Persuasive Essay On Minimum Wage

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Whether it be a high school student trying to earn some extra cash or a single mother trying to provide for her family; many Americans have worked a minimum wage job at one time or another. Minimum wage is the lowest amount of money a company can pay for an hourly employee in most cases. The first federal minimum wage in the United States was established in 1938 at 25 cents an hour. Since 1938 the federal minimum wage has increased to $7.25 an hour, and in the state of Minnesota, has increased to 9 dollars an hour. What will these changes bring to the state of Minnesota? Those who now work minimum wage will surely see an increase in income and a higher standard of living. What about those who are unemployed and actively seeking for a job? I …show more content…

According to David Cooper and Doug Hall of the Economic Policy Institute, “Increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 by July 1, 2015, would raise the wages of about 30 million workers, who would receive over $51 billion in additional wages over the phase-in period.” Would this really help get families out of poverty though? Not to the extent President Obama is hoping for. This is because not all of those who work minimum wage jobs live in poverty. In fact, a majority of these workers are not in poverty and also do not have dependents to look …show more content…

CEO’s would only be able to earn a certain percentage above their lowest paid employee. According to Rick Wartzman, writer for Bloomberg BusinessWeek, “500 CEOs received pay packages worth, on average, $10.5 million. That was 344 times the earnings of the average American worker”. Instead of a 344 to 1 ratio of pay why not reduce the pay to 25 to 1? Those against this plan may think that it is unfair for the government to tell a CEO or business owner how much they can make. True government interference goes against the free market system, but minimum wage also goes against free market policy as well. This system would encourage upper management to pay their lower employees more money so they themselves could make more. Eventually there would also be a natural cap on how much the lowest employee would make. This is because a company will never make an infinite amount of money so the lowest employee would need to maintain a low wage for the company to stay in

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