The Minimum Wage Of 22 Swiss Francs

With the presidential elections right around the corner policy on minimum wage has come up for debate once again. William Hoar from The New American argues in his article “Misguided minimum wage mandate” that raising the minimum wage will only result in loss of jobs. According to the editorial board at USA Today, “ inflation adjusted income of the top 1 percent has grown by 58 percent and the remaining 99 percent has only grown by 6.4 percent”. They then state that a raise to 15 dollars an hour only comes out to an annual income of 30,000 a year. It is true that the majority of the minimum wage workforce is from ages 18 to 25 but considering the fact that that age group are the people attending college and paying off student loans, then it should be expected that they are unhappy with such a low salary. At the minimum wage of 7.25 that comes out to 1200 dollars per month for the cost of living. Therefore raising the minimum wage will not only increase morale, it will also reduce rates of poverty.

In the United States of America, federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. This is an issue, nation wide because the price of living is increasing, while the pay has not. Teenagers are not the only people that are getting paid this amount, adults that are considered the “bread winners” are too, and struggling with it. Supposing that the living wage was increased, the cost of living would be more manageable, and less stressful for many. Hundreds of thousands of people are living in poverty, since they are making the bare minimum and unable to support themselves or their family. If federal minimum wage was increased significantly, then people working forty hours per week would be well above the poverty line, and able to support themselves, easily.

In the United States, the cost of living for a single adult with no children is an average of $28,474 every year (Career Trends, screen 1). This seems like a relatively low number, until the amount of people living together increases. A family of six, two adults and four children, rises to an annual cost of $82,900 (Career Trends, screen1). If an adult were to work full-time at minimum wage, they would only be getting $15,080 per year from their employer (University of California, screen 1). This amount of money is still about $14,000 short of how much it costs a single adult to live. In recent discussions of minimum wage, many people argue about whether it should be raised or not. Although the intentions to raise it are good, the outcome

The selling point that has brought people to the United States for centuries is the American dream: Prosperity, Luxury, Opportunity, and so on. Unfortunately for many, this dream has been squandered by the receding economy of an indebted country. As inflation runs rampant, the value of the U.S. dollar decreases, lowering the value of household and business incomes. This economic recession has led many, especially those who only earn the minimum wage, to poverty. According to the United States Department of Labor, “The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour” (“Wage and Hour Division”). Some people believe that a solution to this problem is to raise the minimum wage; however, doing so would ultimately result in a negative effect on the

The controversy over what to establish as the official minimum wage in the United States has been debated and argued over for many years. Due to inflation, the gradual increase of pricings due to a saturation of printed currency, the minimum wage for workers has to be increased in order to compensate for the ever-fluctuating value of the U.S. Dollar. Many today are rising to the conclusion that a minimum wage of fifteen dollars an hour is necessary. This motion is designed to keep those who have minimum wage income out of poverty and to increase the amount of money in the consumer’s pocket overall. However, this particular increase in minimum wage will lead to the inevitable downfall of the United States’ economy and be a catastrophe for the working class.

As most of you know, life is hard, actually extremely hard. As people of America each and every one of us has some sort of image of what we view “the American dream” as. One of which, is the amount of minimum wage that a person at McDonalds or even Kroger is making. This is a subject that has most Americans have been on edge about. Currently, our minimum wage is 7.25$. In the eyes of a newly employed sixteen year old having the opportunity to make his or her own money is greater than making no money at all. The sixteen year old is a newly worker, any money that is handed to

Although many Americans are aware that our country suffers severely in the category of poverty, minimum wage is not factor that many turn to think as a fault. They claim to know about minimum wage; however, it is merely a blank claim because they have neither experienced the hardship under a cap of expenses nor does the issue affect them. In fact, this issue is detrimental to our country as we are slowly falling into unemployment and homelessness. In Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, she states that minimum wage had fallen back comparing to the living cost in the 1900s; however, this statement is still true today. Enrenreich is a reliable reporter who travels to three different cities with contrasting backgrounds. She tried to experience the life of a minimum wage worker in order to accurately report the inside scoop of a life that most Americans do not know to exist. As a supporter of her claim after realizing the way our country has been living, I too believe that minimum wage does not fulfill its purpose and should be raised, as it does not serve enough to cover even the essential expenses.

