Well, folks, you won’t believe what I stumbled upon today. You thought $15 an hour was a hefty minimum wage? Hold onto your hats because U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) is calling for a $50 minimum wage. I kid you not, she actually said this during a recent California Senate debate.
Lee is one of three California House Democrats, along with Adam Schiff and Katie Porter, vying to fill the late Diane Feinstein’s Senate seat. Steve Garvey, the baseball legend, is also in the running as a Republican. But let’s be real, it’s California – the Dems have got this one in the bag.
In the race to outdo each other with increasingly left-field policies, Lee’s $50 minimum wage proposal really takes the cake. If this plan were to come to fruition, full-time minimum wage workers would be raking in a cool $104,000 a year. Now, I’m no mathematician, but something tells me those numbers just don’t add up.
Lee defended her proposal during the debate, leaving her opponents and the moderators scratching their heads. She cited her experience as a small business owner and her understanding of worker productivity. Apparently, according to Lee, paying employees a “living wage” equates to caring for them and ensuring productivity.
She even referenced a United Way report claiming that $127,000 for a family of four is just enough to scrape by, and another survey suggesting $104,000 for a single person is barely sufficient due to the affordability crisis. In her words, “Just do the math.” Well, I’ve been trying, but I can’t seem to make these figures compute.
The federal minimum wage is currently set at $7.25 an hour, while California has its own rate of $16 an hour. Raising it to $50 an hour would be a massive leap. But hey, maybe that’s just the new math they’re teaching these days.
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