Over time, the movement to increase the American minimum wage has grown in strength and popularity. Proponents of this movement argue that economic circumstances have evolved to permit such changes, as the total monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within the United States has grown steadily. During the same time period, the minimum wage, a concept conceived to protect the individual’s right to liberty by establishing a monetary floor for the value of his labor, when adjusted for inflation, has barely grown at all, leading to inadequate compensation unable to fulfill man’s livelihood. On the other hand, opponents of this movement argue that such increases in prosperity granted to laborers would force entities, be it a corporation, a government, or a community, to not employ anyone at all, as they would not be able to afford such wages, therefore hurting the economic welfare of individuals in the broader society.
The state of government that rules in the United States is a state that champions an individual’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To add to that, the state of democratic government is one that elects individuals to represent broad swaths of peoples in various geographies, separated by traditions, interests, and socioeconomic statuses. These elected individuals are deemed with the task of drafting legislation to determine the laws of civil society, in order to best represent the interests of the peoples who elected them. Coupled with the founding principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, these elected individuals would, foreseeably, do most well by guaranteeing such rights to the peoples of their particular geography.
When the property, and in this case, monetary compensation, being endowed to an individual as the reward of their labor does not, and conceivably cannot, meet his elementary economic needs, as if the individual has a total and immediate dependence on said compensation for their livelihood, the individual cannot consent to such rule over the liberty every man is entitled to. Therefore, that individual is, for all intents and purposes, in a state of slavery under the entity enforcing his labor. Such enslavement is improper on a couple of dimensions. One would do well to ask oneself what the difference is between an absolute monarch, claiming to receive the right to rule from divine and hereditary origins, and an entity forcing an individual to toil away or face harm to his livelihood, claiming their practice remains legal as per the standards set forth by their government.
All these premises having been clearly made out, it is that of the government’s responsibility to increase the minimum wage to a living wage, in which an individual’s right to liberty is guaranteed such that he may live and work without risk to his livelihood. If the government refuses to increase the minimum wage such as to continue subjecting laborers to conditions of slavery, against the common will of the people, then those peoples should seek self-determination in their pursuit of freedom, thereby opposing the will of their government and seeking to dissolve the existing government in favor of a new legislative, differing from the other, by the change of persons or form, or both, as they shall find it beneficial for their safety and livelihood.