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Argumentative Essay On Minimum Wage

1976 Words8 Pages

Minimum-wage rules are crucial because they meet people's needs for food, shelter, clothing, medication, and other necessities in American society. Nevertheless, can people have those items with salary income that lasts for months or years? More people are struggling daily with the notion of the minimum wage not being enough to sustain employees in the present economy, as well as the ongoing inflation in the United States for products and services. This is an important topic to debate since it will either allow individuals to prosper and sufficiently care for themselves or will not offer sufficient individual money to live a basic living. While some people argue that it is acceptable to pay minimum wage workers less because they perform less …show more content…

However, evidence proves otherwise. For example, Minimum Wage Is Not Enough states that a “living wage is the minimum income standard that draws an outstanding line between financial independence and the need to seek out public assistance or suffer consistent and severe housing and food insecurity.” Living wages affect workers' productivity, allowing them to worry less about saving or paying bills. Being able to afford these expenses Comfortably will enable workers to have more discretionary income, creating more workforce stability. Paying for childcare is very expensive, for example, and “the average household spent $18,422 on childcare in 2018 (the lowest of all regions). If two adults worked full-time for minimum wage, they would make just $30,160 before taxes, leaving very little to cover housing, food, healthcare, and other expenses” (Minimum Wage Is Not Enough 5). The high childcare costs create a severe financial strain for families with young children, and many must use family members to help. This cheaper route allows parents to save on childcare, but this is not an option for all families. The cost of food is also rising. According to Minimum Wages Is Not Enough, “A family of four—at June 2021 price—was $835.57 per month.” The minimum wage is therefore not sustainable for people to maintain a proper lifestyle or secure basic

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The solution to the minimum-wage problem that haunts American workers in the 21st century is to strive for lower everyday expenses rather than for a higher minimum wage. The renowned author Barbara Ehrenreich, in her informational novel Nickel and Dimed, tells the story of how she performed a social experiment by working several minimum wage jobs, while living a lifestyle of a low-wage worker. In her novel, Ehrenreich concludes that minimum wage workers “in good health” can “barely support [themselves]” (199). Even though Ehrenreich earned “$1039 in one month,” at the end of the month she only had “$22 left over” as she had to spend “$517” on food and gas, and “$500” to pay her rent (197). As evident, Ehrenreich’s wage is not the cause of her

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We have a systematic problem that includes not supplying livable wages. In the documentary 'One Crisis Away' chapter four, 'Living On $10 An Hour, While Trying to Pay the Bills', as well as in Reading 50 in our text book "The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality" shows how people struggle financially even when being paid over the minimum wage. People are then forced to work two jobs in order to pay bills and take care of their children. However, there is a kicker, if one would make too much money, for example, in Reading 51 or one of the examples from the panel discussion in 'One Crisis Away' then they could lose any government assistance they might be able to utilize to help take care of themselves medically or in terms of food stamps. This, to me, seems to be an effort to keep people down, instead of helping them

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Because the cost of living has welkin rocketed, it has become virtually infeasible 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 exorbitant. The earnings of minimum wage workers are crucial to their families salubrity. Evidence from 2013 and 2014 minimum wage increase shows that an average minimum wage worker brings home more than a moiety of his or her family 's weekly earnings.

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After thoroughly reading two articles by Surowiecki and Saltsman on if the United States raising minimum wage, the minimum wage should remain the same. To support this statement, Saltsman states that the people who live below the poverty line, in fact, are not poor because of minimum wage; Americans remain poor due to not working at a job. People continue to live in poverty because they lack the skills to even attain a job or look for a job. Even though Surowiecki claims that 46% of today’s families live off of a minimum wage worker, minimum-wage jobs weren’t meant to support families. Minimum-wage jobs were meant for teenagers and woman.

