Raising Minimum Wage: Helpful or Hurtful As a society, why do we argue that when minimum wage gets raised inflation will not occur? Raising minimum wage will have little effect on low wage workers; not only will it lower the incentive for low wage workers to further their education, but it will drive up the cost of living and taxes. Today’s society is facing many problems (such as poverty, homeless youth, and expensive healthcare) and raising minimum wage will not solve any of them. Many believe that once minimum wage gets raised it’ll be easier to live a more comfortable lifestyle which is not always the case. Once minimum wage gets raised so will the cost of living. A 2012 Wilson review stated: A 2004 “review of more than 20 minimum wage studies looking at price effects found that a 10 percent increase in the U.S. minimum wage raises food prices by up to 4 percent(Wilson 2). Although these numbers don’t seem high, they’ve risen since 2004 and will continue to rise as long as minimum wage continues to increase. …show more content…
If it costs more to pay low-skill employees, than employers could replace 2-3 employees with 1 skilled worker who can multitask and perform the job at hand well. Another thing to think about when considering raising minimum wage is healthcare. Many workers would rather make less on the hour and be able to have company sponsored insurance rather than make more on the hour and have those hours cut back and left to get Obama care exchange for insurance that they may not need. One more factor to consider is that supporter’s of this debate is that raising minimum wage will reduce poverty and homelessness. According to Forbes roughly 60% of the homeless do not work, the only thing raising the minimum wage does for them is make it harder to obtain a job (Dunkelberg 1). Therefore not only does raising minimum wage eliminate jobs from people but it does not help reduce poverty
The probability of minimum wage increasing without influencing inflation is low. Many consumer goods rely on minimum wage or close to minimum wage workers for production, shipping, and retail, meaning that if wages increase, the price of these goods will also increase.
When I read high schoolers and people who work at jobs that pay minimum wage say that raising minimum wage will solve everyone's problems, it honestly makes me think that they don't understand anything about the economy. When you raise the minimum wage, the price of essentials and necessities also increase. An example of this would be the 1970's, The price of everything was at a very low cost. Such as, Milk which was only $1.65 which today would be far better than the costly price of $3.67. Although you may be convinced that the 1970's seems an easier time to live in, you are actually quite inaccurate. While the prices of everything was low so was minimum wage at a meager one dollar an hour. The price all around of everything increases because
In the article: “The Pros and Cons of raising the minimum wage” it is said that the raise in minimum wage will cause a price increase. How can this happen? The article states: “Employers might income to support their more highly paid minimum wage employees, which could ultimately create a ripple effect for other shops and industries, resulting in a slightly higher cost of living” which will cause to raise the minimum wage once again. In other words, the effect of raising the minimum wage will cause to increase the price in the market so that the employers can pay their employees. Once again, those who work will keep on being on poverty and the idea of raising the minimum wage will be debatable
Would raising minimum wage benefit our society? Changing minimum wage could potentially hurt the economy. It would be nice to have an increase in pay; However it would only lead to inflation (The act of inflating or the state of being inflated Webster dictionary) with the economy.
Businesses simply can not afford to pay their employees more money for low skill jobs. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 38% of employers who currently pay their employees minimum wage said they would lay off some employees if the minimum wage was raised. Raising the pay may benefit a few employees, but it will also devastate the workers laid off. People putting in their resumes will have a much slower rate in getting jobs. As a result, the unemployment rate will increase and people will have to resort to relying on unemployment and welfare to pay their
The real question everyone wants to know is, is the minimum wage going to increase or will it remain the same? Let 's go back in time to where it all started in 1938. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the minimum wage to twenty-five cents an hour. FDR had a great statement about minimum wage and it 's not for little kids. The statement proposes "no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in the country" (Olsen). This is the original thought behind what we now know, today, as minimum wage. The problem is that other salaries have risen exponentially and the minimum wage has remained stagnant and has not kept up with inflation.
Increasing the minimum wage causes middle class Americans have less money in their pockets to spend. Representatives of both businesses and charities have almost unanimously stated that they will be forced to reduce their hours and staff size to conform to the wage increase (Englander). The risk of getting laid off or getting your hours cut because of a wage increase is ludicrous, considering said increase is meant to benefit those same people. San Francisco has recently increased their minimum wage to $15 an hour, and is starting to struggle to support it. The number of households in the area earning less than $25,000 a year is steadily growing,
Raising the minimum wage is a false idea that millions of Americans have; people believe it will put more money in their pocket and will be making more money than he or she is now. This is a wrong accusation to make. The people wanting to raise the minimum wage is the people of lower income levels. If the government raises the minimum wage, the cost of living is going to go up, guaranteed. Many people think that raising the minimum wage will help kids pay for school, when this actually encourages them to drop out early in the pursuit of money.
Raising the minimum wage would hurt the less fortunate families. It spreads income unevenly. Some people would receive more pay and others would lose their jobs making families and the economy suffer. If someone have a minimum wage job that pays $5.15 it is better than no job at $6.00 (Henderson). If someone has a job that does not pay well be thankful for it, it still provides for the
Having a higher minimum wage would mean that the job is worth more, making the job market more competitive. Employers are now forced to spend more per employee, causing more skilled and experienced workers to be desired. Companies may even begin to lay off employees they can’t afford to pay or begin to hire less (Geraghty). The combination of less jobs with stricter requirements would leave inexperienced young people unable to break into labor force, adding to the growing numbers of unemployed workers
Imagine trying to live off of minimum wage. Currently, that is only $7.25 an hour it is very difficult but millions of people worldwide do. That is why I am here, to raise the minimum wage. Even if we could get it up to “$10.10 an hour from $7.25 it would lift 900,000 people out of poverty.” The Congressional Budget Office estimates. Imagine if we could raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour that would help lift A lot more people out of poverty.
Many argue that raising the minimum wage makes hiring workers more expensive, eliminates jobs at the bottom, slows growth and ultimately raises unemployment. Economic studies show that raising the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation creates little additional harm, but what the president is
Minimum wage has been a topic that has caused mixed feelings from all parts of the United States and other countries and it continues to be a topic of interest to many. There are some that feel minimum wage it is not high enough to survive, while others feel if minimum wage is raised, so will the cost of goods, such as food, housing and cost of living in general, resulting in no change regardless of increase. There are many families that are living off minimum wage and can barely survive on it. The majority of these families are on either on government assistance and considered in the poverty lines thus impacting the lower class American population the most, or they are single mothers raising their families on one income. The purpose of
The most prevalent and steadfast myth surrounding the raising of the federal minimum wage is that it will doom the economy. This might seem logical at first, but just think about it for a second. Why do minimum wage employees need more cash? The answer is simple: To spend it, to buy the things that they and their families need to survive. “Most minimum wage workers need this income to make ends meet and spend it quickly, boosting the economy. Research indicates that for every $1 added to the minimum wage, low-wage worker households spent an additional $2,800 the following year” (Fair). Furthermore, EPI estimates that if the federal minimum wage were raised to $10.10 an hour, it would result in over
Some argue that if an increase in minimum wage is passed businesses will raise the prices of goods and services to help compensate the cost of pay raises. The cost in goods and services is already on an increase due to the high host of gas/oil, yet we are