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Raising minimum wage effects
Economic benefits of raising the minimum wage
Economic benefits of raising the minimum wage
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All people no matter their race, color or religion should have the right to receive income that allows them to provide a roof over their families head, food on the table and clothing on their back. High school graduates should have the ability to make ends meet. Both men and women should have the same opportunities at the same wage. Increasing the minimum wage will provide a stable lifestyle for workers, promote productivity in the workplace, and decrease those on welfare. Lower wages have been linked to an increase in turnover of employees. People making less tend to be less serious about their job than those paid better. Productivity can also be affected by low wages. Workers that lack experience and are new to the job may require a training …show more content…
Many people working are making an hourly wage of $7.25 which results in these workers still being considered poor even though they are trying to support their family. At a rate of $7.25 and working 40 hours a week, their yearly income would be $15,080 which is $1,023 under poverty line. This is with a worker having one child in the household. When the family is larger it results in a significant drop below the line. This is indicative that minimum wage at this time is not providing what is necessary to hard working families. (Smith, …show more content…
How is it that employees making above minimum wage turn a blind eye to those that are not able to put food on the table but are working two jobs? Some politicians suggest increasing minimum wage would result in less jobs offered, an increase in cost of service and it wouldn’t decrease poverty. Employees who keep their jobs will benefit but for those who lose their jobs or don’t find a job will suffer from this increase. The argument that increasing minimum wage is unconstitutional because the government should not have the right to decide what private companies can pay their employees is merely another way to wreak havoc on this
Imagine a world where you are working overtime, seven days a week, yet your kids are starving. You can’t get the education you need because you don’t have the time and money to afford it, and you can’t change jobs because this is the only one you can get. Unfortunately, this is the reality for millions of Americans living today. The federal minimum wage is too low to help families, and actually mathematically speaking, too low to survive on. The quality of life for minimum wage families is terribly low, and that is unacceptable. As humans, we should be looking after others and helping the poverty come out of their continuous cycle. Raising the minimum wage would not only help families be able to afford a better quality of life, but help them to afford healthy food, get an adequate education, and invest in the necessary health care they need.
The minimum wage was, as it should be, a living wage, for working men and women ... who are attempting to provide for their families, feed and clothe their children, heat their homes, [and] pay their mortgages. The cost-of-living inflation adjustment since 1981 would put the minimum wage at $4.79 today, instead of the $4.25 it will reach on April 1, 1991. That is a measure of how far we have failed the test of fairness to the working poor.” (Burkhauser 1)
In summary, there is one thing that people need to survive in today’s society: money. Making more legal money means that people are less likely to turn to crime for survival, more people are spending more money, and people are living the way they deserve to. Minimum wage needs to be raised to meet the people’s needs.
Minimum wage is a topic that has been popping up since the 1980s. From whether we should lower it, or even raise it, but now in the 2000s minimum wage has been the center of attention more than ever. There are two sides to this topic of minimum wage; whether it creates more jobs or does not create jobs. Those who argue that raising minimum wage will create more jobs will have a rebuttal which is that it does not only cause the loss of jobs but that it would make things much worse and vice versa for those arguing raising minimum wage will cause loss of jobs. There will be two authors representing opposite views, Nicholas Johnson supporting minimum wage will not cost jobs with his article “ Evidence Shows Raising Minimum Wage Hasn’t Cost Jobs”
Currently, in the United States, the federal minimum wage has been $7.25 for the past six years; however, in 1938 when it first became a law, it was only $0.25. In the United States the federal minimum wage has been raised 22 times since 1938 by a significant amount due to changes in the economy. Minimum wage was created to help America in poverty and consumer power purchasing, but studies have shown that minimum wage increases do not reduce poverty. By increasing the minimum wage, it “will lift some families out of poverty, while other low-skilled workers may lose their jobs, which reduces their income and drops their families into poverty” (Wilson 4). When increasing minimum wage low-skilled, workers living in poor families,
Poverty continues to grow in America. The average minimum wage in the United States is $7.35 an hour- far too low in today’s society. Key expenses, for example, gas and housing prices, have gone up significantly since the minimum wage was last changed in 2007 (Wagner 52). The laws creating the minimum wage were intended to improve the standard of living and decrease poverty. Raising minimum wage is a vital step in decreasing poverty and giving every family the opportunity to survive and succeed. Millions of hard-working Americans are below the poverty line and need an increase in pay. Minimum wage must be raised because it will diminish poverty and assist the working class to support their families.
According to familiesusa.org the poverty line is a single individual who lives alone with no dependents making $11,490 a year. The annual salary goes up by $4,020 for each person you add to the household. Minimum wage is mainly used for part-time jobs, and part-time jobs are not meant to support a family full-time. These jobs are meant for teenagers or people who have others to rely on for income. People who live on minimum wage typically live alone and can support themselves. If a woman has a dependent child she either is receiving additional monetary compensation through ch...
The minimum wage today has a lot of issues; some people say it is not enough to live comfortably. Many agree that there needs to be an increase in minimum wages and by doing that it can help with our issues of poverty. Statistics show that a worker who is full time and earning minimum wage makes only $15,080 a year, which is under the federal poverty line for a family of two. (Gitis, 2013) The problem with that is $15,080 is not a sufficient amount that a person can live and grow on. “A family of two can consist of a mother and son or daughter, father and son or ...
