Minimum Wage: Why American Workers Need To Live

Jason Furman and Parrot Sharon explain why raising minimum wage will help families. The wage has to be elevated to just the point where a family can actually afford all the necessities they need in order to survive. The cost of living in houses for poor people makes it difficult for them to afford it and is difficult to stay on task with all the bills. Many minimum wage workers have families to support. The cost of raising children is very expensive. It is an average of $7,100 per year. Minimum wage workers can barely afford to pay child care for one child, let alone two. Increasing minimum wage will also make life easier to those who have food stamps and child care needs. Which can also help them get into college a lot faster so they can go out and pursue a better paying job.

In this article the Canadian press explains how minimum wage has impacted families and gives an intake of how life is for people who live off minimum wage “A single mother […] works multiple jobs at minimum wage in order to provide

“According to a 2015 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a worker must earn at least $15.50 an hour (over twice the federal minimum wage) to be able to afford to rent a "modest" one-bedroom apartment, and $19.35 for a two-bedroom unit (more than 2.5 times the minimum wage).” The report stated: "In no state can an individual working a typical 40-hour work week at the federal minimum wage afford a one-or two-bedroom apartment for his or her family." It is obvious to conclude that minimum wage is a problem, but what solutions can be produced to fix it? “A survey by the Small Business Network found that 82% of small businesses agreed that "’the government should not be setting wage rates.’” This statement shows how conservative business owners are about their money. If they want to decrease the minimum wage past what it is already, then there’s a serious conflict. These workers are barely making a living, and if they are affected negatively anymore, they are in serious trouble.

The minimum wage of today is not enough for Americans to live off. Nevertheless, obtaining two and three jobs to survive occurs to often and should not be consider a way to live in the United States. Workers of today making minimum wage simply do not earn enough to live off. As a result, they depend on the government to stay afloat. They apply for food stamps in order to buy food each month. Most or on some kind of public housing assistance, because they are

An increase of a couple of dollars per hour or more in the minimum wage could make huge improvements in the difficult existence of the working poor, perhaps allowing them to exit the debt treadmill and stand a better chance of eventually rising into a revitalized middle-class. Researchers at the White House Council of Economic Advisors found that an increase to $10.10 an hour would raise wages for 28 million Americans about nine million of those due to the ripple effect. “According to a 2015 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a worker must earn at least $15.50 an hour to be able to afford to rent a modest one-bedroom apartment, and $19.35 for a two-bedroom unit.”

The selling point that has brought people to the United States for centuries is the American dream: Prosperity, Luxury, Opportunity, and so on. Unfortunately for many, this dream has been squandered by the receding economy of an indebted country. As inflation runs rampant, the value of the U.S. dollar decreases, lowering the value of household and business incomes. This economic recession has led many, especially those who only earn the minimum wage, to poverty. According to the United States Department of Labor, “The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour” (“Wage and Hour Division”). Some people believe that a solution to this problem is to raise the minimum wage; however, doing so would ultimately result in a negative effect on the

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.

If the government raised the minimum wage, then the amount of people in poverty would decline. The poverty line in 2015 was $12,331 a year, only 20 percent below a full-time minimum wage worker’s annual salary of $15,080 (Should the Federal). As a result, minimum-wage citizens can barely meet their living needs. A study completed by the National Low Income Housing Coalition in 2015 said that a worker must earn $15.50 an hour to be able to rent a one bedroom apartment. If someone needed a two bedroom apartment they would need to earn $19.35 an hour (Should the Federal). More people would be able to find adequate housing or their family if minimum wage were to increase. As a result. Less people would be living on the streets. If the minimum wage was raised to $9 an hour, over 300,000 people would be lifted out of poverty. Even better, raising minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would result in over 900,000 people out of poverty (Should the Federal). Consequently, more people would be living comfortably if the minimum wage were to be raised. Poverty levels

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.

Since the cost of living has drastically increased, it has become extremely difficult to raise a family while working a job that pays minimum wage. Sometimes, a person living by his or herself will not be able to survive solely on a minimum wage job either. The cost of living is just too much.

Minimum wage is so low that it will not cover your housing payments either house, condo, or even apartment. People who earn minimum wage only do not earn enough money for any type of shelter by themselves, yes they are able to live with family but the people who have to live by themselves can not even fend for themselves with one minimum wage job. According to Swanson in What You’d Need to Earn in Every State to Rent a Decent Apartment she

Most single mothers that have a job work on minimum wages. This cause more single mothers to enroll in welfare assistants like Foods Stamp, cash assistance or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). In the book viewpoint of Minimum Wage is say that “in 2004” TANF gave about $1,952 to widow mother that with two kids every month and they still lived under the poverty line. If that widow mother would have worked with more than the minimum wages, she wouldn’t receive the assistant and would have being above the poverty line. In that same book it say 2.9 million Americans are hurt by the minimum wages. Most of these people are single mother and minorities. In another article by Michael Reich says that increase in minimum wage by just 10 percent, it cut SNAP enrollment between 2.4 and 3.2 percent, and reduces program expenses an estimated 1.9 percent. If the minimum wage was increased welfare assistant would decrease, which means that the government could use that for assistant for other needs like the debt we are in. Raising the minimum wage would also get rid of poverty in America. Single mothers would have more money to satisfy the needs of their children. It would also cut mothers stress and raise their kids in good

However, it is not. The current minimum wage is $7.25, with some states with higher wages. Still, that amount is not enough to survive on, as Barbara Ehrenreich, a best-selling author attempted to do. During her experience working in restaurants, hotels and, “averaging only about $7.50 an hour” she realized the hardship with earning the minimum wage (Serving in Florida). She bought tan slacks for $30, and according to her, it took her weeks to recover from the setback (Serving in Florida). She learns that for people earn at, or a little bit above or below the minimum wage, a transaction that countless do not think twice about, makes a colossal impact; to reduce the effects of the impact, most people must work two or three different jobs if they do not have a working partner or they live alone (Serving in Florida). Yet despite juggling multiple jobs to improve their lives, their living conditions are still sub-par, as Barbara describes her living space, “[it might] optimistically be called the “living” area, with its two-person table and half-sized couch. The bathroom is so small my knees rub against the shower stall when I sit on the toilet, and you can’t just leap out of the bed, you have to climb down to the foot of it in order to find a patch of floor space to stand on” (Serving in Florida).

The current federal minimum wage is low and must become an active wage so many of the Americans living in poverty can support their families. It should be increase to about $15 an hour to establish equal pay for women as well. It’s inacceptable that women earn less than men for performing the same work. Bernie Sanders said, that boosting the federal minimum wage would generate 85,000 new jobs and increase the take-home pay of Americans by some $35 billion. Sanders also noted that nearly 90 percent of Americans who would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage are adults over the age of 20. United States workers should not be living in poverty because the minimum wage right now is low for workers, who are working to educate their children and giving them a better life.

What some fail to realize is, is that, someone who works full time at a minimum wage paying job is only making around $14,500 a year. (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/07/24/2346781/five-reasons-to-raise-the-minimum-wage-right-now/) This wage is barely enough to even be able to make rent each month let alone live and support anyone off of it. We are going