Increasing Minimum Wage Essay

As we look at the world today, the dollar has much less buying power than it did years ago. When people look at just the basic necessities such as rent, food, car payment, and clothing, minimum wage just isn’t enough to survive on. Recently, Walmart increased their minimum wage to $9 per hour. In my opinion, this decision to increase their minimum wage was due to the supply and demand in the labor market. According to Forbes.com, even with this increase Walmart is still significantly lower than that of the retail sector as a whole with $11.81 compared with $14.65 broadly (Steil & Walker, 2015). With this information it is apparent that Walmart’s decision could be due to pressures from their competitors in the retail sector. Retail sector wages have risen dramatically over the past year: 2.8% (Steil & Walker, 2015). It is obvious with these statistics that Walmart has been forced to follow the path of the retail sector. Companies such as GAP and IKEA increased their minimum wage before Walmart made their decision to do so. If other companies within the

For this reason, I believe that the government should raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. According to Short, roughly 11.9 million Americans receive some form of benefits from the government (Short, 2014). If organizations were required to pay more, the government would save money on the assistance programs that they have put in place. Just increasing minimum wage to $10.10 as proposed by the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2014, more than 1.7 million Americans would no longer rely on government assistance programs thus saving the government roughly $7.6 billion per year (Short, 2015). Increasing minimum wage would also allow people to have more money to spend, which would increase profits for businesses, thus resulting in economic growth. An increase in wages would allow people to at the very least be able to afford the basic necessities required to