How Does Obama Raise The Minimum Wage

The topic on whether the minimum wage should be increased our untouched has been a hot topic in the media and political scene lately. Both the republicans and democrats have spent some big bucks lobbying their insights on the matter. There has been a lot of subjective and objective arguments that are reasonable on both the pros and cons of increasing our national minimum wage. To add to the drama associated with this topic, President Obama endorsed a bill proposing a nearly 40% rise from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour. The President has been campaigning around the country ever since his State of the Union address, pushing congress to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Many say this is too high due to the costs of enacting such an increase, and many say this is a little low due to the increased cost of living. After looking into both sides of this debate, I realize that overall it would be better for the well-being of our nation to increase the minimum wage due to the short term and long term costs that an increase of the minimum wage could lead to. In terms of helping out the lower class and poor citizens of the United States, increasing the minimum wage level is not the answer.

Although America is known as the richest country in the world, 43 million of its citizens are in poverty. Unfortunately, some of them work full time, yet are still in poverty due to the low minimum wage (“Should We Raise”). In 1928, the first federal minimum wage of 25 cents per hour was set by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to prevent workers from being underpaid. Since 2009, the federal minimum wage has been $7.25 (Smith). The age old debate of whether or not to raise it is still going on in the US. The federal minimum wage should be increased to keep up with inflation, help support the poor, and stimulate the economy.

According to the American Enterprise Institute, it is stated by president Obama that increasing the minimum wage: “would alleviate poverty”. The president is certainly correct, this wouldn't help everyone. As the information given: only 11.3% of the people will get beneficiated by this raise. Why this? People who don’t work are the ones in poverty; and because firing some its workers, there will be more poverty than there was before. And if the case is that a company keeps their employees… the people

Raising the minimum wage is a very important public policy issue. Raising the minimum wage is a responsible policy that is supported by research and demanded by the American public. Each day, minimum wage workers across the country struggle to make ends meet and provide a decent life for their kids (Scott & Perez, 2016). Raising the minimum wage is a controversial issue, many believe that raising the minimum wage would only provide low wage workers more money to spend. However, the benefits can be endless for low wage workers. If minimum wage is increased across the United States it would afford the people effected more opportunities for financial freedom. Increasing the minimum wage would raise the standard of living for low wage workers, allow families to be removed from poverty, allow for government welfare spending to be reduced and lastly additional income being spent would positively affect the economy.

With the presidential elections right around the corner policy on minimum wage has come up for debate once again. William Hoar from The New American argues in his article “Misguided minimum wage mandate” that raising the minimum wage will only result in loss of jobs. According to the editorial board at USA Today, “ inflation adjusted income of the top 1 percent has grown by 58 percent and the remaining 99 percent has only grown by 6.4 percent”. They then state that a raise to 15 dollars an hour only comes out to an annual income of 30,000 a year. It is true that the majority of the minimum wage workforce is from ages 18 to 25 but considering the fact that that age group are the people attending college and paying off student loans, then it should be expected that they are unhappy with such a low salary. At the minimum wage of 7.25 that comes out to 1200 dollars per month for the cost of living. Therefore raising the minimum wage will not only increase morale, it will also reduce rates of poverty.

To begin, there is an extensive debate over whether if the U.S were to raise minimum wage, could it really help the working poor of low income families. Nancy Cook, in her article from the National Journal, “Why a Minimum-Wage Hike Can’t Help the Poor”, she points out that two thirds of around 100 surveys from 2007 had a negative effect and that it does more for the middle class than the lower one. (p.14). So, therefore, from her

Raising minimum wage has been an ongoing issue for many years. Similar to every debatable issue, pros and cons are inevitable. In the United States, minimum wage started when the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) was passed and minimum wage started at 25 cents per hour. The purpose of setting a minimum wage is to set a maximum workweek and to eliminate child labor. It is defined to be the least amount of money employers are obligated to pay their employees by law. As the years passed, the minimum wage began to increase to accommodate the growing economy. Although the wage has increased from a mere 25 cents per hour to $7.25 over the course of 75 years, living expenses are much higher causing many people to be poverty stricken (Debate.org). President Obama proposes raising the minimum wage, so that it would help minimize the income gap in America. However, most business organizations and the Republicans oppose to the idea, saying that it could potentially lead to more economic problems. While both sides have valid points, which one provides a more compelling argument? In the United States, the minimum wage should be raised in every state; therefore workers can have a more comfortable standard of living, lower the poverty line, and minimize the income gap.

In a recent speech from President Obama he said he would like to see minimum wage be increased to $10.10 an hour by the end of his term as president in 2017. This increase would be a federal increase in which every state would have to follow and pay their workers a minimum of $10.10 an hour. This pay increase is meant to help people with lower paying jobs such as janitors, elderly, cooks, and anyone else you makes minimum wage. This will be very hard for many companies to achieve and will make them either go out of business or have to cut workers to make up the difference.

