Benefits Of Raising The Minimum Wage

Raising The Minimum Wage There has always been controversy about raising or lowering the minimum wage. The minimum wage should be raised. Raising the minimum wage has the benefits of raising family incomes, may get the economy back on track and allows families to pay their debts; however lowering the minimum wage has a downside, because families don't have enough money, it has not kept pace with cost of living and families earning minimum wage still need government assistance to survive. The first benefit of raising the minimum wage is that it will raise family incomes. Raising the minimum wage will really help many families financially (Averback 1).

This also means more taxes can be claimed back at tax time. Lower minimum wage means that there is less time for employee’s families and self-time, because they will have to work more overtime just to get that extra money on their paychecks. Having little family time due to working day in and day out, could cause families to fight and end up splitting. All-in-all raising minimum wage will provide happy employees, because they will be able to have more family time. No overtime would have to be worked unless they absolutely wanted to work more.

According to The California department of industrial relations the California minimum wage has been steadily increasing since 1918. It has gone from .21 cents to 10 dollars an hour. Increasing the minimum-wage does many things; it stimulates the economy, allows people to live in better conditions, and helps level out the problem of income inequality. The minimum wage also helps in indirect ways. The raising of minimum wage achieves a domino effect, it allows for new job growth since people have more wants, it also helps to reduce crime, people that are able to pay their bills with what they have and don’t need to go and steal just to feed their families.

The national minimum wage in the United States is $7.25. Employees and lawmakers feel that increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 will help boost the economy. The increase of minimum wage will bring people out of poverty and will be able to stimulate the economy by buying more items. This will help the nation pay back more debt and bring in more revenue for the country. Besides a positive effect with the nation as a whole, it will help workers financially.

The problem is increasing numbers of workers and their families live in poverty.Which Pathe stated “with a higher wage, and these compensatory measures in place, employment won’t decline, but it will grow more slowly because of decreased sale volume, at least for the first few years the new wage is implemented” (Pathe). A better way of raising the minimum wage without killing jobs is they could cut wages for higher-paid workers. Which would help the low wage workers at the expense of better paid workers. Also companies can raise their prices in response. when increasing the minimum wage with businesses it boost consumer demand, growing our economy and helping communities thrive.Bernstein argues that “It estimates that the increase in the wage would reduce employment by about 500,000, and 8 million low wage workers would be benefited from the change” (Bernstein).

A second advantage is that it would really help the poor: if it were raised to 9$ an hour, what Obama has offered, millions would be lifted out of poverty. Raising the minimum wage would also help the inequality between men and women, and those who are considered to be “minorities”: it can also be viewed from the racial injustice perspective: many people of color would be lifted out of poverty with a higher minimum wage, which would consist of most of people in poverty; “colored folks” were more likely to work minimum wage jobs. Most Americans support the raise, most Democrats, notably Obama himself, and even quite a few Republicans. Most low-wage workers work for large companies, which have recovered almost fully from the recession and are doing quite well, despite previous assumptions that they cannot properly fund their employees. Something of this sort was already proposed in history: Franklin Roosevelt, during the Great Depression, mentioned it so that it could stimulate the economy in a way that would be supremely beneficial.

Some experts say that, raising minimum wages can improve the life style of those employees who are under the poverty line. They believe that by raising the minimum wages net income of the working class will increase and helps to keep the financial balance in between the management level and the operational level employee. In contrast, there are other people who think that by rising the minimum wages can have negative effect is country’s economy since company can hire low number of staff to keep expenses low, resulting massive unemployment population in the country. Some economist says that with their research they have found that actually increasing minimum wages may not have the positive impact in country’s economy, and might not have positive impact on its people either. According to them, the quantity of labor demanded increases as the price of labor falls.

An increase in labor costs would be met with higher consumer prices because companies would have to offset the upturn in wages. If an employer is forced to pay their workers an additional 10%, the employer will have to raise the price of their goods or services by 10% to recoup the cost. Many small businesses operate on razor thin profit margins and having to pay additional wage costs could mean the end for many of these small

The government needs to raise the minimum wage as it raises the income of people, which saves the taxpayers money and allows it to be used on things such as schools and fixing roads. Also, increasing the minimum wage creates wage growth, which helps grow the GDP, as people have more disposable income. Lastly, increasing the minimum wage reduces the wage gap between the CEOs and working class, with the purpose of distributing more of the profits to the working class to help pay for health care and education. In today’s world of capitalism, there should be a cap on how much one can make in a year in order to help the working class, who ultimately help keep the companies in business.

There are a couple explanations making a connection between increasing the minimum wage will create job opportunities in the united states. The key is that “poor and middle class families tend to spend more of their income than the wealthy, since they 're often struggling to meet basic needs” (Jordan Weissmann n.pag). So by taking money from businesses and giving it to their worst paid employees, raising the minimum wage might, in theory, increase consumer spending,which in turn boosts the economy and creates more jobs opportunities. According to the Economic Policy Institute, raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour “should increase wages by $35 billion and boost economic activity by $22 billion—which by their account is enough to create those 85,000 jobs” (Jordan Weissmann