Minimum Wage should not be Raised

The minimum wage is currently $7.25 that had started in the year of 2009. Yet, some people still do not think it is enough. The minimum wage had started off as 25 cents per hour in the year of 1938. Many would say that is crazy, because how did they survive with only being paid a quarter hourly. Many things was much cheaper back in the them times (not all things), although people fail to realize that raising the minimum will end up hurting Americans more than helping them.

Minimum wage is the minimum amount anybody can get paid at a job. There is still jobs that will pay less than $7.25; like being a waitress or a hostess. It is not impossible to make more than the minimum either. Most jobs pay based off experience or skills even knowledge of what you are doing. Minimum wage rising would cause other things to rise up also in prices, maybe not all things but majority of the cost of living will be raised.

Why do people think raising the minimum wage would be better for the society? Some will argue that it is not enough to keep up with bills even if you work part time. A lot of people do not see the importance of raising minimum wage and why it should not be raised, they only look at it at as making more money. There is still people out here that do not even know what can happen if the minimum wage is raised and why it is the way it is even how it became to be the way that it currently is. There is more to minimum wage than just raising it. How would raising the minimum wage affect our economy? In what ways? (Wolfram, Stoll 2018)

As mentioned before, it is not impossible to make more even less than what the minimum wage is. It can be a little difficult to get paid more but that is where somebody used their skills to show the job that they are worthy for getting a raise unskilled workers get paid less than skilled workers, and that is because the skilled worker knows more and is more experienced with what their job is.

People do not find it fair that a grown woman or man is getting paid the same amount as a high school teen. It is at their own fault that they are making the same amount as a teen, they had the same chance the teen had. Not knowing everybody situation but within time you can find a job that pays you over $10 an hour.

It might be challenging thing to do, for a felon to get a good paying job, but nothing is impossible in the generation we live in today.There is many opportunities especially in the’ generation today, to make lots of money in various ways. (The Balance Careers, 2018)

So what is really bad about raising minimum wage?Look at what is happening in massachusetts, Before other states jump on the $15 minimum-wage bandwagon.One of two states with a $10-an-hour minimum wage. Massachusetts increased the minimum wage from $8 to $9 at the start of 2015 and to $10 on the first day of 2016. Now the state is said to have huge amount of employment losses.

People who are for raising minimum wage are the ones who feel as unskilled workers deserve it, so they would not be living in poverty. The result of raising minimum wage will cause so many problems that americans are not fully aware of, or correctly informed about, it will cause many people to have to be let go because the people who are paying the minimum can not afford the higher wages so in that case, the employers have no choice but to let the people go. Business will go out of business. Our unemployment rate will increase rather than increasing. Many more will be living in poverty than they already are now. Americans who are for it also feel as that the reason for poverty is because the minimum wage is not high enough, but that is not what seems to be the case. The first standard minimum wage is formed under the 'Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the nationwide minimum wage was designed to lift millions of American workers out of poverty and to stimulate the economy'(Wittner).

The past year, many angry protesters that were working fast food were suggesting that the minimum wage goes up to $15 rather tha $7.25. Others feel that fast food employees should not have that option, knowing there is plenty more jobs that pay more than $7.25. Not knowing every person's situation, most people working fast food have the ability to find a higher paying job.There is people who actually get paid for their work and their effort unlike somebody just flipping burgers and taking orders to be paid $15 an hour. If any wage was to go up, it should be to factory jobs or construction workers, they do more for the community than anybody else in my opinion.

It would take a significant rise in productivity by fast food workers to where they could honestly earn fifteen dollars an hour. To put it in other words, the typical fast food restaurant works its employees for 40 hours or less a week, for the fact that after a certain amount of time the individual is considered a full-time employee and as such is awarded full-time benefits. Whether or not they spend said amount of time actually working is up to the level of business at any given time and their level of motivation on any particular day. The amount of work does not directly correlate to the time spent “at work” and to insinuate that it does implies willful ignorance. Factors like willingness to work, the coming and going of people from the restaurant, and the presence of a supervisor all affect work done in a day. The first of the aforementioned factors is possibly the most important because if someone is not willing to do work, then the other two will not matter to them.

Bernie’s message resonated throughout the disgruntled working class — the group was seeing stagnating wages and little job opportunities, while the majority of new GDP was going straight to the top one percent of earners.This resulted in a lot of anger towards the “greedy upper class,” who can afford personal yachts and private jets but cannot afford to raise their employee’s wages to a livable wage. If we follow Sanders’ lead and lift the federal minimum wage to $15, anyone working a full-time, 40-hour per week job would have an annual salary of $31,285. While these demands to raise the federal minimum wage may make a lot of sense to the average citizen, those who study economics see that increasing the minimum wage will lead to unemployment and inefficiency.

Because the resources of a firm are scarce, so is the amount of money that a firm can pay out for unskilled labor. When presented with an increase in the minimum wage, the firm must lay people off and stop hiring new people. This can result in massive unemployment in the short-term, the movement of jobs overseas and increased long term automation. To elaborate on this concept, let’s consider a hypothetical market between unskilled laborers and a firm that produces rainbow sprinkles:

Let the people say that Rainbow Sprinkle Co. makes $10,000 per hour for producing rainbow sprinkles. After the costs of the ingredients, factory maintenance and other fixed costs of production are controlled, the money that the company has to hire unskilled labor is $5,000 per hour. The company yields $5 an hour in sprinkles from each unskilled laborer, so Rainbow Sprinkle Co. is willing and able to pay 1,000 employees up to $5 an hour to do the work. Each year, Rainbow Sprinkle Co. pays out $10,400,000 to its employees. Each of those 1,000 full-time employees will earn $10,400 annually, which is not enough to live on. After a while, the sprinkle workers demand a higher minimum wage of $15 an hour, so that their job pay is enough to support a family. Faced with this new minimum wage, the Rainbow Sprinkle Co. must pay each employee three times as much as before. It seems like an easy solution, but Rainbow Sprinkle Co. still only has $5,000 per hour to pay for unskilled work. For every employee the Rainbow Sprinkle Co. keeps, it must fire two in order to pay the hourly wage of one. The firm also must pay $15 per hour to people who yield only $5 an hour in profit, making the Rainbow Sprinkle Co. take a $10 per hour loss per employee.

This new minimum wage has many unintended consequences. First, it reduces the overall number of people employed by two-thirds, and also reduces the firm’s efficiency due to that $10 loss per hour per employee. To compensate for this loss, the company will have to drive up the prices of sprinkles. Rainbow Sprinkle Co. will eventually move their factories overseas to a place where there is a lower minimum wage in order to stay competitive. With the new increased cost of human labor, they will spend more money on producing “sprinkle-bots” to take the place of workers. This new incentive to automate and leave the country will further increase the level of unemployment in the sprinkle sector and displace people from their jobs.

So to summarize why minimum wage should not be raised; it is not good for the economy. Think about all the small businesses even the big ones at that. Many jobs will be lost, unemployment rate will double up, poverty will rise. It is just not the best bet at this point. Citizens got to stop being lazy and go to school to get an education or just have to hustle, because there is many ways to making money and this is not false news.  

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