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raise minimum wage essay
raise minimum wage essay
raise minimum wage essay
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Why minimum wage should be raised! The cost of living in the United States isn’t cheap at all. The United States is a very big and expensive place to live in. People come from all over the world just to live here. Although America is a beautiful and wonderful place to live, to survive, minimum wage will need to be raised. Many others feel that if minimum wage is raised then it would greatly cause jobs to hire less people. This is because they are under the impression that the labor laws will come into effect, and business will began to cut employees and their hours. Three reasons why minimum wage should be raised are because the cost of living is too high, raising minimum wage would motivate middle class people to want to get a job, and by …show more content…
People are trying to avoid working extremely hard for less pay. For instance, if minimum wage was 18 dollars an hour, there would be less illegal acts going on as far as drugs and prostitution goes. Drug dealers that feel like minimum wage is not enough would be motivated to get a job now. Instead of putting their lives in danger, they can have a more safe and convenient way of making money. The value of money will never go unnoticed, and everyone wants to be highly paid, but not everyone is able to develop the skills for the jobs that pay more than the minimum. On the other hand, there are hard workers in this world that are extremely good at what they do, but only make enough just to get by. This is not right and the only thing that would fix this is to raise minimum wage. For a brief moment out of the passage “Are America’s Wealthy to Powerful?” they mentioned that the wealthy aren’t really concerned about minimum wage going up. They also spoke on how raising the prices would stop most crimes that are related to robbery and drugs. (Davis) It is clear to see that people couldn’t live off of their own terrible pay. If the government doesn’t do anything about it, then it will continue to have hateful crimes and wrongful deaths. In this society, people who don’t have jobs tend to be the ones who committing the crimes. If we want this to stop, we must raise minimum wage. Most people …show more content…
In the article “How Can the Poor Be Helped?” They talked about raising minimum wage, and how important it will be for many people who are in poverty, and how it can reduce this number. By raising minimum wage, this would cause more people to work and companies to get plenty of business because people would have more money to spend on supplies now. This process will create more job opportunity, and will help the economy. “Raising minimum wage will help women - and the economy,” helps us get a better view of how minimum wage can and will help the economy as well as single women. “Other economists have gone further, concluding that a wage increase would stimulate the economy”. (11) The job opportunities are beginning to vary because of the direction the economy is heading, and it will be a matter of time before people start to go on strikes and jobs hold outs because of the little amount of money that they are working for. “Tonight, more than half a million jobs gone in a single month as the recession takes hold”. (Skylar) Workers are taking a stand and the reason behind this behavior is because they are tired of barely maintaining with a week to week check. The economy would be in much better shape if workers were paid above the minimum. “Minimum wage should reflect current economy” speaks about how our current minimum wage and how it should reflect our economy. They believe that if we were to
More than 4.6 million people live in poverty in the US. A question often raised when talking about minimum wage is, would raising it lower this number? The consensus is, yes, it would. If the federal minimum wage was raised, at lot of peoples’ incomes would grow, not just low wage workers. As employers shifted their pay scales upward, many incomes would grow. According to Jared Bernstein, the former chief economist of the Obama Administration, this isn’t as relevant as the impact is would have on low wage workers. He explains how, although many other people would benefit from an increase in minimum wage, most of the help would go to those who need it. He also notes, “We must be careful not to be wedded to poverty thresholds that are inadequate measures of who needs the help.” If the minimum wage was raised to $10.10 per hour, 2 million people would be lifted out of poverty (US Department of
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.
In an editorial written by Warren Buffett for the Wall Street Journal, according to S. Kumar in his article “America’s Workers Have Bigger Problems than the Minimum Wage” for Fortune Magazine, the problems that American workers face are far more than just attaining a livable wage. The three biggest problems that Americans face include the growing power of corporations, competition against technologies, and the growing income inequality that requires specialized skills where low-wage workers may not have education or capabilities to adapt. However, the minimum wage is still a serious problem, according to Roger Lowenstein. Lowenstein writes that the minimum wage does not provide a livable wage, which is a real problem when families are trying to survive on income that is too low even for an
Nowadays, many employees have to face the crisis of working hard for a very low paying job. They are stuck between two rocks of either choosing to work their blood, sweat and tears into a job to receive little to no pay or living in the streets with no food to feed their kids. For a profound amount of families, they are still in poverty, even though all the family members seems to go to a low paying job. By raising the minimum wage, we can help the family to get out of poverty and reduce the poverty rates. A worker need to make at $15.50 to afford an average one bedroom apartment. Since each state varies, take California for example. In California a worker needs to work 92 hours at $9 an hour to rent a one bedroom apartment. ("Minimum Wage - ProCon.org.")The raise in minimum wage would help students and thus increase school attendance rather than working all day. One of the main reason for school dropout is that families don 't make enough money, so they send their kids to go and work. If we can increase the wage, families would keep kids in school and it would result in a better
The people, who are for raising the minimum wage, are people who think that the reason for poverty is because of the minimum wage not being high enough. The first standard minimum wage is formed under the "Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the nationwide minimum wage was designed to lift millions of American workers out of poverty and to stimulate the economy"(Wittner). Today the people that are in favor of raising minimum wage believe that there should be another "Fair Labor Standards Act" to raise the national minimum wage to ten dollars and seventy-fo...
