In the United States there is a problem. People are working minimum wage jobs and are not being able to pay for basic needs such as rent and food. According to the Low Income Housing Coalition, Today, in the United States a person earning the Federal minimum wage of seven twenty-five an hour would have to work around eighty-six hours per week to be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment at the Fair Market Rent, of eight hundred and six dollars (“Out of Reach”). People are working and need government assistance to help them pay for basic needs in life. Raising the national minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour would allow people to live a life where they don’t have to worry about not having enough money for food, rent, or other basic needs …show more content…
Teens usually take these jobs as a summer job, and paying them fifteen dollars an hour would be too much for a summer job. However, This is not true. According to census data, around 89 percent of low wage workers are people 20 years or older (“Data Tables”). Minimum wage jobs were originally designed for people who didn’t have a college degree and were right out of high school, or high school students themselves. But because of the recession we had, older and experienced people have had to take minimum wage jobs. People who are overly qualified are working at minimum wage jobs because they lost their old job. Today, it’s even harder for high school students or one without a college degree to get a job at all. To make matters worse, being paid at 7.25 an hour doesn’t cut it, they still need government assistance to help pay the …show more content…
By raising the Minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour, The United States can be a great example of paying minimum wage workers enough to live a decent lifestyle. People will be able to guarantee a roof over their child’s head as well as provide food without government assistance. For a person, it’s very degrading to be working long hours and get little pay for it. With the raising the minimum wage, people will be happy and feel like they can support their family or just even themselves. They will no longer have to rely on government assistance and live paycheck to pay check. In the United States, jobs will flow and workers will be able to afford basic needs in life. Soon enough other countries will follow our example and raise their minimum wages to a living wage. Poverty will decrease and people will ultimately be happy. That’s the kind of world I want to live
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 has always been a controversial subject that has more and more people debating about the subject. While the talk about minimum wages are highly popular it is an important subject to get informed about if you’re an employee or employer because it has to deal with your money. What is minimum wage? Minimum wage is the hourly wage an employer can pay an employee for his or her work. While the talk about raising the minimum wage has caused some attention in both negative and positive. Nevertheless, the topic that the minimum wage offers substantial benefits to low wage workers without any negative effects to business owners has a growing view among economists.
Minimum wage should be raised to at least $15 an hour. Doing so would benefit lower classes of people greatly. Higher minimum pays will keep people from doing illegal things for money, give them more money to spend, and it would make minimum wage do what it’s intended to do.
Nowadays to live in Napa, CA where I live, one single person should make at least $12 an hour to receive a living wage. Then for one adult and a child the adult has to make $25.82 an hour at least for two adults and one adult working he/she should make at least about $24.13. The minimum wage in Napa is $9, and it is very hard for people to survive on a minimum payment. People often work two jobs to pay rent, bills, but the sad part is that the family loses a lot of time together because parents are working most of the time. For example, I know a man from my neighborhood who works two jobs during the day from 8a.m to 4 p.m. He works at a hotel as a dishwasher, and during the night, he works in a restaurant as a dishwasher. I rarely see him, and I see he is not with his family all day. He works almost every day to sustain his family, but doesn’t have time to hangout with his family. I just think that this is wrong because it is inhuman that a person works all day, seven days a week. My neighbor is so skinny, and I think he is like this because he works too much. We should have a minimum wage increase to benefit all people who work hard like him.
“Minimum wage increases often lead to employers replacing disadvantaged adults who need a job with suburban teenagers who do not.” says James Sherk. Currently, minimum wage earners are seven times more likely to be teenagaers instead of adults. In fact, half of the 3.8 million people employed in minimum wage jobs are under the age of twenty-five (Furchtgott-Roth). Many people use minimum wage jobs as a ...
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.
Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour has been extensively debated over the last year or so. Minimum wage is the undermost wage allowed by law to be given to an employee for their services. Introduced in 1939, its purpose was to stabilize the economy, which was healing from the Great Depression. Most importantly, it was designed to protect the health and welling-being of employees. Currently, the Federal Government 's minimum is $7.25 per hour ($14,500 per year). The ones in favor of the increase are saying that it used to be a living wage; however, now it is not and it now needs to be line with changes to the cost of living. In addition, an increase in minimum wage can increase the productivity and decrease income inequality and poverty. On the other spectrum, the ones who are against the increase are saying that the increased labor cost will drive up unemployment, affect small businesses negatively, and cause other workers from different
In this article, James Dorn and David Cooper argue whether raising the federal minimum wage will help or hurt low-wage workers. James Dorn, Vice President of Academic Affairs at the Cato Institute, argues that raising the federal minimum wage would hurt low-wage workers by reducing job opportunities and raising prices. Dorn also states that the federal minimum wage is responsible for high unemployment among teenagers and minorities and lower productivity among low-wage workers. David Cooper, an analyst from the Economic Policy Institute, argues that the federal minimum wage is not a living wage and that raising the minimum wage doesn’t have a significant effect on employment. Cooper also states that eighty percent of low-wage workers are at least twenty years old and that eighty-five percent of small businesses already pay their employees more than the minimum
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 minimum wage will always be a controversial topic to debate. People are going to protest someday to raise their salaries because they cannot struggle to pay off the increased cost of living expenses. Also, more employers are going to cut off their worker’s hours or get the worker lay off. By raising the minimum wage to $15, people must accept the pros and cons because this a topic will always affect the entire community.
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,
Minimum wage has been around for ages. Minimum wage employment was a temporary condition for people earning little payment until they moved on to a better paying job. These jobs helped build résumés, experiences, and skills for a better career. It has become the easiest way for people to receive easy pay. As years went on that idea began to demolish into a job that many families can get to survive and pay for their expenses. There have been many arguments going on, "Should minimum wage be raised or should it be lowered or eliminated altogether?" 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. It may increase poverty, but those
It is very difficult to live in America if you are living off of minimum wage, and many Americans are living off of it today. Raising minimum wages has its benefits like gaining more money to live better, but people do not see the down side of the increases in wages. With the increase in minimum wage, it also causes the cost of living to increase. How can this help the economy or help people? Minimum wages in America should not be increased because it will cause cost of living to increase, reduce employment, and cause businesses to lose money and workers.
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.