“Whoever opined ‘Money can’t buy you happiness’ obviously had far too much of the stuff” - Robert Frobisher (Mitchell 75). Passing on the most quoted message of a millennia, that many spill out to satisfy your defeat in the money making cycle we live off of every day. The issue to this, is that people who never had enough of money don’t know how to play off this quote. Today’s common issue if you ask anyone is that they need money for rent, food, clothes, bills, car payments, insurance, etc. etc. It’s a common misconception that people need to keep climbing that economic ladder to better themselves in many standing points of life. The real issue is not the based off minimum wage, or the integrity of the economy, it’s the cost of living, inflation. …show more content…
Usually what persists is that’s how big money gets even bigger. The Federal Reserve staved off recession back in 2001 by slashing federal funds rate by six point five percent to as low as one percent in 2003. This in return caused jobless people who wanted to buy homes, got a chance with mortgages so low. This in return became a gold rush to lenders, who offer loans to people, and then sold it to debt collectors. “More home loans, more home buyers, more appreciation in home prices. It wasn 't long before things started to move just as the cheap money wanted them to.” (Investopedia). As this went along, the government started raising the interest rates of the home, gave turmoil to the home owners who still didn’t have enough to pay it off initially. Ownership peaked at seventy percent and which led to the forty percent decline in home prices. Many of the borrowers again couldn’t afford the high interest rates and started defaulting. “This caused 2007 to start with bad news from multiple sources. Every month, one subprime lender or another was filing for bankruptcy” (Investopedia). In 2008 the National Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 which made Seven hundred billion to purchase assets. This marks that we as a nation couldn’t handle what the lenders had done, but no one was accountable …show more content…
By raising the minimum wages to actually catch up with the already rising inflation of survival basics, is ridiculous. This is just tending to the ongoing war between Big money and the labor force. Tending to these types of American conceptions, were basically cattle that keeps getting milked to the point where we need to be pumped by a machine. Instead it should be more of a “If you help me, ill help you” kind of deal. There should be a solid cap on the cost of living and survival basics. Only inflation that should be allowed are luxuries, and other miniscule things that don’t threaten our very existence. “So what happens when the minimum wage is increased? Consider the situation in restaurants that have a middle-income clientele. Restaurant owners, facing a higher wage bill, would like to pass the costs on to their customers. But their customers are people whose incomes have not been affected much, if at all, by the higher minimum wage” (Macewan DollarandSense). This concept might have worked well back when most of American companies still roamed these desolate consumer ridden
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)
It can be argued that the economic hardships of the great recession began when interest rates were lowered by the Federal Reserve. This caused a bubble in the housing market. Housing prices plummeted, home prices plummeted, then thousands of borrowers could no longer afford to pay on their loans (Koba, 2011). The bubble forced banks to give out homes loans with unreasonably high risk rates. The response of the banks caused a decline in the amount of houses purchased and “a crisis involving mortgage loans and the financial securities built on them” (McConnell, 2012 p.479). The effect on the economy was catastrophic and caused a “pandemic” of foreclosures that effected tens of thousands home owners across the U.S. (Scaliger, 2013). The debt burden eventually became unsustainable and the U.S. crisis deepened as the long-term effect on bank loans would affect not only the housing market, but also the job market.
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.
There have been many arguments going on whether minimum wage should be increased. This action has its pros and cons. It can benefit many families as living cost has gone up, price for education is rising, and college students are in huge debts. Minimum wage has been around for ages. Minimum wage employment was a temporary condition for people to earn little payment until they moved on to a better paying job. These jobs helped build résumés, experiences, and skills for a better career. As years went on that idea began to demolish into a job that many families can get to survive and pay for their expenses. It has become the easy way for people to get easy pay.
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 ...
The shockingly low minimum wage in America is borderline unethical. Since the minimum wage was established in 1938, there’s been controversy about how much it should be. It was originally set at an amount that would allow workers to maintain a minimal standard of living (30 Days). Since then, the minimum wage has been raised 22 times, but this hasn’t been enough to support the same goal. Not only has inflation made minimum wage worth significantly less, but the cost of living has gone up. Two thirds of American citizens support raising minimum wage again (Mantel, 76), but some still oppose it, saying it would hurt jobs and the economy. Although raising the federal minimum wage would most likely cause some jobs to be lost, it should be raised because of the positive effect it would have on poverty rates, the economy, and the individuals living on it.
