Nuvo News, May 29, 2013
By Matt Lawson and Fran Quigley
Miryah Lazaropolis is in a tough situation. When she fell behind on the rent on her Eastside home, she and her twin 3-year-old boys were evicted. Fortunately, Lazaropolis' parents are letting her and the kids stay with them for a while. But she owes money from the eviction and overdue utility bills, and the still-unpaid hospital fees for the twins' birth add up to nearly $20,000.
Lazaropolis tries to push the worry about the unpaid debts behind her. But some money problems are more immediate. On the day we spoke with her, Lazaropolis had no gas in her car and no way to buy some much-needed baby wipes — despite her job at Walmart stocking and straightening racks of clothes.
Lazaropolis is paid only $7.40 per hour, and her paycheck does not come close to meeting even the bare-bones needs of her family, even with full-time hours. "I am constantly worrying about how to make ends meet," she said. "It is a struggle, a terrible struggle." ...
The second false premise is that employers would be harmed by a minimum wage increase. ...
This trend is bad for small businesses, according to Holly Sklar, director of Business for a Fair Minimum Wage. "The biggest problem for Main Street businesses is lack of customer demand," Sklar said in a news release advocating a minimum wage increase. "Corporate profits are at their highest since 1950, as a percentage of national income, while the share going to employees is near its low point. We can't build a strong economy on a falling wage floor." ...
Matt Lawson is a student in the Health and Human Rights Clinic at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. Fran Quigley teaches in the Clinic.