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Raising The Minimum Wage Essay

1313 Words6 Pages

The minimum wage has been changing and debated over since it was established in 1938. Many argue that minimum wage should be increased to compensate for rising inflation. Some activists also argue that one cannot make a living off minimum wage alone. Others claim that if the the minimum wage is increased, then corporations and other business will respond to their increase in expenses by laying off employees, and turning to technological advancements to replace the unskilled labor. There are many causes and effects of increasing the minimum wage that delve into the advantages and disadvantages it has on society (“Minimum Wage,” 2015).

There is a federal minimum wage, however, some state have chosen to increase their wage based on inflation. …show more content…

Clinton signed the H.R. 3448, the Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996 into law to help the millions of Americans working the minimum wage and their families. The Act pushed up the minimum wage from $4.25 to $4.75 an hour and took effect October 1, 1996. Another increase followed this by adding an additional 40-cent up to $5.15 an hour on September 1, 1997.

Raising the minimum wage would benefit more than just teens working summer jobs. Only 14% minimum wage workers are teenagers; the other 86% that would benefit from a higher minimum wage are 20 or older. While 29 states do have a minimum wage already higher than the federal minimum wage, that leaves 21 states and 38 million workers who are not benefiting. Families would also benefit from a raise; 30% of minimum wage workers have children.

The majority of disadvantaged citizens work minimum wage jobs. For example, Target is goes out of its way to employ disabled citizens. Business that hire such workers actually receive government benefits for doing so. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) is a Federal tax credit available to employers for hiring individuals from certain target groups who have consistently faced significant barriers to employment (Work Opportunity Tax Credit). Not only does this program help the handicapped, but it also helps release criminal offenders obtain a job and start fresh. Raising the minimum wage would benefit these workers and help better their way of

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Basically, a minimum wage is the lowest a company can legally pay his or her employees, You can get paid more you just can't get paid less than minimum wage. So the minimum wage was signed into the act on June 25th, 1938 by President Theodore Roosevelt. The first ever minimum wage was .25 cents an hour, Today the minimum wage is 7.25 but back then there wage compared to today would be about 4 dollars an hour. About 70 million workers are paid an average hourly wage at the age of 16 or older and of that 70 million

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As a country, we’re facing an epidemic where finding steady employment is hard and the cost of living is high. This has caused many people to work a minimum wage job and struggle with paying rent and etc. A solution proposed to solve this problem would be to raise the minimum wage to something that a person could survive off of. However, this controversy has caused a debate between people who are split on the issue. There are people who are for it and people who are against it.

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Federal Minimum Wage In 1938, the federal minimum wage was established by Congress under the Fair Labor Standards Act, initially set at $0.25 an hour. President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed it as part of the New Deal to protect workers during the Great Depression. An increase in the federal minimum wage has been an ongoing subject of controversy in the US, because of the perceived gap between the actual minimum wage and the need for a true “living wage.” Congress has kept the federal minimum wage the same since 2009 when it went from $6.55 to $7.25.

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There has been a growing controversy surrounding the federal minimum wage and whether it should be raised to $15 dollars an hour or not. Many American minimum-wage working citizens support the notion that the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour should be raised to $15.00 per hour, based on the fact that a job which pays $7.25 an hour will not provide the funds necessary to support themselves or their families. While a pay-raise may seem to be the solution to their problem, raising the federal minimum wage would do more harm than good. The federal minimum wage should not be raised to $15.00 an hour because it is not economically feasible, and would hurt small businesses.

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As of January 1st, 2018, eighteen American states increased the minimum wage because the national minimum hasn’t been adjusted for inflation in years. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 which is worth twenty-five percent less than it was worth in 1968. This has far-reaching effects, whether it be on the economy or poverty levels. Raising the minimum wage wouldn’t just improve these metrics, it would also create income equality for gender and racial income gaps. It is simply is in the United States’ best interest to raise the minimum wage so that our country can thrive.

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The year 2007 marked the creation of the Fair Minimum Wage Act which incrementally raised the minimum wage over the next two years; the first enactment of change in ten years (“Federal Minimum”). The minimum wage is the lowest hourly rate at which most employers may legally pay their workers and it is meant to protect employees from labor exploitation in the United States (Encyclopedia). The current minimum wage is $7.25, a person who works a forty hour work-week earns approximately $15,000 yearly; although some states have a higher minimum wage. The controversy of raising the minimum wage has been in the headlines for the past couple of years; the argument relates to the impact it would have on all pay grades, not just the 2.5 percent of low

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Many Americans believe that it is the answer to the problem of rising living cost and inflation, but it might not be. Raising the minimum wage displays a positive outcome in the short term, but an atrocious outcome in the long term affects. According to a recent survey of economist, conducted by University of Chicago many economists believe that it would be “noticeably harder for poor workers to find jobs”. This is believed due to the high cost imposed on businesses to meet the floor level of $15.00 an hour for labor therefore, higher prices for labor means for a lower need. A similar reason as to why the raise of the minimum wage would produce negative outcomes is due to the ever growing field of technology.

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