David Finkel from the Washington Post wrote a really interesting piece following Robert Iles, a full-time worker in Achison Kansas, “lucky” enough to already be making $7.25 per hour.  Robert's $15,080 annual salary gets used up quickly since this 22-year-old's wages support himself, his father, and his mother. Robert’s Dad can’t work because he is legally blind, suffers from leukemia, and has a partially amputated foot from diabetes. Robert’s Mom used to make $6.25/hour as a nursing home aide, but had to quit to take full-time care of her husband.

Robert’s monthly expenses paint the clearest picture of how careful he has to be, just to barely get by. Out of his approximate $900 take-home pay, he spends: $100 on the mortgage for his trailer, $313 on his car loan, $100 for car insurance, $100 for gas, $90 for an 11 year old car his mother uses, $150 for family phone bills, $35 on credit card payments, and $20 on doctor’s bills. He buys money orders to pay bills, because if a check somehow bounced, the $25 penalty would be devastating (representing more than 3 hours of work lost.) And Robert has no cushion – these expenses already total $908 per month.

Focusing on various residents of Achison, a working-class town of 11,000, Finkel points out that the ripple effects of increasing the minimum wage are complicated. It’s fine for Robert (so long as the manager of “Wow Only $1.00” where he works doesn’t reduce his hours.) The manager will be reducing someone’s hours though - he has to make up the difference. The owner of an Achison convenience store will compensate by increasing prices – he owes $1.5 million on his businesses and doesn’t want to default. Meanwhile the cashier at “Always Low Prices” is worried because even a modest increase in pay (from her current $6.25/hour to $7.25/hour) may put her subsidized housing status in jeopardy. Walmart is a mixed bag. Despite being the nation’s largest private employer, they’ve publicly supported the wage hike explaining they expect their minimum-wage-earning customers will end up spending more. It could also be about the positive PR. Or Walmart may be expecting to benefit from other small businesses going under.

Finkel’s article is excellent because it probes so many subtle issues – like income-based housing that makes workers afraid even of a higher minimum wage – or checking accounts where one bounced check is too expensive for a full-time worker. Finkel's choice of Kansas also drives home the necessity of a federal minimum wage law in the first place. Take away the federal floor and Kansas’s workers would be subject to the state minimum wage. Set at $2.65/hour since 1988, it's the lowest in the nation, something 20,000 Kansas workers not subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act know too well.

The minimum wage increase from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour has already passed in the House, as a fellow blogger reports.  If the minimum wage hike also passes in the Senate, as expected, an estimated 13 million Americans will be as "well off" as Robert. That's 9% of the American workforce who desperately need this boost, but also need additional help.