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.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the minimum wage was created in 1938 under the Fair Labor
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Small businesses, which make up a total of 55% of all jobs and 54% of all U.S. sales (Small Business Administration N.P.), would not be able to function normally while paying their employees $15 an hour. In order to do so, employees would have to be fired and prices of goods and services would have to be raised. Business owners would have to raise prices in order to afford higher wages, as a result boutiques would have to raise their clothing prices, restaurants would have to raise food prices and inflation would occur. Karen Heisler, the co-owner of Mission Pie bakery in San Francisco, California, where a law has recently been passed to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2018 says, “Our business is dedicated to [providing] high quality food at as low a price as we can, but we won’t have room to achieve that…” (Wang N.P.). Small business manager Shelby Sloan who works for Universal Beauty Supply and Salon in Oakland, California says, “It’s good that people are making more money… But as you raise the minimum wage, everybody raises their prices, too. Chili at Wendy’s used to cost 99c. Now it’s $1.49” (Wang