The Living Wage Movement
The living wage movement is an economic reform movement that has become one of the most important public policy issues that has come up within the last 10 years. Although there is no single definition, it is often defined as an hourly salary that allows working families of four to have an income that is above the federal poverty line. This means that the livable wage laws often stipulate that hourly wages should be two to three times above the federal Mininum wage. However, unlike the Mininum wage, the living wage has so far only been enacted on the county and city level. Cities and counties enforce the living wage for companies that have contracts with their respective cities and counties, receive subsidies from their cities or counties, other economic benefits cities and counties provide to companies, and in some cases a livable wage is required for the tourist areas of the particular city. For cities and local governments, the livable wage is perceived as a measure to increase the welfare of the poor. However, like everything in life the livable wage creates its on costs that along with its benefits of increased wage to some low income earners.
Although the livable wage has a good intention of decreasing poverty, it is not consistent with the American spirit of capitalism because the livable wage promotes an economy that does not support business. America has always been a business friendly country. America is a business friendly country because of the American belief in a hands-off approach to commerce and the economy. This is called “laissez-faire” economics; the system allows American companies to make decisions that are best for the firm which in turn increases wealth throughout society because it makes an incentive to increase productivity. It also turns out that this system of capitalistic economics is the most efficient at allocating scarce resources. For example, the opposite of capitalism, a command economy, failed in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union’s economy failed because it tried to allocate resources through central planning, instead of having businesses determine how much of a product to produce. Our system of limited government interference in business has allowed American society to become the wealthiest societies in the world. The lack of government intervention income has become ingrained with t...
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...fort to increase equality and help the poor is laudable. However, the livable wage presents a dangerous precedent in social reform because it is an anti-business policy which is caused from limiting free market capitalism. The livable wage tells companies what they must pay their employees, and the costs of the mandated wages are often many times higher than the federal Mininum wage. This regulation is unnecessary and hurts American business which then hurts the economy as a whole. Instead of a social reform that goes against business, politicians should use reforms that do not have unintended costs on business like lowering the taxes of low income families. Instead of a social reform that goes against the American ethos of supporting business, a policy lowering taxes for would be more efficient in helping low income families. All social policies must be examined carefully for their effects on business because of the importance of businesses in the welfare of the economy.
Works Cited
Economic Analysis of a Living Wage Ordinance. Employment Policies Institute.
20 Sep. 2004
Why the Living Wage is Wrong for Allegheny County. Allegheny Institute.
20 Sep 2004
...degree to make things better for my family now that I am a mother. With the high cost of living, gas and necessities, low wage jobs are no longer able to support families. Many cities are starting to recognize the problems that plague the working poor in their urban spans. Several large cities have passed ordinances that create living wages that exceed the federal minimum wage. This is to help the working poor to earn a better living and aid the local economy in the process. I think this is a good idea, however, this can cause issues with getting local and national employers to remain in the area. The last thing that cities want to do is lose businesses to other areas that do not have local living wage ordinance. Those cities that do have a living wage ordinance give businesses certain tax breaks to aid them in providing a wage that helps the working poor.
Ramisch, Claudia. ?Living on Minimum Wage.? ENGL 1302H Class Presentation, Kentucky Wesleyan College, Owensboro, KY. 13 March 2006.
Poverty and low wages have been a problem ever since money became the only thing that people began to care about. In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich, she presents the question, “How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?” This question is what started her experiment of living like a low wage worker in America. Ehrenreich ends up going to Key West, Portland, and Minneapolis to see how low wage work was dealt with in different states. With this experiment she developed her main argument which was that people working at low wages can’t live life in comfort because of how little they make monthly and that the economic system is to blame.
The minimum wage was, as it should be, a living wage, for working men and women ... who are attempting to provide for their families, feed and clothe their children, heat their homes, [and] pay their mortgages. The cost-of-living inflation adjustment since 1981 would put the minimum wage at $4.79 today, instead of the $4.25 it will reach on April 1, 1991. That is a measure of how far we have failed the test of fairness to the working poor.” (Burkhauser 1)
Should we have the minimum wage rise? Nowadays, many people argue that we should increase the minimum wage because we haven’t had an increase since 2009. People who are living on the minimum wage struggle a lot raising their families. (Webster) Minimum wage means the lowest daily or monthly remuneration that employers may legally pay to workers. On the other hand living wage means the minimum amount that a worker must earn to afford his/her basic necessities, without public or private assistance
Imagine a world where you are working overtime, seven days a week, yet your kids are starving. You can’t get the education you need because you don’t have the time and money to afford it, and you can’t change jobs because this is the only one you can get. Unfortunately, this is the reality for millions of Americans living today. The federal minimum wage is too low to help families, and actually mathematically speaking, too low to survive on. The quality of life for minimum wage families is terribly low, and that is unacceptable. As humans, we should be looking after others and helping the poverty come out of their continuous cycle. Raising the minimum wage would not only help families be able to afford a better quality of life, but help them to afford healthy food, get an adequate education, and invest in the necessary health care they need.
