobs are lost. However, the demand for a $15 minimum wage unfortunately did not lead to a reasonable compromise in Congress to raise the federal minimum wage at all.

In the absence of action in Washington, 30 states have a minimum wage above the Federal minimum wage of $7.25

Major American businesses have created their own nationwide minimum wages.

On September 25, 2021, Walmart raised its minimum starting wage for about 565,000 workers nationally from $11 to $12 per hour. In some states the starting wage will be $17 per hour. The company’s average wage rose to $16.40 per hour.

At the same time, Walmart’s Sam’s Club raised its minimum wage to $15 per hour. Sadly, Chautauqua County lost its only Sam’s Club and its 130 good-paying jobs a few years ago.

Target, which is now renovating the former K-Mart store in West Ellicott into Chautauqua County’s first Target location, reached a minimum wage of $15 per hour two years ago. On February 28, 2022, Target announced a new starting wage rate of $15 to $24 per hour, depending on local conditions. Target has about 400,000 employees nationwide.

The disagreement in America over the minimum wage has been on going for 90 years.

In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, there was no Federal minimum wage. There was no Social Security for Americans 65 and older and no Unemployment Insurance.

Although Franklin Roosevelt was elected President in 1932, it took until 1938 after FDR’s landslide reelection in 1936 and a switch in the US Supreme Court’s attitude about the constitutionality of the federal government protecting workers, for Congress to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act which established our country’s first minimum wage. Ninety seven House members voted against the Act.

Those New York political and business leaders who fear New York’s high minimum wage harms the competitiveness of New York businesses should join the effort to raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25 to a least $12, if not $15. (The 1970 Federal minimum wage under President Nixon would be $12 now in inflation adjusted dollars.)

It is time to care more about the working poor in America, even though they cannot afford to attend $1,000 a plate political fundraisers (or even $100 ones).

Fred Larson is a 1973 graduate of the Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, a 1976 graduate of Yale Law School, was a Chautauqua County Legislator from 1985 to 1993 and in 2014; and a Jamestown City Court judge who retired in 2021.