The Problem Isn't the Minimum Wage

 The problem isn't the minimum wage. The problem is a cost of living mismanaged by those people who control the resources in order to benefit themselves and not all of society. A microcosm example of this can be found in the worship songs found in churches. 

     During the nineties and oughties in particular (and still today), most worship songs that were not written prior to the late twentieth century had to be licensed every year from the corporations who controlled their copyrights. This could be hundreds of dollars per year for maybe ten to fifteen songs. The churches could not legally perform the songs during a service without paying the licencing fees to the corporations. If they wanted to keep using those songs, they had to keep paying the license fees. Over time, in order to increase their revenue streams, these corporations increased the fees, sometimes as much as 2 or 3 times what they originally had been. For smaller churches, this could mean they couldn't afford a youth pastor, or the money they might have used for some charitable works had to go towards paying those fees. "How Great is Our God" by Christ Tomlin made millions for its controlling company just so these churches could sing a familiar praise song, a familiar liturgy if you will, every Sunday. It has only been lately when this stranglehold has started to be broken by churches returning to the ancient hymnals, writing the worship songs themselves, or using songs which are made available freely to everyone; all things which send the controlling corporations into panic and lawsuit mode.

     When the resources needed to live are gatekept by a very few whose only motivation is profit for themselves, this is when real scarcity occurs. On a world like ours, in a country like the United States, there really shouldn't be any scarcity of either food, housing, or the basic necessities of life. Almost all scarcity of the things needed for living is artificially manufactured in nature by human beings hoarding those resources in order to make themselves more powerful and others powerless.

     This is not what or how we were created to be on a world teeming with anything and everything we as human beings actually need to live. Tribes in the rainforests and grassplains know this truth all too well. Their egalitarian societies function on everyone working for the benefit of the whole clan, village, or tribe. In many such societies, hoarding resources is seen as evil or even a sickness. Consider that. Consider that's the way we should be seeing it, and not something to aspire to.