Minimum Wage Raise in Seattle

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Minimum Wage Raise in Seattle
After the protest in New York City, the issue of raising the minimum wage has come up once again. Seattle is spearheading this cause with a proposal of raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. This will help minimum wage workers a great deal by increasing their income. However, there are concern that this move could hurt certain businesses, which can lead to higher unemployment and contraction of the economy. The ethical issue surfaced as this will benefit some at the expense of other.
Washington has the nation’s highest minimum wage at $9.19 per hour. Seattle is set to raise the minimum wage even further, to $15 per hour. More than fifteen millions people work for a minimum wage, which lead to about fifteen thousand dollars a year. These workers would earn a lilt bit below the poverty line for a family of two (Blankinship). Seattle Mayor Ed Murray is pushing this effort since December of last year. Some council members, like Kshama Sawant of the Socialist Party, also support this measure. The federal minimum wage is currently set at $7.25 an hour, with President Obama’s plans to push it to $10.10 an hour (Weissman). Faster workers went on strike in many cities to demand better pay and right to unionize. $15 an hour is part of their demand when they protested in August of 2013 across fifty cities. In this current economy, people ages 25 to 54 are the largest group to hold fast food jobs. Since these jobs pay so little, these workers qualified and used $243 billion in public benefit per year (Covert). Although this is a popular policy, economists and journalists are conflicted in their analysis of the effect of increasing the minimum wage. Some economists found the minimum wage hikes lead to small j...

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...ect of a higher minimum wage. Economists and businesses analyst should observe the change in Seattle when this policy set in.

Works Cited

Weissmann, Jordan. "Seattle Is Poised to Raise Its Minimum Wage to $15. Goodbye, Seattle.." Slate Magazine. N.p., 2 May 2014. Web. 6 May 2014. .
Covert, Bryce. "Seattle’s Mayor Is Pushing For A $15 Minimum Wage." ThinkProgress RSS. N.p., 6 Jan. 2014. Web. 6 May 2014. .
Taibi, Catherine. "There's A New Push To Raise Seattle's Minimum Wage To $15 Per Hour." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 19 Aug. 2013. Web. 6 May 2014. .

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