A person working at minimum wage will only make about $10,700 a year. When rent, groceries, bills and gas are all added up, it appears to be a nearly impossible task to keep a family afloat. But working 40 hours a week at $5.15 an hour, one makes less than $206 a week after taxes. Making $206/week, one brings home about $824/month. Adding 17 gallons of gas at $2.20 a gallon in a car; the cost ends up to be about $38 a week, $152/month. The gas and electricity bill about $120, $50 for cable, $147 for property taxes, $45 for the telephone bill, $25 for water, and $42 for house insurance. All this totals about $580 (Abrams, H). Making it difficult to afford cable, and make the smallest payment possible on all the bills causing one to slip into debt. This is reality for many of the people in the United States. At the current minimum wage level, a full time, year round minimum wage worker in 2005 will earn $5,378 less than the $16,090 needed to lift a family of three out of poverty (Minimum).
The minimum wage being too low has been a public issue in America for generations. Basically, the debate includes two different opinions. Firstly, people who want to raise the minimum wage, and second, people who would rather is stay the same. The overwhelming majority of liberals are on the side that favors a raise. Additionally, a somewhat smaller proportion of conservatives favor the change as well, but for different reasons. The liberal opinion on raising the minimum wage is based on the idea that putting more money in the people’s pockets, will stimulate the economy, and decrease poverty. The problem that conservatives and liberals alike have with this, is that a few direct consequences are proven to apply when raising wages. Some proposed consequences include unemployment, inflation, and unfairness to higher educated people. Another main point is that raising the minimum wage is thought to helps small business by increasing worker satisfaction. This issue of minimum wage has become increasingly popular and important in current times, as president Obama has proposed the idea of raising the minimum wage of contract workers to 10.10$ per hour (about a 30% increase from the current 7.25$ per hour minimum wage). A large number of people consider this wage hike unnecessary due to the fact that today’s value of minimum is higher than it has ever been since the 80’s, and because the wage hike comes at too high of a cost. All things considered, the issue of raising minimum wage is not a battle of political parties and their agendas, its really a debate between everyone.
For many people in the United States, life is no more than a regular work cycle. Members of working class usually have a High School diploma and may work in a low skilled occupation or manual labor. Most of the enjoying age of this people is spent in working, as they don’t want their new once to have a life they struggling through. Therefore, this essay will argue that minimum wage should be increased federally to $15/hour by 2017. Firstly, if taxes touches the sky, why should the minimum wage be on the ground? Increasing minimum wages would also create new opportunities for education as the students wouldn’t have to work crazy hours. Likewise, many couples won’t have to work multiple jobs in order to manage the household. Lastly, it will lift
Because the cost of living has sky rocketed, it has become almost impossible to raise a family on a minimum wage job. A person living on his or her own cannot survive on minimum wage job either. Their living expense would just be too much. The earnings of minimum wage workers are crucial to their families well being. Evidence from 2013 and 2014 minimum wage increase shows that an average minimum wage worker brings home more than half of his or her family's weekly earnings. In 2013 one million single mothers with children under 18 would have benefited from a minimum wage increase to $10.
With ever increasing prices on commodities and scarcer jobs, hard work alone is not enough to pay the bills when they are due. Imagine that you are stuck out in the ocean. The waves are pounding and every time a wave rolls in you are sucked in underneath. After surfacing you only have 15 seconds to catch your breath before the next wave hits. Over time your body starts to give out, 15 seconds is not nearly enough time to recover between each wave. You can only hold on for so long before your lungs give out and you are permanently sucked in underneath. This is what living on minimum wage feels like. People work so hard for money that barely covers their basic needs. Minimum wage is those precious 15 seconds of air that you get. It barely keeps you afloat. Americans need help to keep afloat, and the government could remedy the situation by adding more seconds(increasing minimum wage), so to speak, so that a person does not have to barely hold on, and actually make enough money to live
Contrary to popular belief, most minimum wage workers are 30 or above with families to support, not entry level teenagers as some politicians believe. The American dream isn’t functioning when the middle class is shrinking, instead of growing (Prince). “If one works 40 hours a week, every week at 7.25 an hour that means an annual income of $15,080, with no sick days and no time off…. That’s $15,080 a year, or $13,926 after FICA deductions. Imagine paying market rates for rent in the D.C area, where a tiny apartment might take up two- thirds of the income, and require an hour or longer commute to get into the city, with subway costs taking up an additional 10% or more.”(Ornstein). The statistics show how the low wage workers live. With the added prices, like tax deductions and rent and transportation costs, there is not much money left for food and water, not to mention child care as the employees are working on average 40 hours a week. The low wage workers not only struggle to support themselves, but to support their families as well. In low wage families with single parents life always seems to be a struggle for survival and juggling the costs of necessities vs the meager paycheck the employees bring
For the past three decades minimum wage has been seen to rise several times. Only helping some but more than anything harming most. So who are the ones feeling the effects? Certainly not the wealthy, it never is them, mainly it would be the working poor, unskilled and teenagers. Raising minimum wage would cripple the public even more than what it would actually help.