A JOB SHOULD PAY ENOUGH TO LIVE. WHAT A RADICAL CONCEPT.

JUSTICE · ECONOMIC JUSTICE

Published by Langhorne P. Breedlove

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2026 · 12:15 AM ET

Tags: Minimum Wage · Labor Standards · Working Poverty · Small Business · Economic Justice

Dear fellow American proletariat: The federal government has maintained a $7.25 hourly minimum wage since July 24, 2009. Seventeen years of presidents, Congresses, recessions, recoveries, and increasingly elaborate explanations for why the people who serve the coffee should be grateful to afford the cup. (Source 01)

American Proletariat proposes a $28 federal minimum wage. Not because twenty-eight is a magical number that makes landlords philanthropic. Because a national economy should stop treating the people who keep it operating as an optional expense. And because wages are a matter of public policy, not divine revelation handed down by a payroll department.

THE MANDATE

Establish $28 per hour as the nationwide statutory wage floor for covered workers, with a legislative phase-in, annual adjustment rules, strong anti-retaliation enforcement, and protections against misclassification. Preserve higher state and local wage floors. AP also proposes a separate 30-hour full-time standard and a separate first-phase Switchboard employment guarantee that can combine employer wages with public support to reach $80,000 for qualifying placements. Those three proposals must be modeled together, not accidentally counted as the same promise.

At $28 an hour, 30 hours a week for 52 weeks yields $43,680 in gross annual wages, before taxes and assuming all 52 weeks are paid. At 40 hours the corresponding arithmetic is $58,240. Neither figure equals an $80,000 guarantee; a qualifying 30-hour Switchboard worker would need an additional $36,320 in annual employer pay, public supplement, or other qualifying compensation to bridge that illustrative gap. These are arithmetic illustrations, not forecasts of participation or government expense.

ROOTS & HISTORY

On June 25, 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act after a fierce legislative struggle. The original law established a 25-cent hourly floor for initially covered workers and imposed work-hour and child-labor standards. Representative Mary T. Norton of New Jersey helped force the legislation through an obstructive House process. The American minimum wage was born not from bipartisan serenity, but from a political fight over whether work deserved enforceable standards. (Sources 02, 03)

Federal rates rose unevenly across subsequent decades, reaching $7.25 on July 24, 2009. State and local lawmakers have frequently acted independently, and workers covered by more than one applicable law generally receive the highest applicable minimum. The national floor is a baseline, not a command that higher-paying jurisdictions lower their standards. (Sources 01, 04)

TODAY · THE PROBLEM

The United States Department of Labor's September 30, 2026 state comparison lists federal-minimum jurisdictions alongside states with substantially higher floors. Geographic variation is real; so are differences in rent, transportation, labor markets, and family structure. A $28 national floor would therefore be an unusually large policy change in many regions, not a modest housekeeping amendment. (Source 04)

Bureau of Labor Statistics annual data for 2025 recorded 844,000 hourly-paid workers at or below the prevailing $7.25 federal rate, about 1.0 percent of hourly-paid workers. But this is not the population affected by a $28 proposal. Most workers making $8, $12, $18, or $25 are excluded from that narrow statistic; BLS also warns that its measure excludes tips and does not identify every worker covered under minimum-wage law. A serious cost model requires the full wage distribution, not just the number standing on the very bottom rung. (Source 05)

Federal rules currently permit some employers to pay qualifying tipped workers $2.13 in direct cash wages, subject to a required minimum combined wage and other conditions. There are also special rules for certain younger workers and other categories. AP's proposal should decide expressly which exceptions end, which require transition, and how tips are treated; silence would simply delegate the most important decisions to the people who already write the payroll software. (Source 06)

THE LEGAL PATH

Congress can amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to raise the federal floor and change statutory coverage, tip credits, exemptions, remedies, and enforcement authority. The Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor administers and enforces federal minimum-wage requirements. An executive order cannot, by itself, establish a universal new wage floor for every private-sector worker. The legislative text must also coordinate with prevailing-wage laws, federal contracting rules, state wage protections, and judicially enforceable remedies. (Sources 01, 03)

THE PLAN

01 · SET THE FLOOR AND PUBLISH THE SCHEDULE

Legislate the $28 destination and a transparent, multiyear phase-in. The exact increments and implementation dates require a regional and sectoral impact model before the bill is introduced. Congress should also specify an adjustment formula for subsequent years so the wage floor does not sit untouched until the next generation discovers Congress has misplaced its calculator.

02 · CLOSE THE GAPS

Review tipped wages, subminimum certificates, youth provisions, agricultural and domestic-work coverage, independent-contractor classification, franchise arrangements, and subcontracting. Require accurate hour records, worker notices in accessible languages, complaint channels, and escalating civil penalties for repeated violations. Particular exemptions may require different treatment, but every exception must be justified in public.

