There are two separate issues going on here:

1: She jacked off her free public education and got pregnant by some thug who's now doing time and can't provide for her or her kid. Lots of bad life choices there for which no one but her is responsible.

2: Number 1 not withstanding, McDonald's is deliberately working her at part-time hours at minimum wage. All those billions of dollars in aid to that woman are subsidizing McDonald's just as much as they are subsidizing her. No reputable company should be able to schedule employees at, say, 30 hours per week, and then have them clock out early when they feel like it, reducing their hours to 20. This makes it impossible for her to maintain a regular schedule and to potentially obtain a second part-time job.

The last federal minimum wage raise was 11 years ago. We all know things cost more now than they did in 2009, and I remember everyone having the same arguments back in 2007 when that legislation was passed about how raising the minimum wage to $7.25 would bankrupt American companies.

It didn't.

Now, should she be earning $15/hour in my mind? Hell, no! Not unless you're going to double my salary as well. She's in a low-income job for a reason, and that's because she made bad choices that the rest of us didn't make. However, now that she's older and wiser and if she wants to start making better decisions, her employer bears some responsibility for keeping her in the situation she's in.

Here's my suggestion so we can stop having this argument every decade: Pass a federal minimum wage law that incorporates two things:

1: The minimum wage automatically goes up 1% every year on January 1st. That way corporations can budget for a gradual increase in minimum wage rather than these sudden large bumps every decade or so. They know it's coming, so they can prepare for it easily.

2: Mandate annual raises for employees who work for a company longer than a year. McDonald's should not be allowed to keep an employee who was worked for them for a year at the same wage in perpetuity. She knows their system by now and doesn't require any training unless she moves up the management chain. If she shows up and does her job well enough that they don't fire her, that should be worth a little extra income each year. Also, if they schedule her for 30 hours, she should be allowed to work those 30 hours. How can she even attempt to work out a budget or a schedule for a second part-time job if her scheduled hours are subject to change without notice?

I'm conservative enough to say I should not have to pay for problems that are a result of her bad choices. I'm conservative enough to say that doubling the salary of a high-school diploma single mother while keeping my college-educated salary the same is immensely unfair to me and minimizes my hard work and education in ways that piss me off beyond measure. However, I'm also liberal enough to recognize that big corporations are forcing me to pay for her problems anyway by not allowing her to earn up to her full potential income with them, even at minimum wage, and that CEOs easily afford to take a 1% salary cut so that every single one of their employees can have a 1% raise, and they'd still be able to afford that new Lear jet.