Pros and Cons of Raising a Minimum Wage Essay

Raising minimum wage would affect teenage workers. With younger adults and teenagers finishing up school, about half look for a job, while some don’t want to or have other plans such as going to college. If minimum wage were to be increased, it would make more people want to get a job. Increasing minimum wage would put more money in consumer’s pockets to spend in stores; therefore, stores would require more staff. Teenagers would have more money which would enable them to apply more funds towards their education to improve themselves. Supporters feel if people are going to get paid more, they would want to get a job. An increase in your pay would increase the consumer rate of purchasing things, and would require more staff due to more customers since they have more money to purchase things. According to Economic Policy Institute, “Over three-quarters 3.4 million of the affected workers were adults age 20 or older. The other 1.1 million workers were teenagers, age 16-19. Despite the relatively small number of affected teens, this nevertheless represents a large share, 19.9%, of all teen workers.” (Heidi Shierholz). Those who oppose believe that increasing minimum wage would cause prices of products and services to increase rapidly and cause people to limit their spending. As prices go up,

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.

One of the most talked about subjects in the U.S economy is the topic of minimum wage. With president Obama’s increase in the minimum wage to 10.10$ per hour people, both economists and politicians alike, have been debating whether raising the bar is a smart idea. At a time when the country the country’s inflation continues to rise at a steady pace and Americans are constantly working to feed their families, some economists know that a raise in the minimum wage would help elevate some of the difficulty. The last time the federal minimum wage was raised was in July of 2009, where rose from 6.55$ to 7.25$. However, there are plenty of reasons as to why the wage should be raised. Some may not think it, but raising the

Rex Huppke writes, correctly, that raising the minimum wage is a complex issue. The majority of Americans agree to higher minimum wage, most being Democrats, while many owners believe that we should keep it the same. He says that people like to raise the minimum wage because “[I]t appeals to people, and it sounds like the right thing to do” (146).

The argument for minimum wage has remained remake consistent over the years. Some people are against minimum wage and the other think minimum wage can help you in a certain way. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Unites States federal government passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. The law has been amended almost every year to expand coverage of the wage floor and to increase the wage itself. Many of the fifty states have enacted their own minimum wage laws, some of them set even higher than the federal level. Minimum wage jobs don’t only help adults at hard times it help teenagers and college students. I learned that the proponents for minimum wage believe the raw value of one’s labor to a business

There has been many conversations about what the positive impacts can come to America 's lowest income workers as a result of an increase in the minimum wage, and there has also been equally as many discussions over the negative effects the increase can have on similar people. This paper’s purpose is to combine each viewpoint and objectively analyze the arguments for and against an increase in the minimum wage. I will first discuss the benefits for an increase, then the disadvantages, and in the last paragraph, I will

This paper will explore the pros and cons of raising the current minimum wage to $15.00. It will start with the history and reasons for the minimum wage. It will cite the positive aspects for raising it, as well as the negative consequences of that action. It will then touch on actual cases presently, within the U.S. economy. Finally, I will present my conclusion.

The idea to raise the US FMW has been gaining traction in recent years. While some states and cities taken it upon themselves to enact legislation to raise minimum wage in their jurisdictions, to raise it across the entire country is a different debate. In this paper I will provide history pertaining to when and why minimum wage came to be in the US. ...

The current U.S. Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25 per hour. In just two years from 2013, the demanded from advocates for raising minimum wage rose from $9 to $15. However, raising the minimum wage is more complex than simply raising the number of federal standard of pay for employees. Relative control groups and other market activities play a part in the outcome of the minimum wage. For example, one instance of market activity was observers said that raising the minimum wage did not hurt individuals; however, wages were raised during an economic downturn so the impact of minimum wage was masked by other activities. Federal Minimum Wage is pressing topic and it is important to consider the pros and cons to raising it, to ask what people and how people are affected, and to look further into the microeconomic theoretical framework of wages surrounding the topic.

In 2014, about three million people made minimum wage or less. Those people made up about 3.9% of all hourly paid workers (“Characteristics”). This is already an extremely small amount of people when compared to the rest of the population. Going further, 55% of those hourly paid workers making minimum wage or less were 25 years old or younger, and 63% of people making minimum wage or less were not the main source of income for their household (Dorfman). This means that the majority of minimum wage workers are “young, entry-level employees working for experience or a person earning extra money for their family” (Russell). If a majority of this already small group do not even need the money to sustain themselves, why should minimum wage be raised for them?

When federal and state governments approve a minimum wage increase, it ultimately raises the cost of labor. In response, businesses will typically account for these higher labor costs by implementing reductions in hiring, the number of hours employees are allowed to work, and employee benefits, as well as increasing the prices charged to consumers for the goods and services they provide. While policymakers are hoping to grow jobs and increase the incomes of workers, these intentions are often offset by the ways in which businesses tend to respond to them.

Businesses will not just reduce the number of employees they will also seek to maximize their profit by reducing benefits. While most minimum wage jobs do not offer much in the way of benefits, many at least offer some form of incentive. In some cases it may be a free of reduced cost meal, others may offer at least some form of basic health plan or 401(k). The effect of raising the minimum wage is also disproportionate, affecting small businesses more than larger companies. This leads to a greater incentive for a small business to participate in the ""black market" for labor, by paying employees in cash in order to pay them less than

Republicans believe that raising the minimum wage is not necessary and would have a negative effect on the economy. They believe that raising the minimum wage would be extremely burdensome for small business that cannot afford to pay workers. In contrast, raising minimum wage would put more money in the pockets of low-wage workers which means more sales, especially in the locales they live in. Another myth that conservatives are blinded by is that most minimum wage workers are teens and are not the bread winners of the family, hence raising minimum wage would not be tremendously helpful. The fact of the matter is that sixty percent of minimum wage, full time workers, are between the age of twenty five and sixty four. At that age, a person would probably be married and have at least one child. Right now, those workers are paid fifteen thousand dollars a year, which is merely not enough, as it is less than the federal poverty line for a parent with one

Raising the pay of one’s workers is proven to increase productivity in the workplace: Worker productivity increased 104% while the minimum wage rose 101% between 1947 and 1973 (Henderson). Common sense also plays a role here. If you were being paid a penny an hour when you really deserve a quarter an hour, would you work your hardest? Would you begin your work enthusiastically at full-throttle? No, you wouldn’t, and the second you saw a better opportunity at another place of employment, you would jump to it. Why should you feel loyal towards a job or company which does not pay you enough to live? The federal minimum wage should be raised in order to ensure the effort and loyalty of workers.

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.