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Increase Minimum Wage Essay

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Why the Minimum Wage Cannot be Increased to $15 per hour
The definition of the minimum wage is “the least amount of money per hour that a worker must be paid according to the law” (Freeman, 1996, Pg,1). The purpose of the minimum wage is to redistribute wealth from high paid workers to lower paid workers in an attempt to keep the economy balanced. We cannot afford to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour because it will result in job loss impacting disadvantaged communities the most. At this moment he minimum wage is below the minimum wage rate adjusted for inflation. If we raise the minimum wage jobs will be lost which would lead to a lower overall quality of life for disadvantaged people. (Freeman, 1996)
We Do Need a Minimum Wage
Although there does need to be some type of minimum wage at the federal level to ensure employees get paid something, it cannot be as high as $15 dollars an hour. If the actual minimum wage (also called the nominal minimum wage) is at or below …show more content…

When there is an increase in the minimum wage, employers substitute lower skilled workers for higher skilled workers, so many teenagers have their jobs terminated. This is especially a problem in disadvantaged communities where the unemployment rate for non-white teenagers is a whopping 43% (Jardim & Long, page 9, 2017). Communities like these cannot afford to see this number rise, yet in a study done by the National Bureau of Economic Research, if we were to increase the minimum wage by any number over 10% the non-white unemployment rate would rise to over 50%. If we raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour it would be a 100% increase which is huge. The purpose of the minimum wage is to help low income and low skilled workers, but when it starts negatively impacting the workers it's supposed to be helping doesn't it defeat the whole purpose? (Moore 1971) (Seltzer,

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