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State House Rep. Flips the Script on 'Raise the Wage' Critics

Jeremy Sprinkle
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"I was one of those teenagers" making the minimum wage

North Carolina State House Representative Chaz Beasley knows a thing or two about why raising wages is so important to working families like the one he grew up in.

Speaking from personal experience, Rep. Beasley told attendees at an IBEW Local 379 meeting earlier this month that not only are critics wrong when they try to stigmatize beneficiaries of raising the minimum wage as just teenagers "who want to buy more Jordans", they're failing to see that, for many teens, working is about survival.

"As someone who was raised by a single mom, who was in a single-income family, I was one of those teenagers working for [the minimum wage] selling shoes when I was in high school," Rep. Beasley said.

"I can tell you that extra $6 an hour went so far to making sure my mom could help take care of us... Sometimes that extra six bucks an hour was the difference between my mom being able to make sure my needs were taken care of and us skating by. So even if someone brings up the teenager point, talk about teenagers like me that are out there trying to help their parents get by."

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