https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/news/2015/04/30/111808/the-murray-scott-minimum-wage-bill-a-win-win-for-working-families-and-taxpayers/
"America’s current minimum wage is a poverty wage: Many full-time workers who receive minimum-wage salaries live at or near the federal poverty level. This means that many must turn to public assistance such as food assistance and Medicaid in order to make ends meet. By allowing businesses to pay poverty-level wages, lawmakers have relieved low-wage employers of their legal responsibility to adequately compensate their workers—leaving American taxpayers to foot the bill instead. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, recently estimated that low wages cost U.S. taxpayers a whopping $152.8 billion each year. Yet for workers who cannot make ends meet on paltry pay, public assistance programs are critical to survival."
