Pros And Cons Of Raising Minimum Wage

Erin Warner

Dr. Jeanine Jewell

English Composition 1020

21 February 2016 Raise Minimum Wage At All Costs All over the world, poverty has always been an issue, ever since the beginning of agriculture. Poverty is when a person is in the state of being inferior, or the state of being extremely poor. Regardless of how this sounds, if you’re not in the position, it probably doesn’t mean much to you. I believe that minimum wages are too low for the jobs that are only paid minimum wages. There’s thousands of jobs a person could have, and depending on your schooling or how much experience you’ve had, that could determine how much money you’re going to make. Some people believe that raising minimum wage would raise the earnings of many workers,

Try to imagine what it would be like if employee wages weren’t based on the skills they possessed or the quality of the products they produced. This may not sound like a good thing. But it is. If all companies were to pay their employees by determination of the work they produced, many companies would fail. Some people believe that if companies don’t pay their employees enough, that the employees will quit and find a job they feel fits their needs and satisfaction. But this isn’t always true in our economy, depending on how many available jobs there are in your city. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Among those paid by the hour, 1.3 million earned exactly the prevailing federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 1.7 million had wages below the federal minimum. Together, these 3.0 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 3.9 percent of all hourly paid workers.” Even though 3.9 percent doesn’t seem like a lot, considering all of the

Department of Housing and Urban Development.” This is just one of many things an employee has to worry about when it comes to employment and their wages. Personally, from living in Lincoln, I know that a two-bedroom apartment is still almost $800 a month, even though we’re talking about ten years later. Also, many working families have serious child care costs, and yet some quality child care businesses can be out of range for a low-income working family. According to the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, “in the median state in the 2004-2005 academic year, full-time infant care in a licensed child care center cost an average of $7,100 per year.” Because we have a lack of funding, child care subsidy programs serve only a small amount of those acceptable for the help they need. There are working families that really need child care, but can’t afford it. In these cases, they can try to rely on friends and family for help, or find lower-cost paid providers that likely offer lower-quality care. Raising minimum wage would be an important first step in our economy business. It would also create