Minimum wage has been around in the United States for nearly eighty years, which seems like a relatively short amount of time considering how old this country is. Creating a minimum wage was intended to benefit low-skilled workers, although unfortunately, the federal minimum wage causes unemployment, and increasing the federal minimum wage causes will only worsen the issue of unemployment. Having a federal minimum wage also reduces the incentive for people in the labor force to attain an education to attain higher skill jobs. Therefore, I will argue that having a federal minimum wage is morally wrong because it goes against act utilitarianism.
Minimum wage was introduced in 1938 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, according to the United States Department of Labor. Since its beginning in 1938, the federal minimum wage has been raised twenty-two times. It is important to know that the minimum wage does not rise with inflation. Rather, it can only rise with congressional action when they believe it is appropriate to do so (“Wage and Hour Division”).
It is also important to keep in mind that quite a few states have their own minimum wage laws,
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According to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, this is because as the cost increases to pay workers for low-skilled labor, businesses will instead put their money towards equipment that can replace workers. Another option would be to hire less people while ensuring the fewer amounts of employees are extremely efficient. On top of that, higher employee wages will generally lead to increases in prices of products which will reduce demand for product and labor (Neumark, David). This will generally only affect people currently working minimum wage jobs – which is exactly who an increase in minimum wage is trying to help – since higher paying jobs already pay above minimum