There are a lot of potential benefits for an increase in minimum wage and on the surface it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t want to increase the wage. One of the clearest to see is that an increase to the minimum wage will also increase the spending for each household during the following years. So it works to help stimulate the economy in whatever area you increase the minimum wage. Along those same lines increasing the minimum wage will lead to a decrease in poverty as well. With the decrease in poverty you will also see a decrease in government spending on welfare items because the individuals receiving the higher wage in theory will be able to pay for these services/welfare items without assistance. Another potential benefit of an increased …show more content…
If it were up to me to change the policy on this increase then I would first hire a team of economists and statisticians to see what the actual effects of the increase are. The thing is that we currently have a lot of conflicting evidence regarding the pro’s/cons of increasing wages. I think in order to make effective policy we need to look at what the root causes are of poverty and what we can do to change it rather than just looking at a short term solution that may or may not help the real issues at hand. Personally I think that increasing the minimum wage makes it very hard for those who make barely above that wage. I have a sister who is a single mother raising a family and makes barely above that wage. Every time the minimum goes up she sees no change in her wage but an increase in prices for food to feed her kids. I’m not saying that an increase is bad, just that we clearly aren’t doing enough research in order to make effective policy. There may not be a perfect answer that makes everyone happy, but there has got to be a more effective way to deal with our issues of poverty and low wages. What we need is better information that’s used properly to make more effective