Parker Hutjens
Economics - B3
February 9, 2016
Should we raise the minimum wage to $10.10/hour? Explain
There is a huge debate on whether the government should increase the minimum wage to $10.10 or if they should keep it the same at $7.25. Many jobs are starting to increase their minimum wages as a company but a good amount still start employees at minimum wage. Minimum wages should be increased to $10.10 nothing less for multiple reasons. The cost of living is very expensive and with making minimum wage it is almost impossible to be able to live on that. Also increasing the minimum wage would help decrease the amount of taxes we pay because this raise would have less people relying on social services. Lastly, raising the minimum wage would help the economy recover with the money the people make going right back into the economy and to local businesses. So, yes we should increase minimum wage to $10.10.
Over the past 50 years the cost of living has greatly increased which makes it very difficult to be able to live on minimum wage. The living wage for one adult is about $14.84 per hour which includes housing, clothes, food, and necessities to live. This is over double the amount people will receive while working a minimum wage job. Adults work on average about 40 hours a week and if they work all 52 weeks of the year at minimum wage they will be making about $15,080 before taxes which will accumulate to about $12,818 a year. This salary for a worker at minimum wage is only $1,048 over the poverty rate. If we decided to raise the minimum wage to $10.10, the salary will increase to $17,856 a year after taxes which is $6,086 over the poverty rate which will give the workers money to support themselves and even their children.
Aside from an increase in the cost of living, increasing the minimum wage would decrease the amount of taxes we have to pay because there would be less people relying on social services to be able to get by in life. When people are only making $12,800 a year, a thousand over the poverty rate, it's hard for people to be able to afford bills including food, clothing, and other necessary items. Social services, people that work at minimum wage have to often use include: medicaid, food stamps, WIC. Medicaid, a federal and state program that helps people in poverty pay for their medical and custodial care costs. While, food stamps are used by people in poverty that can’t afford enough food for themselves and their children. Lastly WIC (Women, Infants, Children), is a social service program that helps low-income women afford healthcare and nutrition. If we decide to increase the minimum wage, the amount of people on these programs will decrease because they will be getting paid more and will be able to afford food and healthcare. As less and less people rely on programs like: Medicaid, Food Stamps, and even W.I.C., less money will have to go into the programs which will decrease the amount of money we pay for taxes as taxpayers.
Lastly, making the minimum wage $10.10 would help the economy recover because many would be able to afford more goods and services. Over the last few decades economic growth has been increasing slowly. If we decide to make minimum wage $10.10 more people will have the chance the spend and put more money back into the economy. Doing this will not only help the economic recovery but most importantly will help increase the economic growth. “According to the White House, raising the minimum wage would increase the disposable income of 28 million people, which in turn would boost the bottom line of businesses across the country” (Tharawat). Having an increase of the minimum wage will have potentially 28 million people spend and put more money into the economy which will help it grow larger and larger.
Increasing the minimum wage for all workers around the U.S help the United States as a whole in many ways. First, the cost of living in the U.S is very expensive and when making minimum wage it is very hard to impossible to be able to live. Secondly, if we increase minimum wages we will end up decreasing the amount we have to pay in taxes, because less and less will be relying on social services. Thirdly, increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 would make them most likely spend and put more into our economy which would help the economy recover. After hearing this I hope that you agree that we should increase minimum wage because it will benefit everyone.
Work Cited:
- "4 Reasons People Need a $15 Minimum Wage." Jobs With Justice. 2015. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.
- "5 Reasons Why the U.S. Should Raise the Minimum Wage." 5 Reasons Why the U.S. Should Raise the Minimum Wage. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.
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ReplyDeleteParker, this is a good subject especially since many people do work minimum wage jobs, but there is a huge issue with your proposition. With the increase of minimum wage there will be an increase in the cost of living as more people are able to purchase nicer items. Then people who do not make minimum wage will have to make more money as well costing the country an unnecessary amount of money. This increase in money being distributed will have a greater disadvantage than advantage as inflation wil increase as well.
ReplyDeleteI think we should raise the minimum wage, and not just because of the fact that I work a minimum wage job but I work with a lot of older people who didn't have the money for college and have kids and work minimum wage and barely make it by. Raising the minimum wage would greatly help people like that who don't get compensated as much as they should. This post was very well written and has a lot of voice in it, you did a good job.
