Do a search online about raising the minimum wage and you will see any number of articles, and essays detailing why it shouldn’t be done. As detailed or as long winded as these articles are, they all have one central argument, and that is; if we raise the wages of the lower class, than the providers of goods and services will have to raise their prices, which in turn makes everything go up. To this I say bah humbug. It is asinine to think that a company such as Wal-mart whose CEO makes an annual salary of $20.7 million would have to raise prices along with employee salaries in order to make any substantial profit margin. This is simply not true, especially when you consider that the average Wal-mart employee only makes close to $9.00 an hour, and it’s not just Wal-mart, but other consumer based companies, such as Target, and TJ MAXX. The CEOs of these companies make ridiculously high salaries while not even paying their workforce enough to live on.
The question is why. The reason is simple. It’s greed. The more a CEO makes the more they want to make. The economy is no longer about providing a good or service for the population at large, but about amassing as much wealth as possible, and you’re stupid if you think you have the same opportunities to obtain wealth as those Wal-mart and Target CEOs. The truth is the deck is stacked against you, and it keeps getting worse as the world moves along its orbit. The economy has become based largely on the trading and selling of commodities, and the worker has become a cheap disposable commodity, to be used up by megalomaniacs who sit atop cash mountains, casting down crumbs as they see fit.
The collective bargaining rights of the worker are disappearing at alarming rates. Data from the...
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...some sort of nanny state to make everyone dependent upon the Socialist government. The hard truth is the majority of people on these programs work full-time jobs, and aren’t the only ones in their households doing so. To reiterate the point being made a higher wage means less people on welfare, and it frees up tax money that could be used for other things, or it could go back into the pockets of the American worker. Many would read this and call me a Socialist, and if offering an argument in favor of the rights of workers makes me a Socialist then so be it.
The blogs and articles and essays, some written by economists with advanced degrees, people academically more capable than I am, will continue to deride the raising of wages for the low class worker, or the need for regulation to be put in place. I’m just stating that they’re wrong, and that this essay proves it.
Many people against raising the minimum wage create arguments such as, “it will cause inflation”, or, “ it will result in job loss.” Not only are these arguments terribly untrue, they also cause a sense of panic towards the majority working-class. Since 1938, the federal minimum wage has been increased 22 times. For more than 75 years, real GDP per capita has consistently increased, even when the wage has been
Wallerstein, M. & Western, B. 2000. Unions in Decline? What Has Changed and Why? Annual Review of Political Science. 3: 355-377.
“Franklin Roosevelt’s 1937 impassioned speech calling on Congress to help the one-third of Americans who were “ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished” heralded in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and with it a national minimum wage. Echoes of that speech are still heard today. Senator Edward Kennedy (1989: S14707), in his criticism of the most recent increases in the minimum wage, declared:
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.’
To conclude this analysis on the basis of the labor’s extensive history, Sloane & Witney (2010) propose, “it is entirely possible that labor’s remarkable staying power has been because of the simple fact that to many workers, from the nineteenth century to the present, there really has been no acceptable substitute for collective bargaining as a means of maintaining and improving employment conditions” (p.80). In the end, it is important to anticipate unions and employers presently work together to find solutions that will enhance collective bargaining strategies and practices to serve the interest of both parties.
... of Labor Unions in Labor Markets. In R. C. Free (Ed.), 21st Century Reference Series. 21st Century Economics (Vol. 1, pp. 163-172). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Reference. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.library3.webster.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX1700400026&v=2.1&u=edenweb_main&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w
...fort to increase equality and help the poor is laudable. However, the livable wage presents a dangerous precedent in social reform because it is an anti-business policy which is caused from limiting free market capitalism. The livable wage tells companies what they must pay their employees, and the costs of the mandated wages are often many times higher than the federal Mininum wage. This regulation is unnecessary and hurts American business which then hurts the economy as a whole. Instead of a social reform that goes against business, politicians should use reforms that do not have unintended costs on business like lowering the taxes of low income families. Instead of a social reform that goes against the American ethos of supporting business, a policy lowering taxes for would be more efficient in helping low income families. All social policies must be examined carefully for their effects on business because of the importance of businesses in the welfare of the economy.
Minimum wage is a difficult number to decide on because it affects different income earning citizens in different ways. According to Principles of Microeconomics, by N. Gregory Mankiw, minimum wage is a law that establishes the lowest price for labor that and employer may pay (Mankiw 6-1b). Currently, the minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 per hour. For many years politicians and citizens have argued on what should be the minimum wage that would benefit the economy and society in general. A minimum wage was first established in 1938 to increase the standard of living of lower class workers. To discuss what is better for the country and its citizens, people have to understand what is a minimum wage and what are its effects.
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 ...
It is time, the labor market is taking advantage of humans and it must come to an end. For the sake of protecting the people, the minimum wage should be raised. The minimum wage is a tool that was introduced in the 20th century to protect workers from abuse. Today, that is very much not the case. American workers are subject to jobs that pay their workers the bare minimum. In the wealthiest nation on Earth, no person that works full time should have to live in poverty. At the 1912 Progressive Party, Theodore Roosevelt told the attendees: “We stand for a living wage, enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living, a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members
There are indeed risks of raising the minimum wage, but the rewards outweigh those risks, so the minimum wage should be raised. Some people who are against this may say ...“But other economists say raising the minimum wage actually hurts the very people it's designed to help: One of the basic laws of economics is that if you raise the price of something, there will be less demand for it. In this case, if you raise the price of workers, the demand for workers will decline. That could mean companies cutting the hours of employees, laying them off, or hiring fewer workers in the future.”... Yes, it could hurt the people it is designed to help, but different states have done this and found the opposite to be true. With America’s still fragile economy we need a boost, a helping hand; And this could be it. So next time you go down to vote on a mayor or maybe even the next president, remember that raising the minimum wage is a good thing, and you should be supporting
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.
Flanagan, R. J. (2005). Has Management Strangled U.S. Unions? Journal of Labor Research, 26(1), 33-63.
Market economies, as a whole, inherently and inevitably lead to poverty and a large class disparity. In a capitalist society, the ones who supply labor, the ones who work the hardest, are the ones who are paid the least. The owners, who are already rich, receive most of the profit and accumulate large masses of wealth. “Under capitalism workers receive only a small fraction of the wealth that they alone produce, while the lion’s share goes to the capitalist owners and to the bankers, landlords, insurance companies, lawyers, politicians, and all the other parasites who live off the back of labor and perform no useful work.” (SLP). Thus laborers are paid much less than the value of the labor that they contribute. As Karl Marx said, this is stealing, or exploitation of labor. The wages for...
The laws and regulations surrounding Industrial Relations since the 1900’s have, at each reform, placed tighter constraints on the amount of power unions are able to exert. The reforms have also radically increased managerial prerogative, through an increased use of individual bargaining, contracts and restrictions imposed on unions (Bray and Waring, 2006). Bray and W...