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Effects of Increasing Minimum Wage

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The idea of having a federal minimum wage is a good one. The idea is to protect low and unskilled workers and allow workers to earn a living wage. The recent debate on the floor, though, is whether or not to raise the minimum wage from the current $7.25 per hour up to $10.10. President Barack Obama made this proposal during his annual State of the Union Address, and after this there were many hot debates about it. The debates focused not only on the pro side and the con side of increasing the minimum wage, but also alternatives to increasing it.
There are many pros to increasing the minimum wage, most of which are simple enough to understand and make someone think that there is no reason not to increase the minimum wage. The first and most important benefit of increasing the minimum wage is that workers are able to work to earn a living wage, a wage that is high enough that workers are able to maintain a normal standard of living. Next in line is that a higher minimum wage will increase workers incentive to work, and also increase the incentive of the population not in the labor force to join the labor force and seek jobs. Going off that point, increasing the minimum wage will reduce the need for social programs, such as unemployment, welfare, SNAP, etc., because there will be fewer people living at or below the poverty line and that qualify for these programs. Moving along the list of advantages, increasing the minimum wage will also increase the amount of money workers

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