ReplyDeleteParker, good topic to write about, but I respectfully disagree with your stance. Raising the minimum wage would create inflation causing the dollar to be worth even less, and higher paid people would receive even less money. And with the higher wages the cost of living would be even higher, with all that money being spent on employees the price of the merchandise must come up from the higher wages. If low wage workers get paid more that price has to be recovered, and that will be recovered by the markup on living products making the price of living even worse. Raising the minimum wage would cause serious inflation and cost of living problems, keeping the minimum wage the same would be the best solution.
ReplyDeleteWhile everyone wants to make more money these fast food places will come up with ways to avoid paying people more. For example they could create tablets or screens to take the person's order. This would only leave the kitchen staff who have to make the food, and management. As nice as it would be to be making 10 dollars an hour most fast food chains are only interested in making more money than having their employees happy. Therefore they would find a way to replace the people in the jobs that can be done by a computer and just fire those people whose jobs just got taken by a tablet. Which is why raising the minimum wage is a bad idea because it would leave people out of jobs, and while the increase would help those in the kitchen staff it would hurt more people than help.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with you and we shouldn't raise the minimum wage to $10.00. For many reasons, because if we increase the minimum wage it's going to cause the inflation. And with that things are going to cost more. Also minimal wage isn't meant for a job that you can live on it is meant for teens. Therefore I disagree with raising the minimum wage.
ReplyDeleteI believe there are better ways to help the poor than to raise minimum wage. Although it'd be nice for most high school students around, one would not be likely to continue a minimum wage job if they plan on getting a higher education. If you decide to get a higher education then you should be rewarded by getting a higher paying job.
ReplyDeleteI think that we should not increase minimum wage, sure it may help with lower people on Social Services but it the long run everything will increase in prices. The reason behind this is because companies will have to start to charge more for what they are selling because they have to consider the money they now have to pay their employees. Soon that dollar menu at McDonald's will become a two dollar menu. Then again we don’t really know how it will change the economy in the long run. Plus how will it be if everything starts to rise in prices and immigrants want to come to america, transfer their money to the American dollar and basically have nothing because after the raise in minimum wage our dollar will cost even more compared to other countries.
ReplyDeleteParker, good topic to write about, but I respectfully disagree with your stance. Raising the minimum wage would create inflation causing the dollar to be worth even less, and higher paid people would receive even less money. And with the higher wages the cost of living would be even higher, with all that money being spent on employees the price of the merchandise must come up from the higher wages. If low wage workers get paid more that price has to be recovered, and that will be recovered by the markup on living products making the price of living even worse. Raising the minimum wage would cause serious inflation and cost of living problems, keeping the minimum wage the same would be the best solution.
ReplyDeleteI can tell you really studied your facts and you really went in depth with this but I respectfully disagree with your option. I believe that if we do raise the minimum rage then the cost of what ever they are selling will also go up in price. Also these places that have a minimum wage are places for people just looking for extra money, they are not meant to have a career here.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with your statement. When raising our minimum wage, inflation will increase and so will our taxes. Also, I believe that if you take the steps to get a higher education you should be getting paid more. Many minimum wage jobs provide no special skills/intelligence, so therefore, they should continue to be paid $7.25.
ReplyDeleteYou did a good job supporting your claim that increasing the minimum wage will help the economy. It has many benefits such as increasing people’s income which will get many people off food stamps. However, most minimum wage jobs are aimed at high school students as a starter job and are not supposed to pay much. If the minimum wage is increased, it might be an incentive for people to get a job that doesn’t require much education instead of working towards a college degree to get more money. Also, if the minimum wage increased, it might put small companies out of business since they have to pay more money to their employees. Overall, I think it would be best for the minimum wage to stay as it is because of these reasons.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your article about how increasing the minimum wage would help the economy as a whole. By increasing the wage it would allow people to have a higher wage and become more independent and not need financial assistance. However, increasing the minimum wage it might cause inflation because people will have more money. Also, it could cause more people to be out of jobs because companies can not afford the workers. Although in theory the increase in minimum wage seems like it would be a great idea for people who have minimum wage jobs it could cause more damage than good.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with this for minimum wage to be raised because minimum wage now won't be able to help pay for many of the expenses these days. A lot of things these days are expensive and are getting even more expensive as the days go by. With the minimum wage increasing that means people can get more money so they aren't in financial debt. There are some bad parts to increasing minimum wage. The biggest one is that the company that a person works for might not be able to pay all of their workers $10.10 an hour. Because the company might not have the money to pay their workers that much, they'd be forced to lay some people off.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with your statement, although this would benefit me and allow me to earn more money it wouldn't work out the way you think it would. The companies paying the wages still want to make the same percentage of profit therefore they'd either fire many workers to keep the amount that they'd pay in wages the same or they would increase the price of their products to retain their profit margin. Plus people can't live off minimum wage it's been proven you're tight about that but why should we just give them more money if they are preforming the same remedial task and haven't tried to work towards something better. The people that make enough to live in this country do so because they have something called a degree not a high school one but one from a university allowing them to have a career not a job.
