Minimum Wage Analysis

“A 15 percent increase in the minimum wage nationwide would destroy about 290,000 to 590,000 young people's jobs, and about 400,000 to 800,000 jobs overall” (Henderson, David R). Due to the Fair labor Standards act, the federal minimum wage, or the lowest you can pay an employee for work, currently stands at $7.25 an hour. Although a number of Americans think that raising the minimum wage would benefit our country, it would actually bring a number of problems to our economy, such as a rise in job loss and high school dropout.

Ira Knight, who is an author of article “Let’s Make the Minimum Wage a Living Wage”, expresses an opinion that increasing the minimum wage would help all struggling workers and at the same time improve U.S economy. On the other side, Janice Steele in her article “Keep the Minimum Wage Where It Is” argues that raising the minimum wage would have bad effects on workers, consumers and small businesses. Ira Knight’s article seems to be the stronger of the two positions because her arguments are based on several recent studies, and last but not least, she had a personal experience with the minimum wage job.

Everyone agrees that it is time to raise the U.S. Federal Minimum wage, but if we listen to the ‘Fight for 15’ movement and increase it to $15; will that much of an extreme increase hurt more people than it helps? The current U.S. Federal minimum wage is set at $7.25 per hour and was signed into law in 2009 by then President Barrack Obama. An increase to $15 per hour would be more than double the current rate and would have to be implemented in stages or it could have catastrophic consequences for our economy and lower wage workers. The minimum wage is the basis for the wage structure across the states. The population could see a decline in their living standards if the minimum wage

The minimum wage is intended to protect workers and fight poverty. In the United States, the federal government sets the minimum wage at $7.25 per hour although many states set higher minimums. There is currently a movement to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. This movement is called the “Living Wage Movement” (Living Wage Resource Center, 2016) or the “Fight for $15” (Fortunato, 2016) and purports to address the problem of poverty in America.

The topic of increasing in the federal minimum wage has been hotly debated in Congress and between politicians and activists since the most recent increase to $7.25 in 2009. The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 proposed a $10.10 federal minimum wage increase but failed in Congress, while a more recent proposition, the 2016 Raise The Wage Act, hopes to put wages at $12 per hour by the year 2020 (14). Propositions like these seek to allow lower-income working families to earn a living wage but they have faced resistance by conservatives. Stagnation of wages has caused various cities and states to spearhead minimum wage increases at a local level, with twenty-nine states now having wages higher than the federal minimum (13). Raising the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour would correct for years of deteriorating wage values and would pull hard-working families out of poverty while lessoning income inequality and boosting the economy from the bottom up with minimal costs to businesses.

The federal minimum wage in the United States is currently $7.25 an hour. Increasing the minimum wage would lift approximately 900,000 people out of poverty. Forty-three million Americans are living in poverty due to low income, health care costs, childcare costs, college costs, and housing costs. The federal minimum wage should be raised because it keeps up with inflation and would scale down poverty levels.

Six years after the end of the 2008 recession, the pay for American workers remains at the same rate as when the recession began. Low wage jobs have dominated the job growth associated with the post-recession recovery. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour remains decades out of date. “The federal minimum wage has lost more than 30% of its value and would be more than $10.59 per hour today if it had kept pace with the cost of living over the past forty years”. (“Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, 2013).

Should minimal wage be raised to $15.00 an hour? I think that minimal wage should be raised and would greatly benefit the economy. Raising the minimum wage can lead to economic stimulus, create more opportunity for jobs, and reduce the expense of social programs. If the economic stimulus is improved, there is more money to be spent. If there are more jobs created, people can appreciate productivity and turn down rates. If the expense of social programs is reduced, low income families would not have to worry about depending on welfare. Raising minimal wages would give hope to the woman, different race, and encourage and motivate others to further their education. (Doyle, 2015).

There are many reasons why the minimum wage shouldn’t be raised to $15.00. First and foremost, the required work isn’t worth $15.00. To work at a fast food restaurant, grocery store, or anything of that sort, requires no educational experience. Therefore, anyone can secure any one of those particular jobs. For example, a middle school drop out who has little to no education can secure a minimum wage paying job, so how can you expect for businesses to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 when anyone can work for the company. Second, the work required from an employee doesn’t require $15.00. Flipping burgers, taking orders, having great customer services is all part of your job description. It doesn’t actually require hard training. These are things

I would wake up at 4 a.m.-six days out the week: to be on time for a minimum wage field job; 10 hours a day. As I got off my dad’s truck and my feet touched the ground; I closed the door and told him good bye- at the same time I felt scared, independent, and proud. A woman who had a red bandana around her mouth instructed me to put my lunch inside of one of the yellow school buses. We were instructed to make a circle as the sun began to rise. My eyes wondered to the 50 workers- teens and women but mostly grown men: all Latinos some dark skin and others light skin like my-self. Their tired eyes were red as the sun rose. Ten minutes later we entered the bus. Still a bit tired I began to close my eyes as my body moved with the swaying motion of

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

Since the enactment of the Fair Labor Standard Act in 1938, the minimum wage rate has been cause for much discussion. In more recent years, the public has made a push to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour. During his State of the Union address, President Obama, shared his views when he stated “… 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.” Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has made it well known that he wants to raise Pennsylvania minimum wage to $10.15(Ye Hee Lee, 2015). Early this year, Gov. Wolf signed an

The minimum wage for Texas is $7.25 and the chart does not show it going up any time soon like other states. In 1938, Congress began the minimum wage at 25 cents per hour, according to the Fair Labor Standards Act, (Sherk, 2013). The federal minimum wage was signed into law in 1938 by President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression. The main purpose for the federal minimum wage was to help keep the American workers out of poverty and increase the purchasing power for the consumers in order to help the economy. The United States should only use the federal minimum wage in each state because each state cost of living is different and they may or may not have what the other states have to offer. Twenty-nine states and the District

The general idea of the article is that the president want to rise the minimum

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.