Comment on The federal minimum wage needs to increase. By how much is a difficult political question.

The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set newsroom policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com. The federal minimum wage is too low. It’s unreasonable to believe that working people can make ends meet no matter how many hours they work for $7.25 during a week. Forty hours is just $290; working 80 hours translates into just $580; in fact, if you worked ALL 168 hours in a week, your pre-tax pay would amount to $1,218 (or about $63,000 a year).