On March 2, you ran comments by Kevin Canfi eld in his “View From the Middle” column. He claimed raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour is insanity because if you adjust the 2009 wage of $7.25 to today’s dollars, it would only be $8.04. Then he generously compromised that number up to $8.25, which he fi nds acceptable. If Mr. Canfi eld had compared the 1968 minimum wage of $1.60 to today’s dollars, he would find that it would now be $10.79, so his ofter of $8.25 is looking rather jaded and miserly to me.
His main gripe seems to be that the price of meals he eats in restaurants will go up if you give the people who work there enough money to have roofs over their heads and food to eat. I get the impression he doesn’t have to eat oft the dollar menu when he goes out, but if he did, would it really be so terrible to have to eat oft the $1.25 menu so a worker might be able to go to the doctor if he’s really sick or injured?
I see from Mr. Canfi eld’s credentials that he is a Procter & Gamble retiree. Those are the folks who sell us Tide, Pampers, Puft s, Dawn and Duracell batteries. I personally use some of their products, but now I can’t help but wonder how much more I had to pay for them so that Mr. Canfi eld could make more than $7.25 an hour. Could I get a big box of Tide for $3 if they weren’t paying “insane” wages to their employees instead of the minimum wage that was set in 2009?
This “View From the Middle” isn’t worth the toilet paper that paid the wages of the man who wrote it. Try taking a “View From the Bottom” where the minimum wage workers of this country look from. It’s bad enough that the 1 percent in this country are hoarding wealth instead of paying decent wages. We don’t need the middle class who already “got theirs” fighting a sociopathic war on the poor so that they can dine out cheaply.
Please shoot me if I ever show such blatant hatred for the working class people of this country.
TROY JUZELER
Bentonville