Raising the Minimum Wage The employment effect of the minimum wage is one of the most studied topics in all economics. Today, the debate over raising the minimum wage has been a hot topic after President Obama explained in his 2014 State of the Union address that he intends to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour, an increase of over 40 percent. While the President and his supporters claim that this increase would greatly benefit the economy and result in growing the businesses. Unlike some suggest that creating more jobs for people who need them rather than raising earnings for people who already have them is a better solution for reducing the national poverty rate. Minimum wages are on the agenda in many parts of the world (Luce 2). For example, countries like Australia and Mexico have minimum wage legislation, so they have Fair Work Commission that sets an hourly minimum wage by industry every year. In United States, the minimum wage now is $7.25 an hour, but cities and counties in California, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, and Washington set their own wage that helped grow the businesses markets. Therefore, the three main reasons why increasing the minimum wage will help the businesses are; have more opportunity for new jobs, reduce expense for social programs, and decrease turnover rate.
First, having more opportunities for new jobs and that means if these minimum wage employees are spending more, then businesses are earning more and need to hire
By raising the minimum wage some people will no longer live below the poverty line, the amount of consumer spending will increase and more people will be in better health.
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.
A minimum-wage increase would put billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, benefiting businesses. It may not result in a surplus, but it will benefit the economy. Workers who are affected in any way by the minimum-wage being raised even to just twelve dollars an hour would see nearly eighty billion dollars in increased earnings over the next five years. Because low-wage workers tend to spend increased earnings locally on basic necessities, this will benefit businesses that rely on consumer spending. It still won’t come close to the equilibrium price, but it will help. The minimum wage last year was twenty-four percent below the level it was just about fifty years ago despite the fact that American productivity has more than doubled over that period and low-wage workers now have much more experience and education than they did back then. Now it’s the time to address this weakness in the minimum wage by raising it and lifting the earnings of low-wage
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.
With the minimum wage set at $7.25 dollars per hour many people are struggling to make do. The average cost of living in America is too much for people, who make minimum wage, to make ends meet. It’s thought that raising the minimum wage will have a negative effect on the unemployment rate but there has been no evidence of that. The value of the minimum wage has dropped immensely since 1960. Raising the minimum wage will be beneficial to America and its citizens. In 1968 the minimum wage was equal to $10.74 today. That means in 50 years the purchasing power of the minimum wage has diminished. From the end of WWII upto 1968 minimum wage was on pace with the average worker productivity rate. If this trend was true from 1968 to today and worker
Raise the minimum wage: In the United States, studies show that women tend to make up a disproportionate share of low-wage workers. In the field of education, men tends to go more to STEM than women and that also leads to high paying jobs for men. If we raise the minimum wage, this will help hardworking women to support their families. Approximately, women made up two-thirds of all minimum-wage workers in 2012. With the current federal minimum wage i.e. $7.25 per hour, someone working full time, only earn $15,080 a year round. People working full time with minimum wage is still below the poverty threshold for any family with children and single person is also not far above the poverty line. So, increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would help increase the wages for about 15 million women, which will help close the gender wage gap.
Others studies also report that women are impacted more than men. Two thirds of all workers being paid at or below the federal minimum wage are women. This has been continued in a lot of companies, where there still give more rights to men than women for the same position. This means that 67% more women work minimum wage jobs than men. So, this will really affect women because they will be still doing the same amount of work or more work than before and getting paid less than men.
As the cost of living is raising every day, it is really important to raise minimum wage as well. Through the years, there have been questions about this topic, but no changes have been made. Some people do not realize the importance of minimum wage or even its history. It is a real struggle for many people because they are living in poor conditions making around $200 a week. That is a real struggle for those trying to provide for their family. They have a really hard time trying to make it till the end of the month. They are afraid and worried at the same time because they cannot pay their bills in time or even go to the doctor if they get sick. Increasing the minimum federal wage could make a difference for those living in unfortunate conditions.
First reason, raising the minimum wage would help many employees out of poverty . For
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.
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.
Study shows that wage increases do lower poverty, by 2.4% if wage at $8.00, consistent with other studies. (Washington Post/ Arin Dube)
When people get a job they think that they should be able to afford to financially support their families; however, this is not the case for so many hard working people. There are plenty of people who opposite the raise of 15 dollars an hour, yet there reasons are unsound since just like the business owners try to get their employees are trying to support their families. Many think that raising the minimum wage would hurt businesses, yet how can businesses grow if people do not have money to spend on those businesses. People need to have extra money in order to be able to spend more money and help the economy. Increasing the minimum wage helps many people be able to survive.
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.
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.