Should People Raise Minimum Wage

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.

“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.

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.”

Raising minimum wage has been a battle for many decades and it has always been a battle to raise it. Many families that work for a minimum wage job often have trouble making ends meet because making $8.75 just isn’t enough in this today’s economy. Some jobs are paying $2.13 an hour but this is mostly at restaurants that are family owned but if they don’t make enough on tips they must get paid $7.25 per hour they worked. Although minimum wage has changed dramatically since 1938 when it was $0.25 cents (Kurtz&Yellin) American families simply cannot live on minimum wage. Raising minimum wage should be raised to help families that need it the most.

In order to protect our workforce and the economy of our nation, the minimum wage cannot be raised to $15/hour. Doing so would would have a detrimental effect on the workforce by jeopardizing jobs and restricting people from escaping the grasp of poverty. In order to successfully reduce poverty through economics we must also understand who utilizes the minimum wage, and successful alternatives to raising wages that are available.

According to procon.org “if we were to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 there would be economic loss of up to 500,000 jobs.” When people think about the idea of making $10.10 an hour they think about money not all the other people that will probably get laid off if the minimum wage goes up. In a recent survey they asked 1,213 businesses what they would do if the legal minimum wage were to go up to $10.10. This survey showed “38% of employers who currently pay minimum wage said they would lay off some employees if the minimum wage was raised to $10.10. 54% said they would decrease hiring levels.”(procon.org) This is a highly substantial loss of jobs in the U.S.

A fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage will affect over three hundred thousand workers and cost over two hundred twenty eight million dollars over the next five years(Deng 1). San Francisco raised the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour. That being said The Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institution, Adam Ozimek and Stephen Bronars of Edgewood Economics reported that since the increase many restaurants and hotels have laid off workers (Puzder 1). This comes as no surprise since in 2014 the Congressional Budget Office found that increasing the minimum wage to ten dollars and ten cents an hour would result in 500,000 job losses ( Puzder 1). As of right now 6.5 million Americans are working part time because they’re unable to find full-time jobs and opportunities ( Puzder 1). Raising minimum wage is only going to hurt those that are currently part time, unemployed and the upcoming generation of young adults just now about to enter the working

Should America’s minimum wage be raised from $7.25 all the way to $15 an hour? Many are for raising it because they say it will decrease the amount of families living uncomfortably in poverty struggling to pay rent, feed their children, and make ends meet. But those who are against it, say it will increase the amount of businesses going bankrupt and will drive unemployment sky high. Critics of minimum wage say that minimum wage should be changed to living wage which will take the economy into account and would provide families with enough to live a comfortable lifestyle. Raising minimum wage in the United States to $15 an hour would be a bad idea for three reasons, earnings per share in even large stores would plummet, it would drive unemployment to an all-time high, and it will not take the economy into account.

Imagine being a single mother of three. Now let's say someone didn’t finish high school because they were pregnant with their first child. They are also paid at minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour where they live. Would it be possible to live like that? 1.3 million people in the united states are paid at minimum wage. In some states the $7.25 an hour is lowered or there is none at all. Minimum wage should be raised, although some argue it shouldn’t because of consumer prices.

U.S. Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has said, “It is a national disgrace that millions of full-time workers are living in poverty and millions more are forced to work two or three jobs just to pay their bills” (Wolf 1). Sanders has said this frequently and is referring to the drastic amount of Americans who are currently struggling, despite already having a job. The issue of whether or not to raise the minimum wage in America has been a widely discussed topic for years. Minimum wage refers to the smallest amount of money a worker can legally be paid in the U.S. It was first signed into law in 1938 by President Franklin Roosevelt in order to keep workers out of poverty and as it stands, the current federal minimum wage in

The minimum wage should be increased depending on each state. Some states are more expensive to live in such as Washington and New York. The minimum wage should barely stay the same or increase in non-expensive areas. There are many different reasons to increase or decrease the minimum wage.

The words “raising minimum wage” typically strikes fear into the average person because they can’t imagine a high schooler making more than 10 dollars an hour. However, they’re missing a crucial key word to this plan – minimum. Yes, that guy that messed up your burger at McDonalds would be making 12 to 15 dollars an hour. But that doesn’t mean that you also will, or that your mother, father, sister, what have you, will be making that same amount. By raising the minimum of something, you also raise everything above it by proxy. Someone who makes 15 dollars an hour will be making up to 23 dollars an hour or more. This change would, of course, happen gradually, so our economy has time to

"I guarantee you if a $15 minimum wage goes across the country you're going to see a job loss like you can not believe.’’ (“Mcdonald’s” 1)A higher minimum wage would create job loss,not gain. Another thing a higher minimum wage would do is destroy the economy.Some people might say the minimum wage would put more money into the working people pockets.Even though a high minimum wage would put more money into the pocket of working people,a high minimum wage would not work because of living costs, the economy and stock market would crash because of the money inflation and places like California have a higher population to support,so it can work for them.

According to supporters, keeping or raising the minimum wage would benefit the economy. When people receive increased wages they are likely to spend it (Learning). The more money that people spend nation wide the better the economy. These people want the minimum wage to be changed to $9 per hour. Raising the minimum wage by 1.75 per hour would bring an employee's annual salary to $18,720 ("Minimum Wage"). That would increase the annual salary by almost $4000. The United States spends Billions paying to help low-income workers. We have all these low-wage workers who are receiving $7.50, $8, or $9 an hour, and because they earn such small wages, the government subsidizes them with billions or tens of billions of dollars of social-welfare spending that comes from the taxpayer.," explains Ron Unz a strong political figure in California (Ornstein). Nationwide savings would be enormous with increased wage. Especially over the last few years groups of people have been protesting for higher wages. Cities and states have been considering or acting upon the raise ("Minimum Wage"). Protests have proven effective in a few communities nationwide. The main goal of the supporters is to raise the minimum wage to at least $9 per

Minimum wage always seems like a topic of conversation in the media. As of now, the current set minimum wage has been claimed as not being a livable wage, therefore there has been an outcry to raise it. However, we cannot turn a blind eye to what that may do to our economy. While raising the minimum wage can have a beneficial effects of providing a livable wage, reducing the need for dependent of poverty-focused government resources, and may even reduce crime, there can be many hidden problems that crop up through the woodwork that can undermine this improvement.