Against Raising the Minimum Wage

...

Minimum wage jobs are a stepping-stone to a better job. In my opinion, they are not meant for a person to live on or to support a family, unless you have another source. This gives teenagers the opportunity to save up money, gain experience, and move up from there. Jobs such as working at fast food restaurants, retail and department stores are not as challenging as being an accountant or doctor. This will also affect education because individuals would rather take a minimum wage job that they can live off of, but show a lack of true potential from neglecting college. Current minimum wage employees will be forced to do more work. In order to keep labor costs down, the minimum age employees will have to take on more responsibilities and job duties to make up the difference in the hours available. Since more people are willing to work for higher wage, the current minimum wage workers are more likely to be replaced by higher quality workers.

Raising the minimum wage hasn’t been enough to lift most out of poverty. This should go to show that the government should look into another method. Hiking up the minimum wage over and over should be a sign that it is not resolving poverty. “In 2011, the Census Bureau reported that the country’s poverty rate was 15.1 percent—the highest rate in nearly 20 years”(epionline). This is good news, unfortunately, there is little to no relationship between a higher minimum wage and reductions in poverty. Economists have identified three confounding factors. First, “many people living in poverty don’t work and thus cannot benefit from a higher wage”. Second, “a large number of minimum wage earners are not living in poor families”. Third, “raising the minimum wage can have the unintended consequence of reducing demand for the least-skilled employees” (epinonline). Below is a graph that shows the minimum wage in favor of poverty but not as big of an affect as the government would like.

[pic 4]

In an article by Drew Desilver states that, “The CBO projects that raising the federal minimum wage, now $7.25 an hour, to $10.10 by 2016 would raise incomes for 16.5 million low-wage workers, but also would cost about 500,000 workers their jobs. The office also estimated that such an increase would move a net 900,000 people above the poverty threshold — out of the roughly 45 million who are projected to be below poverty in 2016 should current law not change” (drew). This makes me question, how much more are they willingly to raising the minimum wage until they realize they need a new plan?

I offer an alternative to the minimum wage. If people would respect their money and understand the value of the dollar then they would have to learn skills that would promote them in the job market. The minimum wage could be kept for the handicapped and the disabled, people who for the most part aren't able to advance themselves in the working world. The most positive thing about the current minimum wage is that it is substantial enough to make teens respect their money, but also low enough to force them to save. It's been said that if we do not know our history, we will be doomed to repeat it. The argument over the minimum wage makes it abhorrently obvious that this statement is true. The time for action is now, before we are forced to start this cycle again.