Raising The Minimum Wage Analysis

Desiree Ripoll
Professor Heuer
ENC 1102
5/30/2017
Increasing the Minimum Wage is Good for America Raising the minimum wage is not only beneficial to those who are struggling financially, America’s economy would benefit from this as well. Doug Hall and David Cooper express how increasing the minimum wage would be a tool for modest job creation in the article “Raising the Minimum Wage Would Help Lower-Income Workers”. In the article “Is a $15 minimum wage economically feasible?” Jeannette Wick-Lims discusses how raising the minimum wage is good for the economy if we adapt to the changes accordingly. Elise Gould argues about how there is a strong statistical link between economic growth and falling poverty rates in her article “Increasing the

“The current state of research on this employment question, however, finds that minimum wage increases do not produce significant job losses. This then raises an important policy question: Why haven't there been significant job losses when minimum wages have increased?” (Wicks-Lim par. 6). In 2013, the minimum wage in Seattle was increased to $15 per hour. The city adopted the new policy and the local economy has been growing at a healthy pace since. If Seattle can do it, why can’t the rest of the country? Especially in a place like Miami where tourists are almost always vacationing and spending money, our economy is not really struggling here. Poverty rates have decreased as the minimum wage has increased throughout the years. “The minimum wage is currently more than 25% below its real value in the late 1960. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports that the Harkin-Miller bill to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 would cumulatively boost incomes of people below the federal poverty line by $5 billion..... other academic research finds that the same bill would lift more than 4 million people out of poverty (Gould 2 par. 5). Raising the minimum wage may also help cut back government assistance, such as SNAP or cash assistance, which is ultimately beneficial to our economy. Besides helping the economy, we, as American citizens, need to help our fellow Americans.

I personally cannot relate to how it feels working a minimum wage job but I do feel that the minimum wage is extremely too low, especially for those of us living in Miami, FL. If you are a single person working a minimum wage job in Miami, you could barely afford a 1 bedroom apartment. And in the real world we need food and clothes as well. Imagine how it would be like being a single parent or the head of the household with only making the minimum. It would be practically impossible to get by. Million dollar companies such as Walmart, CVS, and Costco can definitely afford to pay all of their employees the minimum of $15 per hour. The fact that the cost of living continues to rise and our wages stay at a minimum is pretty outrageous. This is why the rich will become richer and the poor will stay