When Joe Biden ran for president last year, he talked about establishing a $15 hourly minimum wage.
President Joe Biden hasn’t made that happen. Most of the incumbent senators don’t support it. Then Biden dropped the issue. He hasn’t made a push to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009. That’s the case even though several Republican senators support a smaller increase or indexing wages to inflation, such as Mitt Romney of Utah, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, and others.
Under the Biden administration, the opposite has happened: The minimum wage is effectively lower than it was when he took office — and Thanksgiving next week is proof of it.
The country is experiencing rapid inflation. The 6.2% inflation rate is the worst since 1990. The prices of food and consumer goods are rising. It will make Thanksgiving dinner next week cost more as well.
If someone earns minimum wage in New Hampshire, a state without income tax, they can expect to take home $255 per week if they work 40 hours per week, according to SmartAsset. While the average cost of a Thanksgiving dinner last year was $46.90, according to CNBC, it will cost between 4 and 5% more this year — a difference of a couple of dollars.
While that might not sound like much, inflation is a price consumers have to pay whenever they go grocery shopping. It’s regressive in that it hits inelastic necessities such as food, clothing, and gasoline. That said, the paycheck of a minimum wage worker doesn’t go as far as it did last year. Although the purchasing power of a minimum wage worker almost always shrinks due to inflation, it’s happening at a much faster rate than normal. In the 2010s, an inflation rate below 3% (and sometimes under 1%) was the norm.
While this inflation isn’t completely Biden’s fault and the Federal Reserve plays a large role, the administration doesn’t seem to have an answer as to how to curb it. In fact, it’s even downplaying the problem. During all of this, the Biden administration has kept Trump-era tariffs — regressive taxes on imported goods that increase the cost of living for consumers.
Instead, the Biden administration wants to blow out spending, which could make inflation much worse.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