Raising the minimum will end up hurting Americans more than helping them. The people that are for raising minimum wage are people who believe that increasing minimum wage can help those people who are unskilled and need an income they can live on. Yet, raising minimum wage would do the opposite and make employers have to fire people who earn minimum wage, because they can't afford the higher wages. People need to realize that increasing the minimum wage would hurt people more than help them. In the end increasing minimum wage would result in some people being let go, for the reason, businesses can't afford paying them minimum wage anymore.
America is currently working on the issue of whether the minimum wage should be increased from $7.25 to $10.10 and economists are studying the effects of the possible increase. Minimum wage workers deal with struggles such as affording health care, paying for education, providing food for their families, putting many hours of work in while making little income and paying their bills. America’s decision to raise the minimum wage would help low wage workers to make higher incomes and would overall strengthen the economy, pulling Americans out of poverty. Americans may hold a minimum wage job if they do not have money to attend a college or university to obtain a degree in order to find a career.
We are living in an advantageous world, With technology, and enough money to be in a reliable economic situation. Yet people live on the streets everyday. Homelessness is a rising issue in all parts of the world. The disturbing reality of the number of people living on the streets has become the harsh truth and has been considered the norm. The exact amount of homeless people living within our world is hard to come by. However, the evidence supporting the issue of the homeless being problematic is plentiful and powerful. Homelessness is seen as an issue that occurs mostly in developing countries, on the contrary, homelessness occurs everywhere. Canada, being one of the most developed countries has one of the highest rate of homelessness within their nation. With the amount of money available today it should be no problem to find solutions and to provide adequate futures for the homeless.
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.
Homelessness is a condition of people without a regular residence. People who are homeless are usually unable to acquire and maintain regular, safe, secure, and adequate housing. Homeless people constitute a demographically diverse population, and the situation is a critical problem in United States. The homeless are known as “the wondering poor”, “sturdy beggars”, and “vagrants”. This condition often occurs due to poverty, but this is only one of many reasons a person can be homeless. In addition to poverty, homelessness occurs as a result of drugs, mental illness, disasters such as hurricanes, or even domestic abuse. It is not a criminal activity.
People are in need of a raise, they need something that would help them live a better life. Democracy exist for people to choose whom meets their expectations, and makes it a reality. Such an act would have a great advantage on the economy making it a stronger economy in time .It would also benefit the society as a whole, making it more balanced .In order to do that the government must balance minimum wage with inflation, otherwise inflation is just increasing leaving minimum wage behind. Business owners want to keep the wages as it is with no increase. That’s because they want to sustain their profit, with no decrease. They make unfounded connections by equating a raise with economic crisis , owners would have to cut off worker to keep up with wages, and that it would result in lower profit. Workers would then save money by not relying on social programs .This issue is really important, where it discusses three major points, the effect of minimum wage on the economy, inequality that has risen due to the huge gap between classes, and how it would make a difference for the American citizen living under the poverty line. One aspect that wasn’t mentioned in the literature is, if minimum having the government incumbents solve this problem. The second is considering increasing the number of state laws that mandate that minimum wage increase whenever inflation
As money can be really important, alongside to food to eat, a house to live in, and places to go from here to there, but for all of those things, you need money. So that’s when “money can buy happiness” expression comes in because many people think that since money can buy everything they want in life, then it can easily buy happiness. My parents lived a decent life style, they had the amount of an average person in Amman Jordan. Meaning that we weren 't filthy rich, but we also weren 't poor either. The amount of money we had was enough to make us happy. We didn’t struggle with anything like food or other necessities we needed. My parents always say that "it’s better than nothing" because looking at others who don’t have much money makes me
Can one really predict the movements and nature of wealth? Can one really give the time to which wealth can be achieved? Can one be certain that wealth would come? How often do one pray for wealth but yet everything seems not to unveil? How much work can be done in achieving wealth when there is but a little time to spend in the surface of the earth? How old must one becomes for wealth to reach his door step when death never fails to disregards time?
Poverty is in our own backyard. Poverty isn’t turning around a globe and looking toward third world countries for an example. Poverty is everywhere. Poverty is the children down the street who go to bed hungry each night filled only with emptiness. Poverty is my neighbor who had her heat shut off this past winter. However I believe that poverty is preventable.