Which would raise it six dollars and twenty five cents. Which amounts to fifteen dollars an hour, which would equate for a full time worker to thirty one thousand dollars a year. A proponent of the minimum wage increase is Thomas Perez, who said “Workers are feeling like they have nothing left to lose” He works as an analyst for the National Employment Law Project, which aims at helping the working class of people. It ends by talking about Obama and his goal of raising the minimum wage to nine dollars an hour, as well as have it follow the consumer index so it would raise periodically Conversely in Arthur Brooks article he stipulates that President Obama neglects the poor. He reasons this by formulating research which he gives that says our current President only talks about the poor class on fourth of the time, while others such as former President Ronald Reagan talked about the poor in his speeches two thirds of the time. Looking at both these articles gives the notion that our President has agreed with raising the minimum wage. Although according to Brook's article he hasn't talked nearly as much about the poor class as other Presidents. It seems important to talk about this class of people since they will be the ones most affected by this social, and economic issue. Seeing the results of just talking about something you can see how effective it is in changing it. Without the

The minimum wage debate brings about a range of reactions from different people. There are those who believe that there shouldn’t even be a minimum wage and that wages should be determined by the markets. On the other hand, we have those who vigorously argue for increasing the wage minimum citing inflation, the poverty line and worker productivity. Regardless, we do have a federal minimum wage rate in the United States at $7.25 per hour, with some states having a higher minimum wage than the federal minimum. President Obama, in his first state of the union address of his second term proposed “Tonight, let’s declare that, in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour” (The White House 2013). A year later, he has revised that number to $10.10 per hour after signing an executive order that has already raised the minimum wage for federal workers to that number. (The White House 2014). With more and more states raising their own minimum wage, a minimum wage increase seems almost imminent with Democrats and Republicans getting closer to a deal. (Bolton 2014). But we are more interested in the efficiency of a minimum wage implemented at the federal level. The main question that surrounds this debate is whether this price floor in labor markets is efficient given that the stated goal of the minimum wage is to make sure full-time workers earn a living wage and are above the poverty line.

Raising minimum wage has been a battle for many decades and it has always been a battle to raise it. Many families that work for a minimum wage job often have trouble making ends meet because making $8.75 just isn’t enough in this today’s economy. Some jobs are paying $2.13 an hour but this is mostly at restaurants that are family owned but if they don’t make enough on tips they must get paid $7.25 per hour they worked. Although minimum wage has changed dramatically since 1938 when it was $0.25 cents (Kurtz&Yellin) American families simply cannot live on minimum wage. Raising minimum wage should be raised to help families that need it the most.

In recent news, President Barack Obama has pledged to support an increase to the minimum wage of at least 9 dollars per hour. He also supports indexing the minimum wage according to inflation (Doyle, 2013). This would create an increase in the minimum wage whenever the cost of living rises. During his 2013 State of the Union Address, President Obama “argued that hiking the minimum wage would improve the lives of millions of workers and their families” (Jamieson, 2013, para. 9). The Obama Administration backs legislation brought to Congress by Senator Tom Harkin and Representative George Miller. Because the two men feel that a hike to $9 would not be enough, they support increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 (Jamieson, 2013). Unfortunately, in March 2013, the House struck down hopes for passing this minimum wage bill for a value of $10.10. Many reasons were given for the event, but, namely, there was division within the Democratic Party (Dinan, 2013). Now, the federal minimum wage remains at $7.25 per hour and this last increase was made back in 2009 (Doyle, 2013). The debate over minimum wage can be found at all levels of society from the

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

The idea of having a federal minimum wage is a good one. The idea is to protect low and unskilled workers from discrimination and allow all 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 per hour. President Barack Obama made this proposal during his annual State of the Union Address on January 28, and following this there were many hot debates about it. The debates focused not only on the advantages and the disadvantages of increasing the minimum wage, but also the alternatives to increasing it.

This is a true statement, but opposition says that this only drives up the standard of living and inflation rate in the world. Inflation is defined as the overall general upward price movement of goods and services in an economy. Although some people who earn the minimum wage are teenagers, almost two-thirds are adults. The average minimum wage worker brings home about half of his family's earnings. Increasing the minimum wage will help these workers to make up for lost ground due to inflation and it will help make work pay. Though inflation is one of the main problems in our economy and even though inflation and minimum wage are directly related, increasing minimum wage will give opportunity for a lot of lower class families to make enough to afford important things, such as insurance. If someone takes a trip to the doctor, with no insurance, they will most likely have to pay around eight- hundred dollars out of pocket. This would take anyone at least three months on minimum wage with two incomes to pay off these medical bills. Barak Obama’s plan to institute a health care plan for everyone will relieve a huge burden on people and also allow them to stay above the poverty line. Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute says, “Jacking the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.25 would give a raise to 10 million workers, including many currently earning their state