03 · SUPPORT TRANSITION WITHOUT WRITING BLANK CHECKS

Small employers in low-margin sectors may face genuine adjustment pressure. Evaluate temporary, targeted technical assistance, credit access, procurement reform, and phased compliance rather than permanent subsidies that reward firms for keeping pay low. Preserve bargaining rights and prevent an employer from offsetting higher wages through unlawful deductions or uncompensated work.

04 · COORDINATE WITH THE 30-HOUR WEEK & SWITCHBOARD

Specify the overtime threshold, regular-rate rules, benefits eligibility, and any conversion of salaried schedules under the separate 30-hour full-time proposal. The Switchboard income guarantee must publish who qualifies, how employers contribute, how public supplements are calculated, and how the system avoids reimbursing wages that employers were already legally obligated to pay.

THE TEN-YEAR LEDGER

The federal government does not directly pay every private-sector wage increase. Most first-order payroll costs would fall on employers; the public budget could change through federal and contractor payrolls, tax receipts, safety-net eligibility, enforcement costs, price changes, and any separately authorized transition support. Costs to consumers and employment effects also matter. None of these channels can responsibly be assigned a single national dollar figure before a credible wage-distribution and behavioral model exists.

YEAR ONE · ESTIMATE PENDING. Model the enacted-law baseline against the first phase-in rate. Separate federal direct employment costs, covered contractor costs, Wage and Hour Division enforcement, temporary assistance, tax and benefit interactions, and uncertain effects on jobs, hours, earnings, prices, and business closures.

YEARS TWO THROUGH TEN · ESTIMATE PENDING. Report each fiscal year and cumulative ten-year totals in nominal and inflation-adjusted dollars; show low, central, and high scenarios; publish assumptions about labor demand, wage spillovers, productivity, tax compliance, geographic variation, and fiscal offsets. Do not pretend a ten-year balance is established simply because a future tax package has an impressive title.

The Congressional Budget Office's 2021 analysis of a different proposal—a phased $15 minimum wage by 2025—estimated both gains in earnings and poverty reduction and reductions in employment, with material uncertainty. That report cannot be scaled proportionally to claim a reliable effect for $28 in 2026 or later. It is evidence that serious modeling must account for gains and costs simultaneously, not a spreadsheet that conveniently knows the future. (Source 07)

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

A floor this high could increase earnings for millions of affected workers while also inducing some employers to cut hours, delay hiring, automate tasks, increase prices, or close locations, particularly in places with lower prevailing wages. Others may absorb part of the change through margins, turnover savings, productivity, or adjustments in pay above the floor. Which response dominates will vary by place and industry. The strongest opposing argument is not that workers deserve poverty; it is that rapid, large mandates could harm some of the workers they intend to help. That deserves an evidence-based answer.

The proposal could also interact awkwardly with benefit cliffs, youth employment, tipped work, disability-related wage provisions, regional housing pressures, and AP's 30-hour standard. Our answer is to design those interfaces explicitly, test phase-in options, and revise details when evidence contradicts an assumption—not to pretend every downside is a talking point manufactured in a country-club basement.

MEASURING SUCCESS

Publish quarterly and annual dashboards of real hourly and annual earnings, paid hours, employment and unemployment by age and region, turnover, firm survival, compliance complaints and recovered wages, consumer prices, poverty, and public fiscal effects. Compare outcomes to credible counterfactuals and report distributional effects for rural areas, low-income regions, small businesses, and workers with disabilities. If some sectors suffer serious unanticipated harm, say so and change the implementation rather than attacking the statistician.

THE POINT

There is no dignity in an economy whose operating model requires a worker to finish a shift and then apply for permission to survive it. A wage floor is not a complete anti-poverty program. It cannot replace healthcare, housing, childcare, public transportation, or sensible taxation. That is why AP has five connected pillars, not one very large campaign sign.

Twenty-eight dollars is the mandate. The phase-in, coverage, enforcement, and ten-year fiscal ledger are the work. We intend to do that work in daylight, with the numbers attached, while remembering that the people whose lives appear in the columns are not rounding errors.

E pluribus unum, bitches.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

01 · U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division — Minimum Wage Questions and Answers; federal rate effective July 24, 2009. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/faq

02 · U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art & Archives — The Fair Labor Standards Act, June 25, 1938. https://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/37057

03 · U.S. Department of Labor — Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage. https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/flsa1938

04 · U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division — Consolidated State Minimum Wage Table, September 30, 2026. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/mw-consolidated

05 · U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Wage and salary workers paid hourly rates at or below the federal minimum wage, annual averages 2025. https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat44.htm

06 · U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division — Minimum Wages for Tipped Employees, revised November 5, 2026. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped

07 · Congressional Budget Office — The Budgetary Effects of the Raise the Wage Act of 2021, February 8, 2021. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56975

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WE ARE ONE.  ·  E PLURIBUS UNUM.