James Costello: A few are making billions, but we can’t afford $15 an hour?

Re “Wage hike is too much, too soon-and it’s forever” (Page 1D, April 10): I was dismayed by Assemblyman Adam Gray and Stanislaus County Supervisor Vito Chiesa’s pan of raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. They startlingly conclude that “we will not see long-term economic growth here until the state stops enacting ‘one-size-fits-all’ mandates.”

Since the wage hike is “too much, too soon,” Valley workers will be condemned to make slave wages forever because “California has not financed, and local government is not wealthy enough to build, the infrastructure necessary to either improve our economic diversity or ease the commute to higher paying jobs outside our Valley.”

California is the world’s eighth largest economy. The Valley produces multi-billions of dollars in agricultural products. Someone in the “infrastructure” is getting rich!

The California Budget Project found that since 1989 “the growth of top incomes has surpassed the growth of incomes of the bottom 99 percent in nearly all of the state’s regions over the past generation. … In many areas only the top 1 percent saw increases in their average income while the average income of the bottom 99 percent of households actually declined in this period.”

Why is it so difficult for the well-paid, well-fed to understand the concept of a living wage?

This story was originally published April 14, 2016 at 6:21 PM with the headline "James Costello: A few are making billions, but we can’t afford $15 an hour?."