The Minimum Wage is a Death Sentence In our modern day economy over four million americans are paid the federal minimum wage of seven dollars and twenty-five cents. People living on the federal minimum wage can attest to the fact that it is not really living, it is more a game of surviving. While the top twenty percent of americans hold over eighty-five percent of wealth the remaining eighty percent of us are left with only fifteen percent of the wealth to fight for. It is not fair for there to be a person spending lavishly while there is another struggling to live. The minimum wage should be raised to fifteen dollars an hour, because it clears people’s worries of financial instability, creates a larger middle class, and makes the minimum …show more content…
That seems reasonable considering that the economic function of a country is a very fragile thing to mess with. Completely changing the economic dynamic could very well be lethal to the country. Ultimately the real goal is to raise the minimum wage to a point where everyone is living comfortably with no fear of financial instability. This could come into action by gradually closing the gaps between the social classes. To ease the fear of a decimated economy, it would be completely acceptable to gradually increase the minimum wage over the course of three- five years from seven dollars and twenty five cents to fifteen dollars. By doing this the American economy would not be suffering such a significant loss all at once, but would gradually change to be able to heal in between each …show more content…
As Robert Reich says in his novel Save Capitalism “ For three decades after World War II, America created the largest middle class the world had ever seen. During those years the earnings of the typical American worker doubled, just as the size of the American economy doubled,”(20). That is an amazing statistic, because when the economy doubled so did the average income, as it should. Then Reich continues to discuss what our modern day economy has evolved to “Over the last thirty years, by contrast, the size of the economy doubled again but the earnings of the typical American went nowhere,”(21). Now that does not seem to add up. If the economy doubled again and the peoples’ earnings did not go up, than where did that money go? The answer is simple, the money is in the hands of that twenty percent of people who own eighty-five percent of the assets. The solution is simple, it would be logical to try and imitate the economic balance from the time period after World War II to recreate the greater percentage of people living in the middle
Right now,according to Victoria Smith,over 40 million people are living in poverty. This could be changed if they were able to get enough money from their jobs, but the minimum wage isn’t high enough right now. Even if only by a little, if minimum wage were raised, the amount of people living in poverty could be reduced by at least 5 million according to Mike Konczal . Originally, the minimum wage was at only .25 cents an hour. Due to causes such as inflation, this wage has been raised to meet the current standard. Although interest in raising the wage has gone away until recently. Minimum wage should be increased because it would increase job growth and economic activity,it would reduce government spending on welfare, and reduce poverty.
The United States economy is still soft and prone to falling apart, and there is a debate that is on going as to whether the minimum wage should be increased or decreased. The minimum wage is a well known price floor, and that is what we need for our economy right now . I personally believe that we should not increase the minimum wage, but decrease it instead. I would rather have the minimum wage lowered than increased because that will only lead to negative side effects. For example, if the minimum wage is increased then the government will need to mint more money and the effect of minting more money is inflation. This will cause the American dollar to go down and worsen the economy even more. Another thought is that what the United States needs now are jobs. If the minimum wage is increased then existing jobs will want their workers to have more experience and for those people that are in dire need to a job will have a lower chance of getting the job because they
“When we talk about the kind of folks whose lives will be made better by raising the minimum wage, we 're not talking about a couple teenagers earning extra spending money to supplement their allowance. We 're talking about providers and breadwinners. Working Americans with bills to pay and mouths to feed” (Perez 2015). Minimum wage is a problem to America because some people cannot live off it and some people say businesses should not pay extra. Should the minimum wage be raised ? “A native of Detroit, Cecil Euseary, 52, moved to Holland, Michigan in 2007, after his mother died — he had to get out of town. He moved back to Detroit in 2014.He works at Burger King working minimum wage there. He can only get about 25 hours of work per week at Burger King. Cecil has been active in the "D15" campaign to increase the minimum wage in Detroit to $15 per hour. He once met with U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez, when he was visiting Detroit. "It 's hard. If it weren 't for my god mom — this is her house; I get a room upstairs — if it weren 't for her, I don 't know what," Cecil says. "I 'd probably be out on the street, in a shelter." (Euseary 2014). The minimum wage should be raised from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour because if you raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour it would lift people out of poverty, it would increase the federal purchasing power and not as many families struggling to make ends meet. Here’s another story, Enriqueta works as a housekeeper for minimum wage in the
This hot debated topic about how minimum wage should be increased dates back to where history began. Most people today forget the painstaking, agonizing labor that people had to go through. Think about this for a moment, a world full of men, women, and children working every day 90 plus hours per week and getting less. In 1915, “woman was paid $6.00 a week; she bought her lunch for 15 cents while her struggling co-worker got by on 6 cents.” (http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2015/01/02/a-glimpse-at-your-expenses-100-years-ago) This shows these people worked very hard for little money without complaining about their expenses.
