Minimum wage is an extremely diverse topic in the United States. Well, more or less, the debate on whether or not to raise it. Over the past few weeks our class has read several articles and watched a video entitled “Thirty Days”, all of which discuss minimum wage and how raising it would affect society. In this essay I aim to compare and contrast the positive and negative aspects of raising minimum wage based on the articles we have read and the video we watched in class. The first article we read was entitled, ”Serving in Florida,” by Barbara Ehrenreich. In this article Ehrenreich packs up her life and goes on the hunt for a minimum wage job and cheap housing. She quickly finds that housing is extremely expensive while working with a minimum wage salary and she will have to lower her standards even more than she originally thought. After finding an affordable “home” she starts her look for a minimum wage job. At this point minimum wage is a whopping six dollars an hour, barely enough to support herself. Now imagine if she were to have a family to support, it would be …show more content…
This video followed the same guidelines as “Serving in Florida” did. Spurlock and his girlfriend, Alex, gave up their entire life for a month to live as people on minimum wage do. They found an apartment first then went on the hunt for minimum wage jobs as unskilled workers. Alex found a job making slightly above minimum wage while Spurlock had to go to the job service center, making just at minimum wage. During the month that they did this “minimum wage trail” both ended up in the emergency room and with no insurance it was very costly. They also decided to invite Spurlock’s niece and nephew down for a weekend. After doing this they realized that there was no way they would be able to support a family of four working minimum wage jobs, after all, they could barely keep themselves