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But the people working at fast food chains and gas stations are still making minimum wage. “More than 400,000 workers make less than $15 an hour” (Lanzinger). The people who make minimum wage need to make more. The more money they make the more money they can spend for groceries and other stuff that is required for

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It is becoming really difficult to live in the land of opportunities when all the money being brought in is barely enough for people to provide for themselves, let alone their family. People are falling ill, missing holidays with their loved ones, and having to worry about providing for their family all because the minimum wage is nowhere near the cost of living in the United States. Raising the minimum wage to a living wage will help provide needed security for struggling low income Americans. “I say this: If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family

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For most American families, the minimum wage does not even provide a living wage. It might take something more than putting all your eggs in one basket to meet the rising expenses. That bungalow with the

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Many politicians, business owners, and citizens hold fast to the belief that heightening the salary attached to minimum wage positions will yield negative benefits for our society. This opinion is supported by three vital view-points. The first can be found in the news article, “The Argument Against Raising Minimum Wage.” It expresses how the enlargement of this payment will take a toll on employment. The document reasons that if the amount of money employees earn is expanded, companies will be less likely to hire as many workers (Huppke).

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” This is crazy, how could a minimum wage person afford a house in this market. All over the world is it happening, cost of living going up and people being paid the same. Also, minimum wage makes it impossible to live life without stress, the stress of owing money and stress of working all the time. People have to work more then one job so they could provide for their basic needs. CTV News Toronto says, “As a single mother, Mason said she works multiple jobs at minimum wage in order to provide for her two

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Since the Great Depression, there has been a minimum wage in America, but this minimum wage has changed 22 times since the Great Deprnbession. Many people say minimum wage should stay at $7.25 like it has been since 2009. Meanwhile, other people believe that minimum wage should be $15.00 so they can have more money to live comfortably. People think that a higher minimum wage will help, but it will hurt more people than it will help. If America makes the minimum wage $9.00, people will no longer be in poverty and it will make the economy balance out.

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Minimum wage and poverty With everything going on with the Walmart workers picketing for fifteen dollars an hour wages, the topic is widely discussed with many people taking many different sides. The essay “Raising the Minimum wage will reduce poverty” By Sharon Parrott and Jason Furman, They go into how they think the minimum wage should be raised in order to decrease poverty in america, Of course there are reasons to raise it and reasons to not raise it. Yet with the multitude of reasons for and against it, it’s hard to make a decision that makes everybody content, Some of the reasons not to raise it include, Raising it can make prices for everyday items go up, Why go and spend thousands of dollars on college when you could get a decent job right out of high school, and Why let workers who work at unskilled jobs make as much if not more than the military. Some reasons for minimum wage raising is, The fact that the cost of living is higher means people can’t survive with minimum wage without federal care, And just helping people get back on their feet when they couldn’t find a job. The reasons Minimum wage shouldn’t be raised outweigh the reasons it should.

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Study has shown that many families average minimum wage worker earn half of his or her earning weekly. Here in Mississippi minimum wage is only 7.50 now you do the math for a single family’s home, this come out to be around 14,400 dollar a year for a single. This is not enough money. The worker who benefit from a minimum wage increase work full time and average from 20 to 30 hours a week. This is why I argue that minimum wage need to be increased so families can survive in this high cost

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For a person working full-time at the federal minimum wage makes 7.25 an hour, with around 15,080 per year (Smith), only accounting for 20 percent higher than the poverty line cut off for a family of one (U.S.Department of Labor, 2016). Meanwhile, for a single-parent family of two, this annual income only accounts for nine percent above the poverty line (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016). With this low of a percent above the poverty line, many people are struggling to live comfortably, which is what the minimum wage was established to do. However, a recent report from the 2014 Congressional Budget Office, and a study conducted by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst suggests that with a raise many Americans will find themselves out of the struggling annual low incomes, and poverty levels. For instance, the 2014 Congressional Budget Office reported that if the minimum wage was raised to nine dollars, over 300,000 Americans would find themselves leaving poverty in the past.

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Evidence of Problem Existence: Most of us can't get by on minimum wage pay and leaves people struggling at home. Chris Isidore stated on a article listed on CNN that "About 20% of American adults who have jobs are earning only $10.65 an hour or less, according to Osterman's analysis. Even at 40 hours a week, that amounts to less than $22,314, the poverty level for a family of

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1. Introduction In the modest term, a minimum wage is a lawfully authorized minor bound for wages, but the term “lawfully authorised” is unclear, leading too many different kinds of minimum wages institutions (Cunningham et al, 2007:19). It further states that in the most straight forward cases, such as Brazil and Bolivia, the federal government identifies a wage level and all employers in the country must pay at that level or above it (2007:19). Economist have tended to oppose minimum wage on the grounds that they reduce employment , hurting many of those they are supposed to help (the economist:24/11/2012).

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