Prop 206: A family’s dream

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Tucker Marmie, Staff Reporter

All someone wants to be able to do is provide for their family comfortably in a world where that is a hard task in today’s economy. People with minimum wage jobs aspire to do the same, but under the current wages it’s virtually impossible.

Every family deserves the opportunity to live a life where they don’t have to always worry about how they’re going to pay for their basic needs. A hard working person, no matter the job, should make a wage good enough to live at the threshold of living.

Many people may argue that these jobs aren’t meant to support a family, that these jobs are meant for high schoolers or just to bring in a little extra money.

In some instances, a job that pays minimum wage is all that a person is able to get. This could be because they didn’t get a college education, or maybe they went to prison and that’s the only job they could get. You never know why someone is working that job, and chances are they aren’t working there so late in life by choice.

Prop 206 will raise up the minimum wage to $10/hr at the start of 2017 and then gradually raise it up to $12/hr by the year 2020. It will also provide employees the right to paid sick time.

The current minimum wage is $8.05/hr and that adds up to roughly $17,000 annual income for a full time job. This was forcing some parents to work multiple jobs in order to put food on the table for their family. Also, the paid sick time is just as important because now employees can miss work when truly sick instead of coming in and spreading his/her sickness to customers just because they can’t miss out on the money.

Plus, this will benefit the economy around the state due to the fact that people will finally be getting more money to spend.  

This proposition will benefit every community by bringing more money into the loop for families and the economy as a whole.