America Must Increase the Minimum Wage Essay

A bill increasing the current minimum wage is greatly needed, and our government officials should demand a raise due to the increase in the cost of living, as it’s no longer realistic. We need higher paying wages for all, middle and lower class income levels. Without some sort of help and support from our government the economy will only get worse. Students will not be able to afford the cost of school and living. Single family households will not be able to support their selves.

Raising minimum wage would affect teenage workers. With younger adults and teenagers finishing up school, about half look for a job, while some don’t want to or have other plans such as going to college. If minimum wage were to be increased, it would make more people want to get a job. Increasing minimum wage would put more money in consumer’s pockets to spend in stores; therefore, stores would require more staff. Teenagers would have more money which would enable them to apply more funds towards their education to improve themselves. Supporters feel if people are going to get paid more, they would want to get a job. An increase in your pay would increase the consumer rate of purchasing things, and would require more staff due to more customers since they have more money to purchase things. According to Economic Policy Institute, “Over three-quarters 3.4 million of the affected workers were adults age 20 or older. The other 1.1 million workers were teenagers, age 16-19. Despite the relatively small number of affected teens, this nevertheless represents a large share, 19.9%, of all teen workers.” (Heidi Shierholz). Those who oppose believe that increasing minimum wage would cause prices of products and services to increase rapidly and cause people to limit their spending. As prices go up,

In 1938 congress instituted minimum wage with 25 cents an hour being the first wage. After 78 years seven dollars has been the increase of minimum wage, stated by the article listed on, Heritage.org . Every year the cost of living and surviving in this country increases. You would think after 78 years, minimum wage would not be at $7.25. Many college students work part-time jobs that pays minimum wage to have some extra cash in their pockets or pay a few minor bills. Having a part time job is perfectly fine in college, but imagine not being in college, working a minimum wage job. Lets be honest, the pay checks are no where near what you would like them to be or it isn 't enough to cover everything that you want or need. So, imagine not being in college, working a full time job, with rent, children, car note, insurance, and etc. Many adults work minimum wage jobs, barely making it to provide for themselves and their kids. Your probably thinking, "maybe those people should go back to school or look for a better job.” Yes, that is true but for most people, its too late. A better job requires a degree, most people have kids and cant afford to take a couple of hours off or get someone to watch their kids while they attend school, so a minimum wage job is the only option. So, to make a better life for the struggling parents and the needy college students, increasing the minimum wage is a must for various reasons which include decreasing poverty, increasing health, and relieving

McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and cleaning services: all of these have one thing in common-they are all minimum wage jobs. Their pay is low and work load high, and because of this living as a low wageworker is never easy. One must handle many hardships in order to make a few meager dollars, with which most cannot sufficiently live. 'The 'living wage' in the United States is between $9-10.18; sounds great to a college student, but in the real world this kind of money just isn't going to cut it,' (Ramisch). Minimum wage standards for American workers rest at $5.15 per hour, and in such slighted fields, very few make much more than that, perhaps $6-7, but even that is a rarity. The material life of a low-income employee includes bare necessities

states “if all we do is raise the minimum wage, I'll worry we're missing a chance to lift people out of poverty for good, and that a few years from now, we'll be having this same conversation — again” (148).

Should minimum wage be increased? Passage one strongly supports and gives details on why minimum wage should be raised. Many workers are asking for a national minimum wage increase to $15 per hour, while others say that a higher minimum wage will stifle business and ultimately hurt the economy. So, should the minimum wage be increased or not? The federal minimum wage was introduced in 1938 during the Great Depression under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was initially set at $0.25 per hour and has been increased by Congress 22 times, most recently in 2009 when it went from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour. 29 states plus the District of Columbia (DC) have a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage. 2,561,000 workers earn the federal minimum wage or below.

In the United States alone, the amount of people in poverty is 14.5%. That equates to 45.3 million people in 2013. In a country like America, one of the world’s superpowers, it’s embarrassing to admit. But the main issue is to fix issues like these with the minimum wage and welfare. The minimum wage applies to workers who got a job whether because they were in school or because they had not gone to college and had no other option. Most of the country lives off as minimum wage workers as only 1% of the world’s population has a college degree. Minimum wage needs to be adjusted to modern inflation. But the minimum wage allegedly does not affect poverty at all says a large demographic and does not need to be adjusted. The minimum wage makes up a lot of the country and should be adjusted or modified to today’s standard of living.

However, this system of measuring poverty is flawed because if a family makes a dollar more above the set limit, they do not qualify for financial help from the government (NCCP, 2008).The poverty threshold is an inadequate measure of whether people are considered poor or not. Current poverty measures are flawed because it assumes how much a family spends and does not accurately include family resources such as Earned Income Tax Credit (NCCP, 2008). The way that the government measures poverty is based on outdated information that was set in the 60s. Because it has not been sufficient to keep up with the standard of living, those who are living in “high cost cities like New York and those who live in rural areas of the country” (NCCP, 2008) are barely getting by.

The federal minimum wage has been debated and questioned since it was created in 1938. In 2009 the federal minimum wage was set at $7.25. Barack Obama proposed it be increased to $10.10 per hour but was unsuccessful in his attempts. The working class has declared that it currently is not a liveable amount and are fighting to have it increased to $15 with a movement called #fightfor15. Workers believe that a higher minimum wage will create more jobs and boost the economy. There are many arguments that say minimum wage should or shouldn’t be increased. A value of $15 could do more harm than good. According to research, increasing the federal minimum wage to just $10.10 would provide a livable income for workers and boost the economy.

Minimum wage jobs are everywhere, and that makes them relatively easy to find. Many Americans work minimum wage jobs; however, these jobs are being overworked by the wrong people. A minimum wage job in the United States has never been, and never will be, meant to provide for a family. Adults who work a minimum wage job and try to raise a family on that income are almost always living in poverty in the United States, but what is poverty? According to Jewel in “Street Life Is No Life for Children”, “Poverty [is] the lack of affordable housing, access to education, and many other resources” (Jewel 428). In recent years, there has been talk in the United States about raising

“Of course, nothing helps families make ends meet like higher wages. … And to everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, go try it. If not, vote to give millions of the hardest-working people in America a raise.”

"No family gets rich from earning the minimum wage. In fact, the current minimum wage does not even lift a family out of poverty."

"The minimum wage is something that F.D.R. put in place a long time ago during the Great Depression. I don't think it worked then. It didn't solve any problems then and it hasn't solved any problems in 50 years."

In this day and age, $7.25 per hour is no longer enough to obtain a sufficient living, especially for those who have to support themselves and their family. According to Kim Daniel, writer for Post-Crescent Media, “A single parent who works full time at minimum wage earns just $14,500 [per year]. If she has two children, this income is more than $4,000 below the poverty line.” Even those who earn a little more than the average minimum wage, like Nick Mason for

An adult supporting themselves on minimum wage is hard enough, but to support a family as well can send a person plummeting below the poverty line. The set minimum wage of $7.25 is not the minimum wage we think it is. Minimum wage workers are not just teenagers taking your orders at a fast food restaurant, they are people of any and all ages trying to earn enough money to put bread on the table. The causes of the inflation of minimum wage are a conglomerate of selfish political leaders, lack of legal binding, and the recent recession. The solution to the increasing percentage of Americans living below the poverty line due to the low value minimum is raising the minimum wage back to its 1968 counterpart.