ReplyDeleteI like the topic Parker because this is pretty relevant however I completely disagree with your statement. If we were to increase the minimum wage it will only lead to problems for the middle class and upper class, the people that actually educated themselves to get paid more. When raising our minimum wage, inflation will increase so the worth of a dollar would decrease and will this increase of minimum wage taxes would actually increase and the cost of living would also increase therefore hindering the people that actually work for their money. It is called minimum wage because it requires minimum intelligence/skill to do the job that you are asked to do, this income is not meant for people to live off of. So the best solution for everyone is to keep the minimum wage at $7.25.
ReplyDeleteParker, although you had a compelling argument for raising the minimum wage, I would have to disagree with your opinion. You stated in your post that if the minimum wage was increased, then people would have more disposable income on goods. However, if the minimum wage is increased, business owners will have to raise their prices of goods to compensate for their new loses. Although workers that received minimum wage will have more money, products will cost more.
ReplyDeleteI 100% agree that the United States needs to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would be way too much and would create many problems. If we raised the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, there will be positives and negative possibilities, just like every single controversial topic like this. I also agree that people rely too much on the government/our taxes for money and this needs to come to an end. This was a very well written post and I enjoyed reading it.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your article Parker. I have to disagree with raising the minimum wage. One, Because most of the minimum wage jobs are not for people in their late 20's and middle age humans. They are intended for young kids in high school who can have some money to pay for gas and some food if they wanted to go out with their friends. It wasn't made for people to live off of. Second, raising the minimum wage would raise taxes and also raise the prices of what things are. For example, McDonald's menu would increase their prices and it wouldn't be that cheap anymore. Lastly, you did a good job explaining the topic and going into full detail, but maybe you could've argued both sides and then have people choose when they write and see how they respond.
ReplyDeleteI do in fact believe we shouldn’t raise the minimum wage pay because of the fact of education and he requirements to receive those types of jobs, there aren’t many. If a person has a good education and learning tool and or skills to be payed a better wage then they should qualify for a more sophisticated. I see in my community that the majority of people who have minimum wage jobs are people in their mid twenties and under. Personally I believe that teenagers shouldn’t have that much to money that way because some don’t pay for things themselves and they don’t know what to do with all of the money they make. As for a responsible adult they would get paid much more because they actually have bills to pay and mouths to feed.
ReplyDeleteYou chose a great topic to write about, but I am going to have to disagree with your stance for a few reasons. The first is that minimum wage jobs were designed for high school age students to gain some working experience before stepping out into the real world, not for middle aged men and women who didn't receive and education and are now stuck with the same job they had in high school. That being said, raising the minimum wage would only encourage those unmotivated people to set the bar low for themselves and work a minimum wage job their whole lives, because they know that they would be able to support themselves off of higher pay with an easy job. If we truly want to improve our economy, our focus should be sending students to college to further their education so that they can receive a better job and contribute more to society. In addition to this, raising the minimum wage would cause a huge inflation and cost of living issues, as a few others have said before me. All in all, you wrote a great article with solid evidence, but I personally believe that increasing the minimum wage would only further damage our economy and the motivation of young people to receive an education.
ReplyDeleteI’ve not heard too many people argue your point of view. It’s an interesting way to look at things. However in the long run, all of the potential benefits of raising the minimum wage will eventually fade away. If we increase the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, a few negative things will happen. First, many others who currently make, say, around $11-$15 per hour will want a raise. If all of these low income people suddenly have so much more cash, it could make slightly higher income people jealous because they did not receive a raise. Secondly, money does not grow on trees. Businesses will have to charge more for their goods and services in order to compensate for paying their employees higher wages. This will all drive the value of a dollar down (the same loaf of bread will now cost $10 instead of $5). That increases inflation. Also, minimum wage is made generally for younger people with their first job, or inexperienced laborers. It’s not that hard to get into a better job once you have experience under your belt. Also, kids making minimum wage don’t need to support themselves alone. That’s what they have parents for. In short, raising minimum wage would have so many more negative (long-term) effects than positive effects.
