Imagine an increase of unemployment, closing of businesses, and living costs. These would be results of an increase of minimum wage. The increasing change of minimum wage does not always result in beneficial ways. Would you want a hike in minimum wage if it could possibly raise the prices around you? Minimum wage is affecting employment, businesses, and how people live in ways that are unrewarding. In 2014, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that if the federal minimum wage raised in 2016 to $9.00 that about 100,000 workers would be unemployed. They also estimated if it were raised to $10.10 that about 500,000 workers would lose their jobs (“The Effects of a Minimum-Wage…”, 2015). With an increase of minimum wage companies would have
But would it? The Congressional Budget Office estimates that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would boost earnings for around 16.5 million workers, while causing up to 1 million jobs to be eliminated. To me that’s not a great trade-off: according to CBO, the typical family living below the poverty line would see its annual income rise by only around $300, or about 2.8%. But for up to 1 million workers, their salaries would go to zero.
Evelyn and Luis have a family of 3 children. Luis works for minimum wage as a mechanic Evelyn works as a nurse. The money they make goes for cable , the water bill and rent. They would like to have a lot money but are unable to. President Obama wants to increase the amount of money people are paid from $ 7.25 to $ 10.10 .
After thoroughly reading two articles by Surowiecki and Saltsman on if the United States raising minimum wage, the minimum wage should remain the same. To support this statement, Saltsman states that the people who live below the poverty line, in fact, are not poor because of minimum wage; Americans remain poor due to not working at a job. People continue to live in poverty because they lack the skills to even attain a job or look for a job. Even though Surowiecki claims that 46% of today’s families live off of a minimum wage worker, minimum-wage jobs weren’t meant to support families. Minimum-wage jobs were meant for teenagers and woman.
Since the election and reelection of President Barack Obama the increase in minimum wage has been a major topic for the United States. His proposal to increase minimum wage has sparked a lot of controversy with some Americans. Many believing that increasing minimum wage will have a negative impact on our economy and even our educational system. They argue that increasing minimum wages will harm the very people it was intended to help because it will increase housing cost as well as the price of consumer goods. They argue that it will decrease the high school enrollment rates at the same time increase dropout rates.
Minimum wage would raise the wages of many workers and increment benefits what disadvantaged workers. An estimated 6.9 million workers would receive an incrementation in their hourly wage if the minimum rage were raised to $10.15 by 2015. Due to the spill over effect the 10.5 million workers earning up to a dollar above minimum wage would withal be liable to benefit from an incrementation. Women are the most astronomically immense group of beneficiaries from a minimum wage increase. Sixty percent of workers who would benefit from an incrementation are women.
When you raise minimum wage you raise the price in everything else for instance if minimum wage was raised ten percent that also raises restaurant prices 0.7 cents that may not sound like a lot but it starts adding up sooner or later and who knows then it could raises prices a whole dollar. Some people think that because the cities they live in are so expensive that minimum wage should be raised but if you live in an expensive city and are also living off minimum wage and can not afford it then you should not be living there. Also women think that they can not have a good lifestyle for their children with what minimum wage is paying. If you are living off minimum wage and trying to raise children then maybe you should find a different job where you can afford a life for your kids. Minimum wage should be raised because the economy is at a point where if minimum wage is raised there would not be a drastic change.
With increasing minimum wage the government would receive more money from employees tax cuts and employees usually have lower wealth than other individuals in the economic marketplace. Tax liability increases can quickly erode the wealth of an individual living on minimum wage. Employees will also face higher payroll taxes, such as Social Security or Medicare, which can also reduce their immediate income. Also Governments increasing minimum wage levels often create a distortion in free market economies. Free market economies are usually driven by the economic theory of supply and demand.
In the US there has been a movement to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been $7.25 per hour since 2009. A goal within this movement is to raise the federal minimum to $15 an hour. This would be a 107% increase over the $7.25 minimum wage. The question is if it is possible to expect that the minimum wage could be raised to $15 per hour without making a massive negative effect, to be more specific affecting the U.S. fast-food industry. The fast-food industry is a great discussion to look at.
Increasing the minimum wage only does positive growth because “...authors found little or no evidence of a negative association between minimum wages or employment”. ("How Does a Federal minimum Wage Hike Affect Aggregate Household Spending?”) Increasing the minimum wage will only cause positive growth in a topic of employment. Raising the
It found that a $10.10 minimum wage, implemented by 2016, would mean higher earnings for 16.5 million workers, resulting in $31 billion more in higher earnings. It would also lift nearly 1 million people out of poverty. But it also found that an increase would reduce jobs slightly. “Once fully implemented in the second half of 2016, the $10.10 option would reduce total employment by about 500,000 workers, or 0.3 percent,” it projects. That figure takes into account what it says would be a decrease in jobs for low-wage workers as well as an increase of “a few tens of thousands of jobs” for others thanks to higher demand.
A person working full time at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour earns $15,080 in a year, which is 20% higher than the 2015 federal poverty level of $12,331 for a one-person household under 65 years of age, but 8% below the 2015 federal poverty level of $16,337 for a single-parent family with a child under 18 years of age (procon.org pro#2). If you put the minimum wage at $9.00, people will be able to live comfortably without unemployment rates going up. However, raising the minimum wage
In conclusion, a federal minimum wage increase will significantly improve the standard of living of low-wage workers. To meet their basic needs, workers must be given a living wage. It is not only morally correct to do so, but also beneficiary to both ends. The increase in wages allows for a more supportable income, but it also stimulates the economy.
There are a lot of potential benefits for an increase in minimum wage and on the surface it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t want to increase the wage. One of the clearest to see is that an increase to the minimum wage will also increase the spending for each household during the following years. So it works to help stimulate the economy in whatever area you increase the minimum wage. Along those same lines increasing the minimum wage will lead to a decrease in poverty as well. With the decrease in poverty you will also see a decrease in government spending on welfare items because the individuals receiving the higher wage in theory will be able to pay for these services/welfare items without assistance.
Many argue that an increase in minimum wage will help guide low skilled workers out of poverty and assist them into having a better career. That is not necessarily true, Many economists can agree that minimum wage jobs such as cashiers, host or a hostess are not jobs that meant to support a family. If anything by raising the minimum wage, it will put more people in poverty than guide them out of poverty. A raise in minimum wage will cause loss of jobs, an increase in the inflation rate, increase in
For instance, from the article “The effects of minimum wage” by David Neumark states that employers will try to keep away from low-skilled workers if the wage were to increase because it would cause them to be wasting money to train them; especially for students and high school graduates who are in absence of any work experience. With minimum wage increasing for the past couple of years it makes it difficult on employers who run small businesses to hire more new workers because they too are also citizens that have to pay their taxes and extra just to keep their business up and running. Such as the author Gina Kim who wrote the article “Minimum wage: helpful or harmful for small businesses” states that 85% of small businesses pay workers a bit more than the minimum to keep their workers interested in the job and they have to make profits out of their business to keep it on track. These businesses cannot innovate if the wage increases because then the labor market will pick up the prices on materials as well creating more of a problem for small business owners to keeping their company open for as long as possible and their solution would be to not hire a lot of employees. This pretty much explains the reasoning about how it will be troublesome for new fresh workers trying to just gain experience and get hard earned