My essay is about the minimum wage in America and how people every day suffer to get day by day with the minimum wage they get paid. Even if they have two minimum wage jobs they still can’t support their family. I also talk about why they should raise the minimum wage to at least ten dollars and I will compare the minimum wage between Michigan and other states. The history of minimum wage for 1938 to the 2013 and how it have changed dramatically throughout the years. Many people with minimum wage jobs are usually on food stamps which helps them with some of the stress of getting paid minimum wage. But just the fact of getting paid 7.25 makes it hard for them to have a good life where they can buy new clothes and still have money left. Minimum wage was actually for the under age kids but the company’s toke advantage of it and started to give everybody minimum wage. Many states have minimum wage but Michigan is one of the lowest, and the highest paying minimum wage state is California with the minimum wage of $10.55. McDonald’s is the number one paying minimum wage Company in America. The minimum wage was created in 1938 as part of the fair labor standards Act (FLSA) it was .25 cent back then, then it was raised to $7.25 by July 2009. When people think of minimum wage they only think about teenagers working summer jobs or just for pocket money but in reality everybody from every age is getting minimum wage no matter how many kids you have or how many bills you have. People struggle every day to pay their bills and to put food on the table because they don’t get paid enough. My friend works at McDonalds for 2 years and now he makes $8.00 he says ‘’ I barely get by the week and I usually still have to ask my parents for extra money f... ... middle of paper ... ...people lose their jobs then they are doing something good for them and their kids after them. Like I say there isn’t a war won without people gone. I personally would protect to because I know I’m doing something for me and for my kids when they grow older and have a job and they will at least get a good amount of money in the end of every week. I think many of the jobs that pay minimum wage are usually the hard ones which that make people stress out and quit which can create a bad name for the company. Works Cited Newspaper article Jeff karoub, published September-2-2013, (grbj.com) ‘’workers rally for increase in Michigan minimum wage’’ Friend interview Ali Ahemd, 20, works at McDonald’s as a supervisor Mcdonalds tells how to spend your money Timothy B. lee, published july-16, ‘’That McDonald’s budget people are making fun of isn’t cruel. It’s realistic’’.
The United States minimum wage is not indexed to inflation. Due to this fact, the purchasing power of minimum wage falls as the price of consumer goods increases. The current hourly minimum wage is set at $7.25, however many states do pay above this rate. One example of this is in Michigan, the current hourly minimum wage is $7.40. The last time a change occurred to raise minimum wage was in 2009. President Obama has put out a proposal that is designed to raise the federally required hourly minimum wage to $10.10 in 2015. The public opinion of this proposal is all over the board ranging from a positive outlook to a negative one. Some of the negative remarks are that it would dampen the economy and shrink the hiring done by small businesses. “The Household Survival Budget for the average New Jersey family of four is $58,500 and for a single adult is $25,368 in 2010. These numbers highl...
Understanding the basic concept of minimum wage is important for every single individual. We all live in this world together and it is obvious that there is an order. In order to continue our lives and afford our basic needs, we all need to work and gain wealth. As the old adage says ‘‘There ain’t a such a thing as a free lunch.’’ We need to give up on something that we like to get something else that we like. That’s why, every single individual in the society face trade-offs. However, people have different status. Some people work as employees and some work as employers. In that case of minimum wage the trade off is between employees and employers. Employees work for employers in order to gain money and afford their minimal living expenses whereas employers give up on their money and pay for employees because employers take care of their need of labor. Employers pay for their workers who we call employees and employees gain hourly money. The calculated minimum money that they gain in an hour base called minimum wages. Besides, there is this cycle that everyone actually works
This article gives you a yes and no opinion on whether or not the F...
Before other states jump on the $15 minimum-wage bandwagon, they might want to look at what's happening in Massachusetts — one of two states with a $10-an-hour minimum wage. Massachusetts increased the minimum wage from $8 to $9 at the start of 2015 and to $10 on the first day of 2016. The state is now mired in its longest stretch of net job losses since the recession, Labor Department data show. Minimum wage is the assured lowest amount of pay per hour that an employee can receive and it’s purpose is to make certain that employers are paying their workers fairly. The first minimum wage was created by Congress in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act; it was twenty-five cents an hour. Since then, it has varied over the years, the highest being in 1968, but today it stands at $7.25 (Sherk). At the moment, Congress is contemplating the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013, which would, over two years, raise the minimum wage to $10.10 (GovTrack). However, raising the minimum wage is a bad idea because a majority of minimum wage jobs belong to teenagers who will not stay in the job very long and do not need to support a family, raising minimum wage will lessen the availability of jobs for the poor, and it is pointless since many of the impoverished that the raising of the minimum wage is targeted to help, will not be able to benefit.
"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."
Minimum wage is a difficult number to decide on because it affects different income earning citizens in different ways. According to Principles of Microeconomics, by N. Gregory Mankiw, minimum wage is a law that establishes the lowest price for labor that and employer may pay (Mankiw 6-1b). Currently, the minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 per hour. For many years politicians and citizens have argued on what should be the minimum wage that would benefit the economy and society in general. A minimum wage was first established in 1938 to increase the standard of living of lower class workers. To discuss what is better for the country and its citizens, people have to understand what is a minimum wage and what are its effects.