ReplyDelete- Martin Mueller
Parker, great article. I agree that minimum wage should be raised, as it has not accounted for the drastic increase in the cost of living in the United States. A wage of $7.25 in another country less developed than the US would be more than enough to live on. For example, the daily wage in India is about $4, so a minimum wage of $7.25 would have you pretty well off. However, $7.25 is barely livable in such an expensive country as the United States, so it should be raised.
ReplyDeleteI think this was a very important topic to talk about because it is so highly debated. While I don’t agree with your views on raising minimum wage (while I believe we should not raise it). I think you left out some key details why the cost of living has increased and one of the main reasons is because of minimum wage increasing throughout the years because with a higher minimum wage all goods are expected to have a raise in price. However you did have very good evidence about taxes and how those would be lower due to the raise of minimum wage. However, minimum wage jobs are not supposed to be a career, they are for teenagers to just get some cash.
ReplyDeleteVery rarely do I hear of someone that supports raising the minimum wage, but your argument is very persuasive. Although, personally I disagree solely because most minimum wage paying jobs are for teenagers or college students, not so much for adults that have gone to college and received a degree. Because of this case I do believe that minimum wage paying jobs should stay at $7.25/hourly. I don't think that most teenagers need to pay for their college all by themselves and college students can take out a loan that they can pay off once they receive a degree and get a job that pays above minimum wage. Any adults that are working minimum wage jobs do have financial struggles because of $7.25/hourly is not enough to live on, but I don't believe we should increase this because of the adults trying to live off of $7.25.
ReplyDeleteParker, I really enjoyed reading your post. I agree that minimum wage should be raised. When you only make $7.25 an hour, you can't live off that in the United States. Even if minimum wage was increased to $9.50 an hour, that would still be better than $7.25 an hour.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that the minimum wage should be raised, that also means that taxes and prices of other material items are going to increase. Especially in fast food places. Cousins Subs wouldn’t be able to pay their employees $10.10 an hour if there sub costs are only $5. The company then would start to lose profit. It’s unfair to those who have a minimum paying job and also have to support a family but I’m sure they would rather get paid $7.25 an hour instead of paying let’s say $8 for just one sub that could only feed one person. It’s something that’s been talked about for years and because it’s been talked about so much and often I don’t think that the government will actually go through with actually raising the minimum wage.
ReplyDelete-Kristie
First of all, nice job supporting your information with valid sources. It really shows how much work you put into this post. However, there are a few things you seemed to miss. Raising minimum wage will only affect people who are currently making minimum wage. The people who earn more than that right now will remain uneffected. Another thing to remember is that if we raise minimum wage, companies will be forced to increase prices and let people go. This is a huge problem, especially for small companies, as now they will have less workers and/or higher prices which makes it harder for them to function. Most importantly, raising the minimum wage to $10.10 will only help people for a few years at max. The prices of necessities will rise along with minimum wage in order to keep the businesses functioning. Taxes may go down for a short amount of time, but they will return to the current prices and they may actually increase afterward. Overall, you did a nice job giving us as much information as possible, but there are always two sides to the same coin. You didn’t really have much information to counteract the negatives of raising minimum wage, which is important in these kinds of arguments.
ReplyDeleteThese are really good points as to why minimum wage should be increased. However, I disagree that increasing the minimum wage will help afford the cost of living. If the minimum wage is increased, then the price of goods and stuff that we buy will need to increase also. Otherwise, money would just lose it's value.
ReplyDeleteI agree that minimum wage should be raised, I would also like to have a billion dollars, but there's no way I'm getting that. You fail to acknowledge the opportunity costs. An article (http://goo.gl/2sO92k) states that it would cost the US $175 billion to take everyone out of poverty, which is roughly what raising minimum wage would be doing. One can’t just raise minimum wage, the money has to come from somewhere, and the negative effects could be a whole different topic.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very controversial topic in the world today, I think you did a very good job of proving your point and making me believe that the minimum wage should be raised. I myself did not think minimum raise should be raised, due to the fact that if everyone was making more money prices would be raised, but after reading your well developed points I have changed my mind.
