Minimum wage helpful or disastrous for Americans Did you know that millions of minimum wage workers cannot make enough money to be over or at the poverty line level and are actually a lot more below it instead? There have been many issues on the topic of increasing the minimum wage from ten to fifteen dollars because it can cause inexperienced workers having a tough time getting or looking for jobs, families not being able to live on the minimum wage the way it stands now, and businesses not being able to create more jobs to hire more workers. For instance, an author named David Neumark believes that the effects of the minimum wage have a major issue that increasing minimum wage can reduce the numbers of jobs and pretty much screw over workers
Each year thousands of workers complain that they are not getting paid enough. They want to be able to afford things other than the basic necessities. What they do not know is that if the minimum wage were to be raised, they would be a lot more likely to make even less money- 0$ an hour. The minimum wage has been debated for years. Some say that raising the minimum wage will lift people out of poverty and provide a higher standard of living for everyone.
This, among other things, shows that the introduction of legislation to repeal all minimum wage laws is a good strategic decision for the economy in the long term. When minimum wage laws are set, disequilibrium occurs as wages are not set where demand equals supply. This increases the costs of hiring workers for businesses which then resort to firing workers or not employing more workers which, consequently, results in an increase in unemployment. This increase in unemployment gives birth to even more complex problems in a society. Not only that, but also, unemployment also affects individuals and countries as a whole.
As opposed to economical benefit, there are many limitations. One may be that the government loses great power status with a declining population. With a bigger economy, governments are able to have bigger armies, bigger production, etc. Having less people and more emigrants leaving their country, it is difficult to do so for many governments, including Germany itself. With a declining population, the government’s economy will, too, decline due to the little occupations/participations, low amount of taxes, henceforth increasing the taxes for each individuals (however, mentioned previously, this may be a better solution).
At some of the larger corporations, such as kmart, these benefits are only given to cashiers who have worked a certain amount of years or are full-time employees. Not having these benefits makes it even harder for the employees to make a profit from their salary. The only solution to these nationwide problems is to require benefits for more of the average employees in our workforce. Our wonderful nation does have laws requiring businesses to offer benefits to their workers who are full time or when they their are over a certain amount of employees. Therefore, this puts many cashiers in another heavy financial position where they are forced to spend their already low profit income on individual health insurance or other insurance options.
It seams to be that corporations tend to take the easy route by claiming for bankruptcies leaving many creditors with losses. Although we cannot blame such corporates, in today’s time this is known as one of the hardest time to search for jobs and stay alive as a business. Looking at it form the economic view bankruptcies are not the best thing to do, especially in today’s economic many of these corporates and small businesses help contribute to our economy. Many of these bankruptcies occur due to government decisions such as drastic minimum wage increases from $11.45 to $14.00 and $15.00 by
I believe that sweatshops should be illegal everywhere because of the treacherous working conditions and pay. No one should have to work long hours in really bad conditions for so little money. I believe the company should pay a lot more than than they normally would because if someone is working in a sweatshop, usually the really need money. If a deli clerk makes about $10 per hour, than a person who workers day and night in dire conditions should get paid more than a dollar a day. My problem with sweatshops was how little pay the companies gave their employees.
Globalization is a key theme that has been discussed in almost all of the above articles. Aguilar and Herod’s (2006) article argues that cleaners in the contemporary economy continue to suffer low wages and poor working conditions because of neo-liberalization. Neo-liberalization has resulted in many companies embracing the outsourcing of employees to save up on wages and social security benefits. From Banerjee’s (2007) article, it is clear that neo-liberalization and globalization are the main reasons that have led to an increase in working hours. This has made many companies restructure job designations because they want to maintain the long working hours and low wages.
Even through 100% Foreign Direct Investments investment in allowed in cash and carry and 51% in single brand, high duties and taxes on imported goods makes foreign luxury goods not affordable to lower-middle class. This is a socialist thought policy, which is implemented to compensate the subsidies on basic required products provided to people. Although it brings down the competition in retail sector local players have emerged at top of the sector and indirect foreign investment in their company. As global recession should have negligible effect in retail sector, it has affected all the departments of a country’s economy which caused in increased unemployment and last man situation as companies did lots of cost cutting to support operating cost. This paper states that crisis came as blessing in disguise which helped retail sector to operate with efficiency and correction in prices.
Lastly, recruitment of foreign workers could possibly be the easiest way to help overcome the shortage of local labor at construction sites . It is well understood that the major cause of manpower shortage is the employers’ reluctance to pay higher wages to the locals, which would consequently increase their expenditure (Abdul Rahim Abdul Hamid, Bachan Singh, Aminah Md Yusof & Nur Ahikin M. Abdullah, 2011) . For this particular reason, the number of local workers keeps lessening each year, resulting in a massive employment of foreign workers instead. The former Minister of Human Resources, Datuk Seri Dr Fong Chan Onn stated that despite Malaysia currently having about 1.8 million foreign workers, there are still hundreds of applications submitted every month by local companies to the Home Affairs Ministry, requesting to hire more foreign workers (Bernama, 2006) . The statement evidently proves that the demand for foreign construction workers is tremendously high, due to the shortage of local workers.