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 ...
There are indeed risks of raising the minimum wage, but the rewards outweigh those risks, so the minimum wage should be raised. Some people who are against this may say ...“But other economists say raising the minimum wage actually hurts the very people it's designed to help: One of the basic laws of economics is that if you raise the price of something, there will be less demand for it. In this case, if you raise the price of workers, the demand for workers will decline. That could mean companies cutting the hours of employees, laying them off, or hiring fewer workers in the future.”... Yes, it could hurt the people it is designed to help, but different states have done this and found the opposite to be true. With America’s still fragile economy we need a boost, a helping hand; And this could be it. So next time you go down to vote on a mayor or maybe even the next president, remember that raising the minimum wage is a good thing, and you should be supporting
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.
Articles and interviews inform the public that “raising the minimum wage will help the lower class” (Neumark). People that currently earn minimum wage want to increase the minimum wage level because it has been raised in the past; “the states have raised the minimum wage level 91 times since 1987”(Cap). Some lower level workers are also relying on food stamps to feed their families. The media says that raising minimum wage will increase job opportunities because people will be more willing to spend money if they earn more per hour. The protesters say that they cannot support their families with only minimum wage amount. They need more money to keep their family off the streets. Raising the minimum wage is not a bad thing to do, but raising it to $15.00 would have a dramatic effect on our economy where as “raising the minimum wage amount to around $10.00 would then have a less dramatic effect on the economy”
About eight million Americans go to work every day, yet they are still living below the poverty line (Camden and Stern). More than one million of them are retail workers. If the minimum wage was to escalate, 734,075 people would be lifted out of poverty. Also the 769,191 people that are living on or near the poverty line would see their incomes go above it by 150 percent. These workers are struggling to provide basic necessities for their family and themselves. If minimum wage was increased poverty could be reduced. Most families are relying on government assistance to provide things such as food by using an EBT food stamp card and Medicaid because they are making minimum wage. Also if a minimum wage worker is only making $5.15 per hour, it will be impossible trying to afford health insurance. Sometimes the benefits workers receive don’t always cov...
People are in need of a raise, they need something that would help them live a better life. Democracy exist for people to choose whom meets their expectations, and makes it a reality. Such an act would have a great advantage on the economy making it a stronger economy in time .It would also benefit the society as a whole, making it more balanced .In order to do that the government must balance minimum wage with inflation, otherwise inflation is just increasing leaving minimum wage behind. Business owners want to keep the wages as it is with no increase. That’s because they want to sustain their profit, with no decrease. They make unfounded connections by equating a raise with economic crisis , owners would have to cut off worker to keep up with wages, and that it would result in lower profit. Workers would then save money by not relying on social programs .This issue is really important, where it discusses three major points, the effect of minimum wage on the economy, inequality that has risen due to the huge gap between classes, and how it would make a difference for the American citizen living under the poverty line. One aspect that wasn’t mentioned in the literature is, if minimum having the government incumbents solve this problem. The second is considering increasing the number of state laws that mandate that minimum wage increase whenever inflation
Americans are not wrong in thinking that increasing the minimum wage will increase low-wage working families’ incomes, and some of these families will rise above the national poverty threshold. While increasing the minimum wage might benefit some American families, it will hurt others. Increasing the minimum wage will eliminate many low wage jobs, which would then result in many people jobless and therefore, a substantial drop in those individuals’ household incomes (“The Effects of a Minimum-Wage Increase on Employment and Family Income”). . “Raising the country’s minimum wage could boost the incomes of millions of Americans, but it could also potentially cut total employment by hundreds of thousands of workers” (Kurtzleben). An increase in the minimum wage lowers employment, which makes it harder for these workers with minimal skills to find a job. Congress then explains that low income families will actually not bring in any benefits from an increase of the minimum wage (“Would an Increase in the Federal Minimum Wage Help or Hinder Small Business” 2-3). While increasing the minimum wage might raise the standards of living for some low wage workers and families, if the increase in minimum wage reduces employment rates, there is no certain answer on what
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.
Raising the minimum wage will prove to be detrimental as it will take away opportunities from high school students to gain insight and explore different career options. Additionally, it will also reduce the unemployment rate, making it harder for the working poor to meet their basic needs in order to survive. Thereby, raising the minimum wage is not a feasible option because it will only deteriorate situations for the labor
In America, there is a high percentage of homelessness and people who are in poverty. So if the minimum wage is rising it will help to reduce poverty for families living in homeless shelter. It will help assist students financially through college by managing their cost of tuition, housing, food, and fees. In contract, in the article “Reducing the Minimum Wage.” James, Skerk. “Skerk James’s story; “who is the follow in labor policy at the Heritage Foundation, argues that raising the minimum wage will not stop poverty. Instead, it will push employees to cut hours and give less job position to low-income workers. If a employees is making a lot of money there is no way for them to cut off hours. That along will motivate workers to put more time and effort in their work so they can be eligible for benefits at their work place. So if rich and poor making enough incomes their will be no differences of categorizing rich from