The Mexico City government suggested Tuesday that it would aim to increase the country's very low minimum wage. 

Many have expressed outrage at the country's very low wage of 67.29 pesos a day, or $5. Yet, suggestions about raising the minimum wage have angered businesspeople, who argue that raising the minimum wage will cause inflation, according to The Associated Press.

While Mexico's Constitution says the minimum wage should provide for the basic needs of a worker and their family, the minimum wage buys only a single meal at a fast food chain. 

The minimum wage in Mexico is one of the lowest in Latin America, and can only be compared to Honduras, which is the poorest country in Central America. Yet, there are lower food prices in Honduras, which allows wages to stretch further. 

According to experts, about 6.5 million Mexican workers earn the minimum wage, which is 13 percent of the workforce. 

Mexicans earning the minimum wage almost made enough to sustain a lifestyle during the oil boom of the mid-1970s. But during the economic crises in the '80s and '90s, in addition to the recession in 2008, the government held off increasing the minimum wage to revive the depressed economy. The tactic worked to some extent in Mexico's flourishing auto sector, but Mexican autoworkers now earn less than their Chinese counterparts. 

"We have fallen 35 years behind in terms of wages," Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said earlier this week. "We can only buy 23 percent of what one could buy in the 1970s." 

He said that while city government alone cannot raise wages, he will try to reach an agreement with businesses to increase wages. 

Many Mexicans who earn close to minimum wage say they are constantly struggling to earn enough to survive. 

Martina Marín Espinosa, a 50-year-old single mother of a 17-year-old daughter, works six days a week as a street sweeper in Mexico City, for which she makes around $5.70 per day. "I just work for my daughter, to get her ahead in life. I don't expect anything for myself," Espinosa told the AP. 

She is able to get by by living rent-free with her two brothers in a poor area on the city's border. 

She only had a grade-school education, so she said she is happy that her daughter is now in high school. 

Experts say the minimum wage would have to be raised to at least $14.50 per day to provide food and other necessities to an average families, and would need to be $41.50 to pay for rent and other bills. 

The president of the national employer's federation in Mexico wrote in a statement that "we businessmen agree on the need to increase the real wages of workers, but we say the real discussion on how to do that has to do with getting more people into the formal sector."

He said that people must be dissuaded from doing "informal" work such as unregistered farm hands. 

Yet, wages are low in "formal" jobs, meaning many Mexicans work under-the-table, where they can earn just as much selling newspapers in a matter of hours than a minimum wage worker earns in an entire day. Around 60 percent of the Mexican workforce is part of the "informal" economy. 

Businesspeople believe, however, that such under-the-table jobs hurt the economy, as the workers evade paying taxes. 

Some businesspeople, such as Gerardo Gutiérrez Candiani, the president Mexico's Business Coordinating Council, said a wage increase should not occur by a political mandate. 

He said the ingredients for growth are "macroeconomic stability ... and sustained economic expansion."