The blogs and articles and essays, some written by economists with advanced degrees, people academically more capable than I am, will continue to deride the raising of wages for the low class worker, or the need for regulation to be put in place. I’m just stating that they’re wrong, and that this essay proves it.
Living in a nice home, a good neighborhood, and having nice cars is what most people think of as part of the American Dream. How are you supposed to get there though? Unless you're going to win the lottery you’re going to have to work in some form. Achieving the American Dream while earning minimum wage may take a person longer but it is still attainable. Through higher education or hard work individuals can achieve a higher standard of living.
A federal minimum wage was first set in 1938. The first minimum wage was just 25 cents an hour in 1938. Can you imagine surviving off of 25 cents an hour? Now just over 70 years later the federal minimum wage is now 7.25. The question at hand is the federal minimum wage enough to meet the minimum requirement for a good, happy and healthy life? Some states and cities say no. While a select few states and cities have mirrored the federal minimum wage of 7.25, some states have placed their state or city/county minimum wage marginally higher than the federal minimum wage. So why would some states prefer to have a higher level than required by the federal minimum wage when some state have decided to match or even go below the federal minimum wage level. The answer to this question lies within each state city and county and how they perceive the cost of living in the presiding area. Minimum wage needs a makeover in America despite some of the negative effects that may come along with it. This paper will explore the reasons behind federal and state minimum wages and why some of them differ among states counties and cities across America.
Over the past decade, politicians have sought to reform the national poverty levels by lobbying for what is frequently referred to as a living wage. Living wages, on the most elementary level, are the absolute minimum a person must make per year or per hour to stay above the federal poverty level. While the number of people that receive living wages is still small, Wood (2002) suggests that this is a trend that is gaining momentum across the United States because it may help reduce employee turnover and increase worker productivity.
There are three types of benefits. These benefits include the following: local economy benefits, business benefits, and workers benefits. The local economy benefits in numerous ways. A few of these benefits are reduced poverty rates, less reliance on social services, increase in consumer spending, and increase in business support. The business benefits include the following: turnover rates, improved quality of service, and lowered administrative costs. Workers benefit from the Living Wage Movement, because they tend to have an increased job satisfaction, reduced from poverty, and they also have an increase in education and health care. Nearly all living wage apply to businesses that receive contracts from the government. According to the Census, most low-wage workers are, in fact, adults over the age of 20. These workers that are benefiting are majority women and
...elp the working middle class from falling into poverty or to help the working poor rise out of poverty. Furthermore the working poor themselves lack the knowledge and power to demand reform. David Shipler says it best when he writes, “Relief will come, if at all, in an amalgam that recognizes both the society’s obligation through government and business, and the individual’s obligation through labor and family —and the commitment of both society and individual.” (Shipler 5786-5788) It is time for America to open its eyes and see the invisible working poor.
There is an idea out there that an employer should be responsible for making sure that their employees are making a living wage. The reason that this is a burning issue for me is because a living wage is subjective. What is a living wage for me may not be what another person considers a living wage. I will look into some of the fallacies of the argument that employers are responsible and explain where I think they are wrong. In the aspect of my life I had to make the decision to come back to school and lose out on the second household income for my family of 3. During the process of making this decision things had to be sacrificed, no more vacations, no more going out to nice expensive restaurants, taking road trips across state lines without lots of planning. Those type of things were included in my “living wage” when my family had 2 incomes.
The gap in wealth between the rich and the poor continues to grow larger, as productivity increases but wages remain the same. There were changes in the tax structure that gave the wealthy tax breaks, such as only taxing for social security within the first $113,700 of income in a year. For CEOs this tax was paid off almost immediately. Free trade treaties broke barriers to trade and resulted in outsourcing and lower wages for workers. In “Job on the Line” by William Adler, a worker named Mollie James lost her job when the factory moved to Mexico. “The job in which Mollie James once took great pride, the job that both fostered and repaid her loyalty by enabling her to rise above humble beginnings and provide for her family – that job does not now pay Balbina Duque a wage sufficient to live on” (489). When Balbina started working she was only making 65 cents an hour. Another huge issue lies in the minimum wage. In 2007, the minimum wage was only 51% of the living wage in America. How can a person live 51% of a life? Especially when cuts were being made in anti-poverty and welfare programs that were intended to get people on their feet. Now, it seems that the system keeps people down, as they try to earn more but their benefits are taken away faster than they can earn. Even when workers tried to get together to help themselves they were thrown
The author neglects the fact that large corporations do not pay the majority of minimum wage earners, small businesses do (Bartlett, 2004). The author of A Living Wage also suggested the creation of a Living Wage Board in each city (2014). The responsibility of this board would include examining the businesses’ income, and wealth. If this board decided that the business could increase wages, it would have the power to force that business to do so. This would increase the responsibility of managers to become the “middle-man” to ensure that the goals of the company are able to support the increase in wages as the Living Wage Board sees fit. However, there is a chance for a communication microbarrier. The Living Wage Board could see the increased revenue of a company and their only perception is to increase the labor rate. The