The Effects of a Higher Minimum Wage When I was eleven years old my parents told me that they could not afford to buy me new school clothes that year. So, in my desperation for some new school clothes I started working. I did odd jobs on farms for family and friends, as well as babysitting. I worked that whole summer of my 6th grade year, and I continued to work every summer up until my senior year in high school when I started to work full-time. I started helping pay my parents rent when I was thirteen and bought most of my own food as a young adult. I bought all of my cars, and I am paying for my own school. So you might ask "why were we so poor? Was it because you had deadbeat parents? Did they not work full-time? What? Why were you so poor?" Well my dad; even though was a very hard working man, he did work at a dead end job and my mom could not find a full-time job until I was thirteen, and neither of them made a whole lot of money. Now I always thought that if the government would raise the minimum wage it would help my parents out. However, I later found out that the problem did not lie in how much money my parents made. The problem was the amount of debt my parents had and lack of experience for other job opportunities. Now even though my parents are doing a lot better today I myself learned to avoid those troubles at a young age and by the grace of God I am able to support my wife and two kids on $11.94 an hour. There are millions of people in America that are in the same situation that I was at age eleven. Many people are praying every day that the government will raise the federal minimum wage. However, the United States economy would take a severe blow if Congress decided to raise the federal minimum wage. If worker... ... middle of paper ... ...intable Krueger A. (1995) Increasing the Minimum Wage Does Not Reduce Employment. Retrieved September 9, 2007, from . Ridenour, A. (2007) Raising the Minimum Wage Kills Jobs, But Congress Doesn't Appear to Care. Retrieved October 12, 2007, from http://www.nationalcenter.org/2007/01/raising-minimum-wage-kills-jobs-but.html Saxton, (1996) Distribution of Workers Affected by the Proposed $5.15 Minimum Wage. Retrieved October 10, 2007, Web site: http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/minimum/against/fig-2.gif Sherk, J. (2007, Janurary 8). Raising the Minimum Wage. The Backgrounder , 1-3. Wilson, M. (1999). Increasing the Minimum Wage Is Counterproductive. San Diego: Greenhaven Press.
Poverty continues to grow in America. The average minimum wage in the United States is $7.35 an hour- far too low in today’s society. Key expenses, for example, gas and housing prices, have gone up significantly since the minimum wage was last changed in 2007 (Wagner 52). The laws creating the minimum wage were intended to improve the standard of living and decrease poverty. Raising minimum wage is a vital step in decreasing poverty and giving every family the opportunity to survive and succeed. Millions of hard-working Americans are below the poverty line and need an increase in pay. Minimum wage must be raised because it will diminish poverty and assist the working class to support their families.
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)
For the past year I have watched my younger sister struggle to support herself and her now 11 month old baby. She makes more than minimum wage. She has struggled to the point where she was evicted and now lives with me. I have also experienced struggling on low pay. When I was 18 I was kicked out of my family’s house, and I was only making $8 an hour. There were days where I had to choose between paying rent and getting my electricity shut off, just because I couldn’t work enough hours to pay all of my bills. It can be very scary to only make minimum wage and have to support yourself. There are changes that need to be made so that every person can live properly with any job.
Minimum wage is a topic that has been popping up since the 1980s. From whether we should lower it, or even raise it, but now in the 2000s minimum wage has been the center of attention more than ever. There are two sides to this topic of minimum wage; whether it creates more jobs or does not create jobs. Those who argue that raising minimum wage will create more jobs will have a rebuttal which is that it does not only cause the loss of jobs but that it would make things much worse and vice versa for those arguing raising minimum wage will cause loss of jobs. There will be two authors representing opposite views, Nicholas Johnson supporting minimum wage will not cost jobs with his article “ Evidence Shows Raising Minimum Wage Hasn’t Cost Jobs”
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.
Throughout the decade, a continuous firing debate still remains, whether to raise the minimum wage or keep as it is. People believe that raising the minimum wage can hurt the economy. More will lose jobs than gain. Though all are true, the amount of poverty shown throughout the decades are jaw dropping. That is in fact one of the leading factors. As there is yin and yang, the demand for a higher minimum wage is no coincidence or selfishness as others perceive as is. The poverty shown throughout the decade is deadly prominent. Minimum wage should be raised as people are not gaining enough money compared to the past, despite with more education, too many low quality jobs, “in active” unemployment are outcasted from the statistics, and finding jobs is more difficult than it was decades ago.
Meer, Jonathan, and Jeremy West. “Effects Of The Minimum Wage On Employment Dynamics.” (2013): EconLit. Web 24 Oct. 2013.
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.
Sherk, James. "What Is Minimum Wage: Its History and Effects on the Economy." The Heritage
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,
Dreier, Peter. “Raising the Minimum Wage is good for Business (but the corporate lobby doesn’t think so,” Huffington Post. 23 February 2013.
Since its inception, the minimum wage has been a hotbed for debate. If today’s leaders could manage to increase minimum wage, millions of families would benefit.
Pyke, Alan. "The Minimum Wage: Myths & Facts." Media Matters for America. N.p., 15 Feb. 2013. Web. 18 May 2014.
About “75.3 million people ages sixteen and over worked for hourly wages in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics” (“Minimum Wage”). Meaning almost a quarter of the workforce in this nation are working a minimum wage job. Numerous people believe that these workers are not able to make ends meet, and increasing the minimum wage will help these individuals substantially. Even though people believe that increasing the minimum wage will benefit the society, they tend to overlook the drawbacks of increasing the minimum wage, and how it will prove to be detrimental to the society. People believe that increasing the minimum wage will reduce poverty and improve the living standards of the individuals.
Bernstein, Jared. “Would Raising the Minimum Wage Harm the Economy?” The CQ Researcher 16 Dec. 2005:1069.