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.
The minimum wage today has a lot of issues; some people say it is not enough to live comfortably. Many agree that there needs to be an increase in minimum wages and by doing that it can help with our issues of poverty. Statistics show that a worker who is full time and earning minimum wage makes only $15,080 a year, which is under the federal poverty line for a family of two. (Gitis, 2013) The problem with that is $15,080 is not a sufficient amount that a person can live and grow on. “A family of two can consist of a mother and son or daughter, father and son or ...
Because the cost of living has sky rocketed, it has become almost impossible to raise a family on a minimum wage job. A person living on his or her own cannot survive on minimum wage job either. Their living expense would just be too much. The earnings of minimum wage workers are crucial to their families well being. Evidence from 2013 and 2014 minimum wage increase shows that an average minimum wage worker brings home more than half of his or her family's weekly earnings. In 2013 one million single mothers with children under 18 would have benefited from a minimum wage increase to $10.
Currently, in the United States, the federal minimum wage has been $7.25 for the past six years; however, in 1938 when it first became a law, it was only $0.25. In the United States the federal minimum wage has been raised 22 times since 1938 by a significant amount due to changes in the economy. Minimum wage was created to help America in poverty and consumer power purchasing, but studies have shown that minimum wage increases do not reduce poverty. By increasing the minimum wage, it “will lift some families out of poverty, while other low-skilled workers may lose their jobs, which reduces their income and drops their families into poverty” (Wilson 4). When increasing minimum wage low-skilled, workers living in poor families,
They may argue that jobs and benefits could be cut and could reduce desire for career advancement, but they are wrong. The Congressional Budget Office projected that a minimum wage increase from $7.25 to $10.10 would result in a loss of 500,000 jobs. In a survey of 1,213 businesses and human resources professionals, 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. People get laid off from jobs every day due to money budgets, lack of professionalism, or illegal actions. Companies do what’s best for their investment regardless, if minimum wage goes up or not. Whether they were to lay off people there will be extra workload divided among the employees left, which is more than they are getting paid for. That could lead to the company having to pay their employees
The definition of Minimum Wage is “an amount of money that is the least amount of money per hour that workers must be paid according to the law” (Minimum wage). Minimum wage, like other laws, are used to keep the economy in line. Minimum wage laws were invented in Australia and New Zealand with the purpose of guaranteeing a minimum standard of living for unskilled workers. (Linda Gorman) Minimum wage puts a price on the services one offers. Many different principles can be used to explain Minimum wage and explore the different aspects of it. Including what minimum wage does for our economy and the current status of it.
Today the federal minimum wage is $5.15, but should be about $8.50 if Congress had adjusted it for inflation over the past 35 years. While $5.15 may not seen that bad, when factoring in such variables as sky rocketing gas prices, budgets can get pretty tight. David Shepard, a sophomore at Wayne State University, worked at a Meijer Retail and Grocery Superstore for over two years while in high school. At the time Shepard lived with his parents and didn’t have to worry about paying rent or buying groceries, all that he had to pay for was filling up his gas tank and paying for his car insurance. Shepard recalled, “It was all I could do to pay for the basics like gas and bill’s, I barely had any money to have fun on the weekends”. This is only an example of a high school student that can nearly slip by on minimum wage with only a few expenses. There are 1.8 million people in America with children under the age of 18 that would benefit from an increase in minimum wage (Minimum).
The most popular reason for increasing the minimum wage is that it will give more money to those who are below the poverty line. The 2013 Congressional Research Service report states, “A single parent with two children who works full time at the current minimum wage would be earning around $15,000 and living at 76 percent of the federal poverty level. If the federal minimum wage was raised from the current $7.25 to $9.00 an hour, the same family would be at 94 percent of the poverty line” (Mejeur). It is also believed that an increase in minimum wage will spark economic growth. The Economic Policy Institute claims $2.85 increase to the current wage amount would bring around $22.1 billion net into the current economy and create around 85,000 new jobs over a three year period (Should the Federal Minimum Wage Be Increased?). Finally, the increase would greatly reduce government welfare spending. With an increase in wages to lower class workers, they would be less dependent on government benefits. According to the Center for American Progress, “Our results imply that the effects of the Harkin-Miller proposal on wage increases would reduce SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] enrollments by between 7.5 percent and 8.7 percent (3.1 million to 3.6 million persons). The total anticipated annual decrease in program expenditures is nearly $4.6 billion, or about 6 percent of current SNAP program expenditures”
Many critics claim that that raising minimum wage increases unemployment, especially for unskilled workers, and harms small businesses, including grocery stores and restaurants. The argument declares that companies such as these rely mostly on unskilled workers for labor, and if the minimum wage increases, then their profits and, therefore, hiring would decline, creating a...