Minimum Wage Should Not Be Raised

A controversial topic often debated between liberals and conservatives is the minimum wage issue. While many liberals advocate for raising it, a number of conservatives are persistent on keeping the rate constant; however, studies show that raising minimum wage would not alleviate this country’s poverty issue and would, in fact, increase the unemployment. For these reasons, the minimum wage should not be raised.

Increasing the minimum wage would cause economic strain in many ways to workers already living in poverty. According to James Sherk’s article: ‘Raising the Minimum Wage Will Not Reduce Poverty’, raising minimum wage to seven dollars and twenty five cents would cause an estimated eight percent of current workers to lose their jobs. Another statistic suggests that if it were raised by ten percent, the minimum wage would reduce employment by two percent (Sherk). In addition to this financial problem, those workers whose wages are increased will not be able to work for the same number of hours as before the raise. Neumark, an economist at the University of California explains that workers who already earn near the minimum wage will be affected positively; he suggests that “net adverse consequences for low-wage workers” will begin to occur. Raising minimum wage may help some workers, but the majority may be

Although a minority of workers will experience pay raise or may even be brought out of poverty, the majority of workers would face unemployment and, if not that, would only be allowed to work for a short period of time in order for their bosses to compensate for the raise in mandatory pay. Also, some economists dispute that raising the minimum wage will have little to no effect on poverty rates altogether. For these reasons, I do not believe the minimum wage should be