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 should be raised to at least $15 an hour. Doing so would benefit lower classes of people greatly. Higher minimum pays will keep people from doing illegal things for money, give them more money to spend, and it would make minimum wage do what it’s intended to do. Not everyone can go to college and get a high paying job. Sometimes people end up having families early and have to start working immediately. Most jobs that are available to anyone are minimum wage jobs. When people are struggling to make ends meet sometimes they’ll end up doing things that are illegal just to survive. People start stealing if they become desperate for food, especially if they have children to feed. This leads to business losing money and stock. People can also start selling drugs or sex for money. This increases crime rates and makes neighborhoods become bad places to live. If minimum wage was raised people would be more likely to take legal jobs and stay out of illegal activity. With minimum wage going up there will be more money in the pockets... ... middle of paper ... ...ties and $1035 is left. It is easier to see how a family could survive off of this. They would be able to make a better budget to buy groceries and other necessities, and still be able to spend money on fixing things that break. It would take away the need for two parents to work, which means that children will more likely have a parent home. This would also give people a chance to buy better quality food. Everyone deserves to eat the best quality of food because it is a basic need. It is not fair that economic status determines one’s health. In summary, there is one thing that people need to survive in today’s society: money. Making more legal money means that people are less likely to turn to crime for survival, more people are spending more money, and people are living the way they deserve to. Minimum wage needs to be raised to meet the people’s needs.
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.
Welfare reform caused many families surviving with the help of the government to go out and look for jobs despite their need for childcare that they could not afford. Barbara Ehrenreich, a journalist with a PhD, decided to find out what life would be like living on minimum wage labor. During her journey, we see that labor has not changed majorly because laborers are not paid fairly and they are declining their rights. Although women are allowed in the workplace, an eight hour work day is established, and we have a minimum wage, many are still struggling to make it because the system simply does not work unless you are running the show. Her journey begins as she begins applying at many places in Key West, Florida, where she lives.
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 such a thing as a free lunch. ’’
This article gives you a yes and no opinion on whether or not the F...
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.
The core of this problem is the low standard for minimum wage. Due to resistance put forth by businesses, the government has only enforced wages that produce lifestyles well below the line of poverty. This standard is leaving 9 million Americans living far under 18,850 a year! “Currently, full-time, full-year work at the federal minimum wage of 5.15$ and hour yields an annual income of 10,300$. If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation since the late 1960s, as it had done in the previous two decades, its current level would be more than 7.50$ and hour, or 15,000$ a year” (The American Pros...
In recent years the minimum wage has been a heated topic. People want to hike it up to 15 dollars an hour which they call a living wage, while others just want to keep it the same. There are also others that suggest to bring the minimum wage to around $10.78 an hour, which should be around the minimum wage now if we account for inflation from the 1960’s. I agree with that to a certain point. We as a nation need to bring up the minimum wage only up to ten dollars so that less people are living in poverty, and not any higher so that states with smaller economies don 't crash and burn.
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 ...
The minimum wage must be raised because the cost of living has gone up considerably. Education is essential if one wishes to work, and the cost of education has increased drastically in the past twenty years. Companies should be requied to pay workers what they deserve, and that is more than minimum wage is now. With our new technology and the technology in the future work is harder and more complicated. A minimum wage increase would raise the wages of many workers and increase benefits to those disadvantaged workers.
One way raising minimum wage will be beneficial is that it could lift many Americans out of poverty. Raising the minimum wage in Illinois, would help the families of more than 1.1 million workers who work to meet their children’s basic needs and “reduce the adverse effects of poverty on a child’s well-being” (Fiscal Policy Center). Studies have shown that raising the minimum wage would help 1 in 5 Illinois families who are in poverty. By raising the minimum wage in Illinois, it would help workers with families spend money on food, housing, gas, and other needs without going into poverty. Along with puling Americans out of poverty, raising the minimum wage could also stimulate economic growth. Raising the minimum wage, is stimulating economic growth by worsening the income inequality and substantially reducing the employee turnover for the business. Increasing a person’s income would raise their yearly earnings by $3,640 and “Improve the economic security and reduce the economies poverty rate” (Fiscal Policy Center). Low-wage workers spend most of what they earn on their basic needs, which is quickly spent and does not leave the worker with much money left to spend on other needs. This boost in the minimum wage will stimulate the economy and help create opportunities for more people, by hiring more workers to keep up with the
It is very difficult to live in America if you are living off of minimum wage, and many Americans are living off of it today. Raising minimum wages has its benefits like gaining more money to live better, but people do not see the down side of the increases in wages. With the increase in minimum wage, it also causes the cost of living to increase. How can this help the economy or help people? Minimum wages in America should not be increased because it will cause cost of living to increase, reduce employment, and cause businesses to lose money and workers.
A person working at minimum wage will only make about $10,700 a year. When rent, groceries, bills and gas are all added up, it appears to be a nearly impossible task to keep a family afloat. But working 40 hours a week at $5.15 an hour, one makes less than $206 a week after taxes. Making $206/week, one brings home about $824/month. Adding 17 gallons of gas at $2.20 a gallon in a car; the cost ends up to be about $38 a week, $152/month. The gas and electricity bill about $120, $50 for cable, $147 for property taxes, $45 for the telephone bill, $25 for water, and $42 for house insurance. All this totals about $580 (Abrams, H). Making it difficult to afford cable, and make the smallest payment possible on all the bills causing one to slip into debt. This is reality for many of the people in the United States. At the current minimum wage level, a full time, year round minimum wage worker in 2005 will earn $5,378 less than the $16,090 needed to lift a family of three out of poverty (Minimum).
In the 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama called on Congress to raise the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, and soon after signed an Executive Order to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for the individuals working on new federal service contracts. An increase in the minimum wage has been a topic of discussion for many years now, and it looks like this year will finally see the first increase of minimum wage in 10 years. Not everyone agrees that there should be an increase, but many states have already raised their minimum wage rates because of the federal government’s inaction. Iowa raised the state’s wage, and it will rise again in 2016. Clearly there are benefits to a higher minimum wage; the current minimum wage in the United States should be raised because it helps the economy by increasing employment, and it is now at the lowest value it has been in more than 50 years, causing hardship for earners of minimum wage.
Minimum wage has been a topic that has divided our nation for a while now. Some say there should be an increase in the minimum wage while others say the should not be. In my Argument today, I will be in support for the raising of the minimum wage. If the minimum wage is to be increased, it will provide low-income family with money to spend. Furthermore, the more people spend, the better the economy so raising the minimum wage will boost our economy. And finally, raising the minimum wage will reduce the gab between the rich and the poor, which is also an issue in our nation.