Peebles goes on to state that he operates on very thin margins, so every time the minimum wage increases, he has to pass it on to his customers. “I realize it’s hard for somebody to live on minimum wage,” he said. But the minimum wage jobs are good for some segments of the work force, including high school and college students and stay-at-home moms looking for extra income (qtd. in Beyerlein and McCall). This may be true for a small segment of workers, but a parent earning minimum wage does not make enough to stay out of poverty. The minimum wage jobs pay such meager wages, it is impossible to save even a couple hundred dollars to help make the transition to a better paying job

Many fast food workers and minimum wage employees have been protesting recently, in hopes of increasing the federal minimum wage. States such as Seattle, that have already increased the minimum wage to $15 per hour, and California, that has approved a bill that will change the minimum wage to $13 per hour in 2017, have already jumped on board with the movement. President Obama and many other protesters around the country who are fighting for the increase in the minimum wage believe that the raise will decrease poverty among Americans and provide a stable income to support a family, or serve as a livable wage (Lee). Instead of creating a positive impact on those in need, increasing the minimum wage will affect the lives of lower-income, lower-skilled workers in a negative way. According to conventional economic analysis, employment levels for lower-income workers in jobs such as fast food, or any job that pays minimum wage, have steadily decreased with the rises in the wage (“Effects of Raising”). While it will negatively affect the lower-income workers, the other half of Americans who work for higher wages and are not in poverty, will have increased incomes (“Effects of Raising”). Raising the wage will not produce the desired outcome and will consequently make the situation worse. Also, these types of jobs are not meant to be supporting families or be a livable wage. These jobs are stepping stones for teens and young adult workers to gain

The concept of minimum wage has been a huge issue among Americans and has really become a large discussion point among a lot of the political debates as well as the Internet recently. According to the United States Department of Labor, “The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. Many states also have minimum wage laws. Some state laws provide greater employee protections; employers must comply with both”. Regardless of the constant debates that occur on whether or not minimum wage should be a livable wage or merely a segway job for teenagers, a majority of these workers are older than 25 years old. As reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2014, of the 77,207, 61,883 of them are 25 years of age are

Years ago in the late 1960s, a full-time worker earning the minimum wage could lift a family of three out of poverty (Vallas & Boteach, 2014). The rise of the cost for daily living over the years including groceries, medical bills, and raising children makes it impossible for a family to live off a minimum wage salary. “Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour and indexing it to inflation—as President Barack Obama and several members of Congress have called for—would lift more than 4 million Americans out of poverty” (Vallas & Boteach, 2014). This would extremely benefit the American people and the

In 1938, The United States enacted a minimum wage law under the Fair Labor Standards Act that made employers pay their workers at least twenty-five cents. The law was intended to reduce the amount of Americans living in poverty and keep track of unjust business practices. Still to this day, we Americans argue over the controversy due to low minimum wage and high inflation rates. The deregulation of business and the inconsistent government policies have led to an alarming problem, the minimum wage isn’t enough for Americans to live off of nor is it doing its original purpose by getting citizens out of poverty.

The minimum wage is low compared to our average working American. The Economic Policy Institute states, “Today, the federal minimum wage is equal to roughly 36 percent of the median wage. This means that someone working at or near the minimum wage is much farther away from a middle class job than similar workers a generation ago” (PAR. 5). In addition, multiple people say that minimum wage jobs are for young people entering the job force but that is not the case. “The average age of workers that would get a raise from a minimum wage increase to $12 is 35 years old and the vast majority (90%) are 20 or older” (“The Impact” PAR. 5). Many of these individuals work in the service industry too. 2.5 million minimum wage workers from 30 years old and younger work in restaurants or food-service industries that pay minimum wage. (DeSilver PAR. 8). It is also becoming more common to have older individuals work in the service industry because it is easier to find a job that pays minimum wage. Backing that statement up further is three-quarters of the 5.5 million workers in 2013 who earned minimum wage were over 20 years old and two-fifths of those workers were working full time. (Nabeel PAR. 25). Raising the minimum wage to $12 would restore the national wage floor. It would do this by bringing low-wage workers closer to the middle-class, which would ultimately reduce the gap between

The primary reason for many non-politically driven arguments for a hike in minimum wage has been the cost of living increases which have marched upwards over the years, meaning the price of survival in the United States has been increasing steadily over the years. However, many of those pushing for an increase in minimum wage have failed to take into account that those who work at minimum wage are not usually the same ones who are working for just their survival; they are people who have been unlucky enough in their lives to be forced into supporting medical care or are people who are supporting families as a single parent. The people who live on minimum wage are typically the ones who need the most. According to Eric Schlosser’s book Fast

This includes jobs as fast food workers, grocery cashiers, lifeguards and other jobs alike. All of these jobs are not meant to build your life off. These are jobs for high school students and college students to work while in school. These jobs where never meant to make a life off of and definitely not meant to sustain a family. In a recent study, it was found that if the minimum wage were raised to $15 dollars and hour, the price of a McDonalds Big Mac would rise from $3.99 to $4.17, at 17-cent increase. It was also found that to make up for the higher cost of employment salary that food sizes would shrink from 12 to 70 percent (Covert 1). The thought of minimum wage being raised to $15 an hour sounds great but there are a lot of behind the scene shrinkages or raises that have to be made in order to compensate the