The purpose of minimum wage is to make sure that businesses treat their employees fairly and don’t force them to work long hours for pennies. However, the federal minimum wage, and thus Maryland’s minimum wage, of $7.25 is not nearly enough.

Sure, $7.25 an hour is great for high school kids who only use the money for social spending or unnecessary things that they want to buy. They work two or three shifts a week and get between $100 and $200 a week. Great deal, right?

Well, not for everyone. If the same kid has to pay for all of his/her own transportation, meaning the car, the insurance, and the gas, then that deal of $200 doesn’t look as great. And what if that student needs to pay entirely for his/her own college? Well, then that money is downright pocket change.

At this current minimum wage, a person that works full time, meaning eight hours a day, five days a week, makes a little over $15,000 a year.

This puts just one person hardly over the poverty line, meaning that that salary might provide one person enough shelter, food, and clothing to survive. Forget about saving anything for college or any other large expense.

If that same person must somehow provide for just one other person, like a child or other family member that does not or cannot work, then those people are considered poor by the federal government.

Now, this is not just kids or uneducated and lazy workers. This is the reality for millions of people that were laid off from their jobs during the recession and now have to settle for minimum wage jobs.

If someone was laid off and must provide for a family of four and only had a minimum wage salary as income, that family would be close to $8,000 below the federal poverty guideline for annual income.

Now there are some states that have much higher minimum wage than the federal mandate. Washington’s minimum wage is $9.19 an hour, and there are eight states, plus the District of Columbia, that have minimum wages above $8.00.

But Washington isn’t in the top 10 most expensive states to live in 2012, according to CNBC. Maryland is. Maryland needs to take into account the fact that it’s expensive to live here and raise the minimum wage. Not just for the sake of the high school kid bagging groceries, but also for the struggling families.

Bryan Doherty is an Opinion Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.