Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The impact of the national minimum wage
The impact of the national minimum wage
The impact of the national minimum wage
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The discussion of raising minimum wage to $15 an hour is a very big topic. Some people think it should be raised so they can try to live off of it. Raising minimum wage would help some areas in the U.S., but it will also hurt other areas that are smaller and do not have as high of a price of living. It could very seriously hurt the nation's economy. In some states a raise could help, but raising the federal minimum wage would be a very bad thing. Minimum wage should not be raised to $15.00 dollars an hour because it is not meant to be a living wage; if there is a raise to minimum wage, then there would be an increase in the cost of goods as well as a raise in the unemployment rate. There are many people fighting for the federal minimum wage to be raised from $7.25 to $15.00 and hour. In fact, California voted to have their minimum wage up to $15.00. But many other states are still trying to have a law passed to raise the minimum wage. But for some states the raise would not help the economy, but instead hurt it. A higher minimum wage would help in those states with a higher price of living. In those states that have a lower price of living, the raise would make the unemployment go up because the companies would need to make cuts so they still …show more content…
One big reason for this being is that different states have a different price of living. For example, the price of living in California is higher than it is in Indiana, Ohio, Utah, and many more. The federal minimum wage should be on the lower side and stats that have a higher price of living can raise it according to their needs or wants. A state with a lower price of living would have the ability to keep its minimum wage down so that jobs are not lost and the community does not pay the price. “A good rule is to set the minimum at half the local median wage,” (Arindrajit Dube, par
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.
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.’
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.
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”
One way raising minimum wage will be beneficial is that it could lift many Americans out of poverty. Raising the minimum wage in Illinois, would help the families of more than 1.1 million workers who work to meet their children’s basic needs and “reduce the adverse effects of poverty on a child’s well-being” (Fiscal Policy Center). Studies have shown that raising the minimum wage would help 1 in 5 Illinois families who are in poverty. By raising the minimum wage in Illinois, it would help workers with families spend money on food, housing, gas, and other needs without going into poverty. Along with puling Americans out of poverty, raising the minimum wage could also stimulate economic growth. Raising the minimum wage, is stimulating economic growth by worsening the income inequality and substantially reducing the employee turnover for the business. Increasing a person’s income would raise their yearly earnings by $3,640 and “Improve the economic security and reduce the economies poverty rate” (Fiscal Policy Center). Low-wage workers spend most of what they earn on their basic needs, which is quickly spent and does not leave the worker with much money left to spend on other needs. This boost in the minimum wage will stimulate the economy and help create opportunities for more people, by hiring more workers to keep up with the
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.
In recent years the minimum wage has been a heated topic. People want to hike it up to 15 dollars an hour which they call a living wage, while others just want to keep it the same. There are also others that suggest to bring the minimum wage to around $10.78 an hour, which should be around the minimum wage now if we account for inflation from the 1960’s. I agree with that to a certain point. We as a nation need to bring up the minimum wage only up to ten dollars so that less people are living in poverty, and not any higher so that states with smaller economies don 't crash and burn.
Over the years the cost of living has been on the rise. Therefore, it is only right for minimum wage to increase as the cost of living increases. Many states and even some individual cities have taken the first steps toward raising the minimum wage. States like Washington and cities like San Francisco have already raised their minimum wage above the federal minimum wage. This is a very good start as it is becoming harder and harder for Americans to start and take care of their families. We need more states and cities to follow their lead some more Americans can feel more financially stable. This will make a better America for us all.
Minimum wage was established state wide in 1938 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt; at that time it was only 25 cents which is equivalent to 4 dollars in today’s world. It was established as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act which covered youth, government and overtime pay. Massachusetts was actually the first state before Franklin’s statewide acknowledgement, and it only covered woman and children without overtime. There are lot of issues with minimum wage now such as setting a statewide minimum wage to $10.10, which does not benefit places were living is expensive such as in New York. It leads to an imbalance in different states’ economies, and the government setting price controls in wage has some issues.
The United States hasn't always had a minimum wage. Before the minimum wage was introduced during the Great Depression of the 1930s, there was no national minimum wage, or indeed any legislation to protect workers from exploitation. Due to this lack of regulation, tens of thousands of workers were routinely subjugated in sweatshops and factories, forced to work in horrible conditions, and for only pennies a week. Early attempts by labor unions to create a mandatory minimum wage were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that they “restricted the worker's right to set the price for his own labor.” This allowed employers to continue abusing their workers through the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the incredible demand for jobs caused wages to drop even further to an all-time low.
A federal minimum wage has been around since 1938; starting out as a way to set wage precedents for workers, minimum wage has grown and changed in accordance with growing inflation for the past 76 years. Although a federal minimum wage allows workers to have a minimum amount of income that is necessary to survive and pay the bills, and it forces businesses to share some of the vast wealth with the people who help produce it, federal minimum wage costs the economy thousands of jobs and makes little sense due to cost-of-living differences throughout the country.
Some think that the minimum wage should not be raised, but others think that the minimum wage should be raised. If one had to be chosen, raising the minimum wage would be better. The minimum wage should be raised because if you were to work full time on minimum wage, you are below the poverty line; Also states that did raise the minimum wage above the federal standard have had more job growth than states that did not. Finally, "Minimum wage workers are much more likely to immediately go out and spend that extra money in the economy," says Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute, which favors raising the minimum. "That's because they're often living paycheck to paycheck."
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
In the 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama called on Congress to raise the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, and soon after signed an Executive Order to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for the individuals working on new federal service contracts. An increase in the minimum wage has been a topic of discussion for many years now, and it looks like this year will finally see the first increase of minimum wage in 10 years. Not everyone agrees that there should be an increase, but many states have already raised their minimum wage rates because of the federal government’s inaction. Iowa raised the state’s wage, and it will rise again in 2016. Clearly there are benefits to a higher minimum wage; the current minimum wage in the United States should be raised because it helps the economy by increasing employment, and it is now at the lowest value it has been in more than 50 years, causing hardship for earners of minimum wage.