ReplyDeleteBeing a teenager, and recognizing that this issue has a large effect on me personally, I believe that the minimum wage should be about $10/hr. If we were to raise the minimum wage, a mass majority of our economy would vastly improve. Welfare and other social services would be minimized because it would provide more financial support to low income families. It would also benefit other families, middle class family who have to pay hefty taxes to the government to support social services, the overall cost of living would improve for everyone's advantage. And the large poverty rate in our country would be decreased. So for these reasons alone, the minimum wage should be made higher to not only help the impoverished citizens, but the middle class family as well.
ReplyDeleteGreat article, but I completely disagree. First of all, minimum wage jobs like fast food restaurants are for high school and college students that are learning how the economy works and learning how to properly save and spend money; these jobs are not for adults trying to live fulfilling lives and raise a family. Second, if minimum wage is increased then the cost of living and the prices of things would increase as well. When people have more money to spend the prices for food and other necessities increase. There will become a bit of inflation. Yes, raising minimum wage would stimulate the economy from increased spending, but forcing small businesses and companies to raise minimum wage would mean they are profiting less unless they raise the prices of their goods. It also means that if a company couldn't afford to pay more to a lot of workers, people would be getting let go so their business could continue. Raising minimum wage will have very negative long term affects and will eventually hurt the people and the economy more than help it, therefore meaning it shouldn't happen.
ReplyDeleteAlthough making more money would be nice, I don't believe we should raise the minimum wage. Minimum wage is for high school and college students looking to make enough money to go out with their friends and pay for basic things such as gas and fast food. The majority of the people arguing for the increase in minimum wage are adults who have to live on their own. If adults are working at a minimum wage job, that is their fault they never went out to pursue a higher paying job. If the minimum wage was increased, it would also increase the prices of goods produced by the stores. For example, there would be no more dollar menu at McDonald's because they'd have to raise the prices to pay for their employees. Also, if minimum wage was increased, the server's wage would have to be increased as well. The server's minimum wage is $2.13 per hour because they make their money off of tips. If they get paid more than that, their service would decrease because it wouldn't matter if they made a lot of tips or not.
ReplyDeleteThis is another topic that is highly debated with the upcoming election. If we increase the minimum wage there will be inflation and the possibility of decreasing the availability of jobs. Some of the small businesses will not be able to keep up with these high wage requirements. Also the price of most items will increase so the cost of living will go up with the increase of this wage. Although it would be really cool to make more money, there are some setbacks to this.
ReplyDeleteIt may seem that raising wages would be a simple solution to poverty, however many problems arise when you actually do raise wages. The first issue you run into is that companies will start cutting down on the amount of people they employ due to the higher cost of using that worker. The second of these many issues is that by raising the minimum wage companies will raise the prices of their products which will increase the cost of living. Also jobs that pay minimum wage are not meant for people to make a living off of they are intended for students who don't have to pay for all the things entailed in the cost of living. Ultimately I feel that the benefits of raising the minimum wage are far out weighed by the problems that it would cause.
ReplyDeleteYour post was very insightful and included good facts and evidence; however, I would still caution people in regards to raising the minimum wage. Yes more money is generally a good thing but we have to remember that the money has to come from somewhere. Employers, especially smaller businesses, will suffer greatly because they cannot afford to hire workers at a higher rate. Simple economic analysis tells us that an employer will have to either hire less workers when the MC is greater or artificially increase marginal productivity by increasing prices. Aside from that, an increase in the minimum wage in no way helps the unemployed or those who aren't working or looking for a job to begin with, another big issue.
ReplyDeleteI agree somewhat with your claim to raise minimum wage, but your data isn't as well thought out. The biggest problem I saw with your data is that taxes wouldn't drop at all, in fact they would rise. Most taxes are not a single monetary value that you have to pay, they are a percentage of your income. Also most social security taxes help yourself in the long run as well, seeing as though it is used mostly to provide for the elderly and disabled, those who can't work as often or as much as the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteParker, I agree that the minimum wage should be raised to improve the quality of living for American citizens. Raising the minimum wage allows more people to become independent of government welfare assistance and raises the living standard. According to the concept of the invisible hand, with more money circulating in the economy, businesses will profit from more consumers, and overall improving the economy. Overall, this was a great topic choice that had good amounts of evidence to support your opinion.
ReplyDelete