Essay On Raising The Minimum Wage

Since businesses would have to pay more in salaries, they would hire less, or not hire at all.

The minimum wage debate has been a hot topic over the past year, especially with the Presidential Election. This is a divisive topic that people rarely agree upon. There are essentially two sides you can take when it comes to this argument. Either people are for minimum wage or are against raising, or even having, a minimum wage. Proponents of the minimum wage are typically politicians who are lobbying for the vote of the people who feel that a minimum wage is critical to their wellbeing, and those who sympathize with people who earn “minimum wage”. Minimum wage is destroying America’s free market economy and someone needs to take action and find a better solution to this problem. Without anyone acting on this problem now, it can potentially be worse in the long run. Raising the minimum wage in the United States will do more harm than good to society because of the long-term effects.

Imagine a single mother who has has the task of taking care of multiple children, all on a minimum wage budget. This mother’s mind is overwhelmed with worries. Will she be able to pay next month's rent? WIll she be able to put food on the table for all of her children. The single mother lives each and every day with this anxiety, and even with government assistance: Is it enough to live comfortably?

Investing in employees is the single most important investment that a company can make. A lot of Americans are now in deep poverty, or have a huge amount of debt to catch up too. With the thought of that, in the United States today, millions of Americans are living on the federal minimum wage of $7.25. For this case, it is necessary that there is a need for an increase in the federal minimum wage because it would be much more beneficial to both the economy of the United States and to individual workers because more Americans need spending power, higher minimum wage will help close the wide gap between the wealthy and the poor, and the working poor need to protect themselves in case something goes wrong.

The minimum wage is one of the most discussed issues around the country. Everyone has a different opinion if raising the minimum wage would help families across the country to have a better lifestyle or if would cause an unbalance in the economy. Democrats and Republicans have a different view on this issue, while Democrats supports raising the minimum wage by $15 an hour, Republicans have stated that they refuse increasing the wage because it would leave different factions of Americans outside of job opportunities and it would cause an unstable economy. The current presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton from the Democratic Party and Donald Trump from the Republican Party have differed in their opinions about the raising the economy with the minimum wage. In order to make a huge decision in the economy of the country it is necessary to see the facts and numbers to evaluate which decision would make the economy stable and grow equally.

When you picture a minimum wage worker, who do you picture? Do you see a sixteen year old, a middle-aged mother, a college graduate, or even a senior citizen worker? In September of 2013, California governor Jerry Brown signed a new bill into act that would cause the California minimum wage to rise from the current $8.00 and hour to $10.00 and hour in increments over the next three years. The minimum wage rate will go up in two separate $1.00 boosts. The first will change the rate from $8.00 to $9.00 in July of 2014, and the second increase, to $10.00, in January 2016. In this paper, I will discuss, compare, and weigh the pros and cons of the minimum wage increase in California.

While I think that the minimum wage should be raised to $15.00 an hour, Mark Perry, a scholar at AEI and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan 's Flint campus, argues “Seattle’s new minimum wage law takes effect April 1 but is already leading to restaurant closings and job losses” (Perry). Perry wants us to know that the Seattle’s new minimum wage law is “a government-mandated wage floor that guarantees reduced employment opportunities for many workers,” and increasing the minimum wage will surely leads to small business closing and job losses (Perry). However, what he said is erroneous, and a recent report written by Michael Hiltzik, an American columnist and reporter, won a beat reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1999 and won a Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism in 2004, also validated this statement.

Minimum wage is something a lot of people want to change. Some want to change it to $15.00 an hour, that is double of what it is now, others argue that it should stay the same. Many things would change if minimum wage was raised. People argue that it should be raised, but they don’t stop to think about what the consequences would be. Raising the minimum wage would not only affect many of us in this room, but many people around the United States.

When you have a job to where you have to deal with so much, but you only receiving 7.25 an hour. You always thinking to yourself that you deserve way better than date. Alabama has no minimum wage and the federal minimum of $7.25 applies in the state. The Birmingham City Council passed an ordinance Tuesday to set a minimum hourly wage in the city and increase it to $10.10 an hour by July 2017. Alabama is one of the top ten poorest states in the United States and our poverty rate is 18.7 percent. In the years of 2011 to 2013 nearly 17 percent of our people struggled to find food. In 2013, almost one million Alabamians depended on food stamps for their home. Raising minimum wage for Alabama has to happen by the year of 2018 because we all have to provide for our families in all types of ways, there would be way many more students in college, and Alabama could change for good.

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

Fair Labor Standards Act is a law that was established June 25, 1938 that made employers legally required to pay workers overtime for certain jobs. According to Department of Labor, “the set minimum, in 1938, hourly wage was at .25 cents at the maximum work week at 44 hours, which is $4.00 today. Now raising minimum wage has its positives and negatives. A few that caught my attention are economic growth.

Minimum wage is one of today most debated topic among Americans society. Whether or not the government should raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15. This is shown by these two articles who have a different view about the topic. In the first articles written by John Komlos Title “Column: Why raising the minimum wage is good economics” the author claim that the minimum wage in the US is way too low for the high living cost in today society. Whereas the second article written by Harry J. Holzer call “A $15-hour minimum wage could harm America’s poorest workers” he claims that by raising the wage to $15 is too much and it would actually do more harm than good for minimum wage workers. Both of the articles supported their claim by giving static and experts research in order to back up their augment. As for Holzer, he uses a lot of his opinion in order make his claims which are really strong as wells. However, on the other side Komlos use more static and calculation as well as emotional tone in order to help paint the picture for the reader to see what he is trying to say. Which this give it a more well-rounded view of the topic more.

Minimum wages go all the way back to 1938, during the great depression, when the stock market crash and bank loan were failing. Families need income of some type, were they wanted to make it fair were individual could get pay the same without a college degree. I am going to start off with a little about minimum wages history and how this could help our Economic.

If you have ever worked for minimum wage, I am sure you have felt as if your time was worthless. After taxes you brought home next to nothing, no matter how often you worked. That's at least how I felt when I worked for minimum wage. In high school I had nothing to pay for but a cell phone. I worked for minimum wage and it seemed like I barely could afford it. I had basically no bills and I worked around twenty hours a week, and it seemed like I couldn't save any money. I always wondered how my coworkers, who were adults, who had real things to pay for pulled it off. After reading Barbara Ehrenrech's Nickel and Dimed it really made me wonder if the current minimum wage is really high enough.

Congress enacted the federal minimum wage in 1938, during the Great Depression. Congress had two goals; keeping workers away from poverty and boosting consumer spending for economic recovery. Today, there is a debate, whether we should increase the minimum wage again. Increasing the minimum wage is useful for several reasons. First, the current minimum wage has failed to keep up with inflation. Second, a higher income level reduces employee turnover and increases efficiency and ultimately, raising the minimum wage does not reduce employment. Even with high unemployment rates, the minimum wage is useful for the economy.