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Essay about Should the Minimum Wage Be Increased?

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If you have ever worked for minimum wage, I am sure you have felt as if your time was worthless. After taxes you brought home next to nothing, no matter how often you worked. That's at least how I felt when I worked for minimum wage. In high school I had nothing to pay for but a cell phone. I worked for minimum wage and it seemed like I barely could afford it. I had basically no bills and I worked around twenty hours a week, and it seemed like I couldn't save any money. I always wondered how my coworkers, who were adults, who had real things to pay for pulled it off. After reading Barbara Ehrenrech's Nickel and Dimed it really made me wonder if the current minimum wage is really high enough. …show more content…

Unfortunately the minimum wage is only $5.15/ hour while, "The living wage In 2000, amounted to $17,050 a year for a family of four, or $8.20 per hour for a full-time, year round worker." Obviously the minimum wage is not high enough to be considered the living wage. Which led me to believe that someone could not live off of the current minimum wage. This didn't make sense to me because according to the International Labor Organization one of the criteria for minimum wage calculation is the cost of living.
This made me wonder why minimum wage jobs exist? And what kinds of people are taking these jobs. Well, when I hear the phrase minimum wage job the first occupation that pops into my mind is working at a fast food restaurant flipping burgers. That doesn't seem like an intellectually involved job. And when you look at a typical minimum wage job setting such as a fast food restaurant you typically see high school students, high school dropouts, and mentally challenged people filling these job slots. The common theme would have to be a lack of education. And just because someone is uneducated does not mean

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