Minimum Wage Laws in America As cost of living continues to rise across the United States, America’s minimum wage remains the same. With a gallon of milk closing around four dollars and federal minimum wage at $7.25, one can understand how the minimum wage can be troublesome for our working class Americans. States such as California, New York, and New Jersey have some of the highest food and rental cost in the country. We must find the right balance and compensate for inflation, otherwise our lower class citizens will keep on struggling to support their families and themselves. With the cost of gas, food and utilities rising our low wage workers simply cannot keep up. According to Angelo Amador, U.S National Restaurant Association, 9 out of 10 supervisors start at these relatively low wages, and later on continue to move up the ladder and secure more well paid positons. When a full time mother or father has to …show more content…
Los Angeles is just one of many American cities using a rise in the minimum wage to try to address poverty and inequality. State and local governments are acting where the federal government has not. Just over half of American states have legal minimum wage rates above the federal minimum, which has stood at $7.25 an hour since 2009 (The Data Team, 2015). The big question with minimum wage is what should it be raised to? Well clearly some states should differ from others because the cost of living is much higher in states like New York versus a state like Virginia. A dramatic increase to 15.00 minimum wage is risky, and could prevent more problems, so the trick is finding the right balance to boost the economy and not create more job loss for Americans. Alan B Krueger
Should government raise minimum wage? Minimum wage is set at $7.25 an hour, and if minimum wage was raised to $15 an hour such as in California, California 's law will affect both a much larger number of people, and a much more diverse population of workers than any other measure to date. A few reasons why raising minimum wage is a bad idea is because current employees who get paid the minimum wage would be obligated to do more work. To keep labor costs low, these employees would have to take on additional duties and responsibilities to make up the difference in hours available. Since more people would be willing to work for more pay, the current workers would be likely replaced by higher quality workers or automated systems.
Raising the minimum wage has been one of the biggest debates during the 21st century. One side of the spectrum argues that raising it will make it so they have a living wage, while the other argues that raising it will hurt the economy. Whichever the case is, people are clearly divided on this issue. Before Oregon passed the 15 dollar minimum wage law, people wrote arguments to try to either prevent or pass this law. The article, “How a $15 minimum wage would affect a real business: Guest opinion” by Lee Spector argues that raising the minimum wage would hurt small businesses like the one he earns.
Compare to the charts depending of the cost of living there are some changes that can take place and raising the minimum wage stats whereas living can be better for society and Americans. Minimum wage is an issue still today and is debated word wide with eclectic audiences. Minimum wage will always be looked at s priority and poverty with low income and housing as a minority family. When the day has set and the family is around the dinner table for dinner then the issue of minimum wage comes up in the conversation, how can the family do better, what can we do to be middle class if not top class where the millionaires lives and the status of a millionaire. Not sure how a millionaire lives but comparing to the stats society is way off to another side of the map.
Cities are also allowed to pass minimum wage rates and several cities have recently adopted regulations that establish a higher minimum wage rates. For example, Los Angeles signed into law a bill that would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020 (Wattles). According to a Pew Research
But the people working at fast food chains and gas stations are still making minimum wage. “More than 400,000 workers make less than $15 an hour” (Lanzinger). The people who make minimum wage need to make more. The more money they make the more money they can spend for groceries and other stuff that is required for
Raising the minimum wage, a topic that has been plaguing the nation for years has finally made its appearance in Los Angeles. Many people argue that raising the minimum wage is helping everyone, distributing the nation’s wealth more equally, but that is definitely not the case. Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour in Los Angeles County is a double edged sword, helping many lower-income workers, but harming more middle class employees and employers. The intent of raising the minimum wage is to help many lower and middle class people. But, by raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour in Los Angeles County, the city is raising the standard wage by more than 50% within the span of 5 years.
Because the cost of living has welkin rocketed, it has become virtually infeasible to raise a family on a minimum wage job. A person living on his or her own cannot survive on minimum wage job either. Their living expense would just be exorbitant. The earnings of minimum wage workers are crucial to their families salubrity. Evidence from 2013 and 2014 minimum wage increase shows that an average minimum wage worker brings home more than a moiety of his or her family 's weekly earnings.
The topic of our debate is “The federal should raise minimum wage”. I am going to define the following terms: minimum wage- lowest legal wage that can be paid to most workers ($7.25). I the affirmative team believe the statements are true, our following contention will uphold my point: • Living Standard • Economy Contention 1: Living Standard Raising minimum wage will help many people that are in “living wage”. Living wage enables workers that can’t support their life and their families with a low amount of payment they get. Nearly 8 million Americans go to work every day yet still live the poverty line.
The federal minimum wage should be increased because raising it would increase the economic activity and spur job growth, decrease poverty, and also improvements in productivity and economic growth have outpaced increases in the minimum wage. Increases in job growth and economic activity will happen when the minimum wage is elevated. If the minimum wage was increased it will “inject 22.1 billion net into the economy and create about 85,000 new jobs over a three year period”. (“Raising the Federal minimum Wage to $10.10 Would Lift Wages for Millions and Provide a Modest Economic Boost") Thousands of new jobs will be created and it will put billions of dollars into the economy.
Introduction More numbers of state are joining to take action to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour in a few years even though there is a high disputing controversial all over the nation. The federal has set the minimum wage level to $7.25 on Jan. 1, 2015. In less than a year the index number of the minimum wage is going up automatically with cost of living. And eventually it will be likely to increase year by year with automatic and expectation index.
Since the Great Depression, there has been a minimum wage in America, but this minimum wage has changed 22 times since the Great Deprnbession. Many people say minimum wage should stay at $7.25 like it has been since 2009. Meanwhile, other people believe that minimum wage should be $15.00 so they can have more money to live comfortably. People think that a higher minimum wage will help, but it will hurt more people than it will help. If America makes the minimum wage $9.00, people will no longer be in poverty and it will make the economy balance out.
Many citizens of California would naturally think about prices of products when they hear that the minimum wage will increase. An online article, by PewResearchCenter, says that “..Since it was last raised in 2009, to the current $7.25 per hour, the federal minimum has lost about 8.1% of its purchasing power to inflation”. Even though this was news a few years back, it still shows the effects of having a raise in minimum wage. It shows that 8.1% being purchased have been increased into products. There will be no point in raising the minimum wage if the price of products goes up.
This poses the question: “Is the current minimum wage a livable wage?” The answer, unfortunately, comes back negative. The current federal minimum wage, at $7.25, is worth nearly 38 percent less compared to 1968 when the federal minimum wage was valued at its highest ($11.72 in 2016 dollars). Given the facts, it is justifiable to raise the federal minimum wage as it would amount to a more livable wage, stimulate the economy, and provide better circumstances for workers of color and women.
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.
New York is on track to having its minimum wage be $15 an hour (for a business with 11 or more employees) more than twice the national minimum!