When people receive more money from a job and uses it to buy and pay for necessities, more money will be in circulation. More money in circulation will help to even out other payments and job owners will not be worried about paying workers. More money in the economy will also raise income. Raising the minimum wage might hurt the consumers as well, but it will be worth it in the long run since it might help more people improve their financial situation. It also makes more sense to raise the minimum wage because more than half of the fifty states have already raised their minimum wage higher than the federal limit (“Minimum Wage”). If raising it works for other states already, why not raise it higher for the whole
In 1938, the Federal Government established a minimum wage through the Fair Labor Standards Act, during the Great Depression. Its stated purpose was to keep American workers out of poverty and increase consumer purchasing power to help stimulate the economy. President Franklin Roosevelt, understood that the minimum wage should be a living wage, he stated “by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of a decent living.” Today, the Minimum wage is critical for ensuring that hard work is rewarded with fair pay. However, its value has eroded substantially, factors such as inflation and rising prices are decreasing its purchasing power, and the minimum wage is no longer what it used to be, despite decades of economic growth. Today, a family can no longer live on minimum wage; and a single person working full time on minimum wage is barely above the poverty line. When President Obama gave his 2013 State of the Union address, he advocated raising minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10-yet a year later, this still hasn’t happened. For many working Americans a higher minimum wage will make the difference between living in poverty or not, furthermore it provides a stepping stone into the middle class for many families. If the minimum wage is increased to equal a current living wage, the income inequality gap will decrease and the quality of life for those living on minimum wage salaries will increase,
First of all, while proponents believe that it would bring families out of poverty, opponents say it would actually end up decreasing jobs and leaving many American’s impoverished. According to The congressional Budget Office, if the minimum wage is changed to the ideal amount of $10.10, it would result in a loss of 500,000 jobs. By increasing wages companies would call upon
In todays back and forth economy it has become increasingly more difficult for a person to support a family, much less themselves, solely on the income from a minimum wage job. With federal minimum wage sitting just over seven dollars an hour, those tasked with budgeting these kind of meager earnings have begun to question why they dont deserve more pay. Some states have their own laws with discretion over minimum wage pay, and 29 states and DC all currently have minimum wage standards higher than the federal standard, but not necessarily by much. Those working labor jobs, where minimum wage is the compensation they receive for their time and energy, are struggling to afford such basic necessities as housing and food, even when they work
In 2013, there was three point three million people who were getting paid at an hourly rate of seven dollars and twenty five cents. That is barely enough to afford rent these days in our housing market if there is just one income coming through a home. People around the world have been protesting to raise the minimum wage pay. Most are for it, and most are against it. It’s a fifty-fifty problem in America. If minimum wage went up to ten point ten dollars an hour, it would raise about nine hundred thousand people out of poverty who work
Millions of Americans live in poverty, unable to find high paying jobs to support themselves and their families. Common belief persists that paying a higher minimum wage would aid in lifting people out of poverty by giving those with low paying jobs a higher income, however the evidence suggests otherwise. As the 2016 race for the White House heats up, the minimum wage battle stands at the forefront of every economic discussion. The rhetoric between candidates within and across party lines intensifies by the day. While the debate over whether or not to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25/hour to $15/hour rages on, one side continues to stand out from the other.
The most prevalent and steadfast myth surrounding the raising of the federal minimum wage is that it will doom the economy. This might seem logical at first, but just think about it for a second. Why do minimum wage employees need more cash? The answer is simple: To spend it, to buy the things that they and their families need to survive. “Most minimum wage workers need this income to make ends meet and spend it quickly, boosting the economy. Research indicates that for every $1 added to the minimum wage, low-wage worker households spent an additional $2,800 the following year” (Fair). Furthermore, EPI estimates that if the federal minimum wage were raised to $10.10 an hour, it would result in over
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.
In the United States, the federal government maintains a national minimum wage to protect the purchasing power of ordinary workers. It seems good that the government protects your purchasing power by adjusting the minimum wage with respect to the inflation rate. Its economic side effects are so obvious that make this policy a bad one because it creates more unemployment, makes employers cut fringe benefits and is inefficient.
At the present time, the current minimum wage is not prominent enough to allow employees to afford their basic everyday essentials. According to an anonymous advocate for raising the minimum wage, "66% of US workers earning less than $10 an hour report that they 'just meet' or 'don't even have enough to meet' their basic living expenses"' ("Website: Minimum Wage – ProCon" 36) One can infer from this piece of evidence, that a whopping more than half of the US employees suffer from the poor earning in jobs. This disregard for worker's life necessities is
Everyone loves making money- that’s how we survive our world. Without it, none of us are going very far, and we all know it. In today’s time, it is hard to actually get out there in the workforce and be successful when your income limits what you can do. You might not be able to afford to go to college, or to move to where you have always wanted to live. Raising minimum wage will benefit above forty-one million people in the United States. That is about thirty percent of the whole United States. Thirty percent does not seem like a large number by itself, for the United States is a very large country. According to “Population,” there are well over three hundred thirty three million people currently residing in the United States. This fact may make you wean away from wanting minimum wage to be raised because it seems barely significant- that it will make almost no difference at all. However, when it is a factor in the lives of people, something that might improve their lives immensely and help the economy as a whole, it is actually very significant. States like Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, and Maine are starting to realize this as well, as they have raised their minimum wage up to twelve dollars an hour. I firmly believe that minimum wage should be raised to fifteen dollars an hour. Raising minimum wage is necessary due to the facts that it would give low income workers the chance to dig their way out of poverty, it would majorly help