Raising Minimum Wage In The United States

On June 16, 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced a plan to help raise the United States out of the Great Depression. At the heart of this plan was the idea that wages must be set and fair. “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”(Roosevelt) This plan became the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set the Federal Minimum wage. Minimum wage has increased, slowly, over the years, but has not kept up with its intended purpose. Raising the federal minimum wage to a "fair living wage" level will improve the lives of the working poor, without adverse economic consequences.

Since September 1, 1991 the federal minimum wage in America has been $7.25; over 30 states have raised their minimum wage to over that amount, and I feel like they should raise the minimum wage to one final salary. It would be extremely difficult to survive on $7.25; To make ends meet, It is most likely that someone working minimum wage will be working more than one job. This can be very hard on families with children because the parents are away so much. Some states that have higher minimum wages like Washington with a $11 an hour make the prices of living higher and so it does not make a major difference in life.

America is a place where the people strive to create equal opportunities in every avenue of life. Every American should have unrestricted access to the options presented before them, allowing them to pursue their life goals and die happy deaths. However, this principle only stands for access to options, it has nothing to do with the advantages and disadvantages of said choices. The American dream is the idea that if you work hard enough, persevere, and really believe in yourself, good things will come. Drastically raising the minimum wage goes against all of those principles, rewarding lethargic actions and poor life choices. Raising the minimum wage to $15 will do more harm than good for middle class americans by decreasing the value of the money in their pockets, driving out big companies, and generally increasing unemployment.

In my report, I will go into detail and show how raising the federal minimum wage would positively effect the economy. In doing so, I will be discussing how an increase in the federal minimum wage would make a vast improvement on the way many low income families live, and also how raising the federal minimum wage would boost the economy as it desperately needs.

Aaronson, Daniel (2001), "Price Pass-Through and the Minimum Wage", The Review of Economics and Statistics 83(1), 158-169.

Political analyst and civil rights activist Benjamin Todd once said: “No person can maximize the American Dream on the minimum wage.” Today, I have chosen to speak on the controversial topic of whether or not the United States should raise the federal minimum wage.

In the USA thousands of employees live under the poverty line while working full time jobs

In addition to raising wages and establishing safer working conditions, enforcing unionization nationwide can also can also create better benefits for the working population. Unions have played a major role in regulating overtime pay and minimum wage. Recently, activists and labor unions have been fighting for minimum wage to rise to 15 dollars. Raising minimum wage would lower the poverty rate in the United States. In a study conducted in 2013 by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, “economist Arindrajit Dube, PhD, estimated that increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 is ‘projected to reduce the number of non-elderly living in poverty by around 4.6 million’” (Should). Under the Social Security Act of 1935, unemployment insurance (UI)

Study shows that wage increases do lower poverty, by 2.4% if wage at $8.00, consistent with other studies. (Washington Post/ Arin Dube)

Minimum wage is the lowest amount a business is allowed to pay its employers by law. In the past several years, many state legislators have been trying to increase this amount. Currently, in the state of Pennsylvania the minimum wage is $7.25 but in some states, such as California, it is up to $10 already (Whiteman.) This topic is of high interest to myself and others because a change in the minimum wage can have drastic affects on the economy. Many people want the government to pass new laws for a higher minimum wage; some want the wage up to fifteen dollars an hour. Increasing the minimum wage at such a large amount will have a major impact on the economy. This side argues that an increased minimum wage is just what the United States needs.

Have you ever wonder about people who works hard at their jobs and don’t get enough money? My friend's mother is a single parent with two child one is in college and another one is in high school. She works at the Macon County Elementary School as a special need teacher. You can say that most teachers don’t make a whole a lot in the middle Georgia area. She doesn't have enough to pay for daughter college funds or give her son his needs for school. She also struggles to pay for rent, car insurance, and other bills. Most of her family isn't from here so she really don’t have many relatives to support her. Increasing the minimum wage can help families who are struggling with living issues, decrease the unemployment rate, and help businesses with the cost of living.

The first minimum wage law was imposed in New Zealand in 1894; since then other countries have followed. Forty-four years later, the United States enacted The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 which set the United States minimum wage to $0.25 for workers who were covered. Since 1938, as the standard of living increases in the country, the minimum wage has been “raised 22 separate times–most recently, in July 2009, to $7.25 an hour” (Center for Poverty Research UC Davis; 2018), where it currently remains. Although there is a federal minimum wage, states and cities are allowed to set floor rates higher than the federal rate. Minnesota’s minimum wage is currently $7.87 but Minneapolis recently decided to raise their minimum wage to $15.

Families will have better care, reducing demands on the health care system. More money means people can spend money on better products at the supermarket which means there is less of the chance of them become ill. That leads to them being less of a burden on the government and the government does not have to spend tons of money on health care. When people start spending money the economy starts going and businesses make enough money to pay the higher wages. “Raising the minimum wage would be good for our economy. A higher minimum wage not only increases workers’ incomes—which is sorely needed to boost demand and get the economy going.”(Lester) Low wage workers are most likely spending the money where other low wage worker work at. This would

For many years now, president Obama and Congress have taken up the issue of minimum wage laws because lately it has become a sort of conflict in our society as well as our economy. There has been much discussion about what good can come to America’s low-wage workers and there has been the same amount of discussion on what possible negative effects this legislation may bring. Full-time workers should receive enough to support themselves and their families. The purpose of the minimum wage law is to lift up the under paid workers but those workers see themselves as being underpaid(). If the economy is constantly changing should not our wages?

I think minimum wage is important because brings families with a lower income out of poverty. Mr. Sherk says “it is ineffective because it keeps some workers from on “the bottom rung of the ladder” little chance. When they keep upping the minimum wage some workers get the benefit while others get left and do not get the higher paying jobs. With increasing the minimum wage older workers get left for younger teenagers which leaves a high unemployment rate. On a statistic taken by the BLS or Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the people getting minimum wage are 16-24 year olds, the teens wanting a summer job or single mothers trying to support their families. Nine percent of adults under the poverty line are working full time.