> Not everyone is a single mother trying to make ends meet
In the meantime, student loans are at an all time high!
Whether or not you had college paid for by somebody else who saved or even if you didn't need to go; Teenagers need more than pocket money, afterall, in 2 years they will, for the median, be committing to loan terms that will take 10+ years to pay off, if they ever do.
A 16 year old also may not have a college opportunity and may decide to go straight to work, may decide to go straight to having a family with a high school sweetheart. At that point, the 16-18 year old needs a liveable wage too.
So, 1.04% of the adult population of the US makes minimum wage.
In your logic, why should we set national economic policy based on 1%?
From [1]: 1.8 million workers made the federal minimum wage or less. But that does not say how many people made less than $15 an hour, which is considered a living wage. According to the NELP in 2016, 42% of US workers make less than $15 per hour. Nearly half of US workers. [2]
So raising the minimum wage would support nearly half the US workforce to be able to, you know, live. I think setting economic policy with this in mind makes more sense than only considering what teenagers need.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2017/home.htm [2] https://raisetheminimumwage.com/fight-for-15/
Therefore 0.0230.580.78 = 0.0104, or just over 1% of adults earn minimum wage.
Not everyone is a single mother trying to make ends meet for her two children. We should not make economic policy as if they are.
"So why don't we take care of them?" Single mothers trying to make ends meet have access to a wide array of social programs already. We are already not abandoning them to the tender mercies of minimum wage and nothing else.