Today, the minimum wage bill failed to pass through the Senate. The bill would have raised the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10. While I don't necessarily agree that an act of Congress should be the best motivator to pay your employees a living wage, something needs to be done, and fast. Certainly there is no easy solution. Raising the minimum wage could put thousands of small businesses across the country in danger of going out of business. On the other side of the coin though, there is a great abomination happening in big business. The two biggest (or most visible) offenders are McDonald's and Wal-Mart. Deservedly or not, they are the poster boys for this argument. They posted profits of $6B and $16B in 2013 respectively. While those are slim margins based on sales, billions are still billions. How can they post profits in the billions while hundreds of thousands of their workers require government assistance to live?
The federal bailout of the financial crisis of 2008 was unfortunate. The biggest and smartest names in the financial business took risks too large; failing to account for a black swan-esque occurrence. And then it happened, the government had to step in to keep our economic system afloat. Americans went bananas that these "fat cats" were getting bailed out. But isn't the situation at McDonalds and Wal-Mart equally worse? Everyday, the executives of these two companies and their shareholders know they are making a profit only because our societal social nets are catching the minimum wage workers who can't afford to live. Which is the worse of the government bail-outs? Who is the bigger offender?
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