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Positive effects of minimum wage
Debate over minimum wage
Minimum wage increase debate pros and cons
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Although minimum wage supporters aggressively advocate for a raise in the minimum wage, I believe that we need to remove minimum wage laws if we truly want to benefit American citizens and the economy as a whole. Its supporters often peddle the minimum wage as a means of economic justice to insure that unskilled workers receive a fair, living wage and are not taken advantage of by employers. However, a minimum wage is actually a bad economic policy, veiled in good intentions, that is inefficient in its goal. Ignorant of the harm that such policy creates, minimum wage supporters become drunk on the feeling that they have made a change for good and like an addict hooked on snake oil claimer for more. The minimum wage needs revoking because …show more content…
This reasoning does not seem in line with the redistribution of wealth and economic equality attitude that minimum wage supporters usually promote. However, there are consequences to a minimum wage that make the raise in pay Bob receives useless. Cutting employees is not the only way that employers will cut cost. They will also raise the price of goods and services. This will weaken the value of the dollar and thus contradicting any benefits that were though to arise from a rise in the minimum wage. In addition, “It’s true that the government can force business owners to pay its minimum wage workers more per hour, but it can’t force these business owners to pay them more per week.” (“The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00.") Employers will cut benefits, training, and work employees harder to get more out of fewer workers to make up for cost and layoffs. Therefore, people that do receive a slight raise in pay because of the minimum wage will be in the same boat before because of higher prices, cut hours, and the addition of duties and reasonability’s that would have otherwise be spread out over multiple employees. As David Henderson, the editor of The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, put it “And many of those who do benefit from a wage increase will likely find those benefits undone. They will work fewer hours, will work harder per hour, and will get less training.” (PragerUniversity. "What 's the Right Minimum
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.
When the question is asked "Who benefits and who loses when it comes to the minimum wage" there are really 2 ways to look at it, the short term effects and the long term effects . While the minimum wage laws usually aim to prevent poverty among lower income earners sometimes it create it rather than help prevent it.
Well, raising the minimum wage has both the pros and cons. Still, the fact that increasing the minimum wage nationwide would increase millions of workers’ earnings is deniable. I suppose that’s why some people advocate raising the minimum wage will grow the economy for everyone. In 2014, the president of the United States, Obama, called on the current Congress to raise the national minimum wage, which proves that Obama actually supports raising the minimum wage. ‘February 2014 Congressional Budget Office Report The Effects of a Minimum-Wage Increase on Employment and Family Income is the latest attempt to do so, in this response to Members of Congress with respect to an increase in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour.’
Like Ehrenreich says "someday [...] [people] are bound to tire of getting so little in return and to demand to be paid what they're worth. There'll be a lot of anger when that day comes" (273.) I think this is so true. Minimum wage is way less than what a family can live on. If a person is working, pay them the amount of money required for them to have a good quality life and for one to provide for their family. Instead of paying for the people that don't bother getting jobs, pay more to the people that are doing the work.
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.
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 ...
Let’s just say you have t wo children, you are a single parent and are reliable for everything in the household but only making minimum wage. Do you think you would be able to handle the pressure put on you and provide? Well, there are many single parents out there with children and a lot of those families are living in poverty because of the lack of money reachable to them. With wages being as low as they are it makes it harder on those parents because money just do not grow on trees. The minimum wage should be raised due to the many people in poverty already and not all people get paid what they deserve.
They may argue that jobs and benefits could be cut and could reduce desire for career advancement, but they are wrong. The Congressional Budget Office projected that a minimum wage increase from $7.25 to $10.10 would result in a loss of 500,000 jobs. In a survey of 1,213 businesses and human resources professionals, 38% of employers who currently pay minimum wage said they would lay off some employees if the minimum wage was raised to $10.10. 54% said they would decrease hiring levels. People get laid off from jobs every day due to money budgets, lack of professionalism, or illegal actions. Companies do what’s best for their investment regardless, if minimum wage goes up or not. Whether they were to lay off people there will be extra workload divided among the employees left, which is more than they are getting paid for. That could lead to the company having to pay their employees
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.
On the other side of the argument Americans believe that with the increase of minimum wages it would help Americans out a lot more. One possible way that the increase in minimum wage may help an individual out is in the article Minimum wage Pros and Cons, “The Economic Policy Institute stated that a minimum wage increase from the current rate of $7.25 an hour to $10.10 would inject $22.1 billion net into the economy and create about 85,000 new jobs over a three-year phase-in period. Though this may be true, one problem
The minimum wage being too low has been a public issue in America for generations. Basically, the debate includes two different opinions. Firstly, people who want to raise the minimum wage, and second, people who would rather is stay the same. The overwhelming majority of liberals are on the side that favors a raise. Additionally, a somewhat smaller proportion of conservatives favor the change as well, but for different reasons. The liberal opinion on raising the minimum wage is based on the idea that putting more money in the people’s pockets, will stimulate the economy, and decrease poverty. The problem that conservatives and liberals alike have with this, is that a few direct consequences are proven to apply when raising wages. Some proposed consequences include unemployment, inflation, and unfairness to higher educated people. Another main point is that raising the minimum wage is thought to helps small business by increasing worker satisfaction. This issue of minimum wage has become increasingly popular and important in current times, as president Obama has proposed the idea of raising the minimum wage of contract workers to 10.10$ 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.
The living wage is more and more being called a movement because the current federal minimum wage laws does not provide enough money for an individual that works a full time job to be able to support a family. Making them feel like they should not have to raise a family in poverty. Across the United States there are efforts to provide what is called living wages for workers which began with requiring all employers to pay at least the minimum wage to its workers that is equal to the living wage for the area (City/State) they are working in. The current minimum wage is set, depending on where you are living it can be up to several dollars short of what should be the living wage. The living wage movement is very active in full force forward
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
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.