What is the Minumum Wage?
The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. This translates to an annual income of about $15,000 a year for someone working 40 hours per week.
In 2011, more than 66 percent of Americans surveyed by the Public Religion Research Institute supported raising this figure to $10. The charts that follow illustrate some historical trends that are interesting to look at within the context of the debate over what the minimum wage should be.
What Should the Minimum Wage Actually Be?
Between the end of World War II and the late 1960s, American productivity and wages grew steadily. And why wouldn’t they? We were the only major industrialized country whose economy had not been devastated by a major war. The minimum wage peaked in 1968, and since that time increases in productivity outpaced the minimum wage growth.
Put another way, the purchasing power of the minimum wage in the late 1960s was nearly $9.54 an hour (in 2014 dollars). That’s more than two dollars above the current level of $7.25 an hour!
While raising the minimum wage to $9.54 would provide a large improvement in living standards for millions of workers who are currently paid at or near the minimum wage, it is worth asking a slightly different question: what if the minimum wage had kept in step with productivity growth over the last 44 years?
Alternatively, rather than just hold constant our purchasing power at the 1968 level, suppose that our lowest paid workers had shared evenly in the economic growth over the intervening years? What would they be paid if that had occured? (and why does it seem so far fetched that workers should get a slice of the profit from the increased productivity that hey they produced?). This brings up another related question: what is the appropriate wage floor for the labor market?
During the years from 1947 to 1969, the minimum wage actually did keep pace with productivity growth. (This might also be true for the decade from when the federal minimum wage was first established in 1938 to 1947, but we don’t have good data on productivity for this period.) For more on these trends see the Center for Economic Policy Research website.
In another study, economists found that the minimum wage would have reached $21.72/hour in 2012 if it kept up with increases in worker productivity [see the study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research]. That means when we adjust the minimum wage for BOTH inflation AND increased worker productivity (which has more than doubled since 1968), the minimum wage would be much higher than it is today.
Consequently, even though advancements in technology and worker productivity combined have increased the amount of goods and services that can be produced in a set amount of time, wages have remained relatively flat while this occured. Why?
[Note: “Inflation” is the term economists use to describe an economic trend, where there is a general increase in prices accompanied by a loss of purchasing power/decreasing value of money].
Alternatively, a study from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), found that a minimum wage increase to $15 per hour would likely eliminate about 1.3 million jobs by 2025, or roughly 0.8% of payrolls nationwide, and possibly as many as 3.7 million.
The CBO recommends a gradual increase over time.The data, they say, suggests an increase to $10 an hour would have the least detrimental effect on employment levels. This study, however, did not break down industry sectors, and rather attempted to forecast trends by looking at the economy as a whole, which is difficult to accurately project.
Recent Trends
More recently, during the years 2000 to 2012, workers boosted their productivity by 25 percent. In spite of this substantial increase, which had a pretty sizeable impact on the bottom line profitability of their respective firms, workers saw their earnings FALL rather than rise.
Alternatively, during this same time period, the top 1% of wage earners saw their earnings increase dramatically – more than 33%. This development is why some leading some economists refer to the early 21st century a “lost decade” for American workers. You don’t have to have a degree in economics to process all of this. Just ask yourself a simple question: Does this seem fair?
Bear in mind now, if you are one of the people arguing against the workers who want to be paid $15/hour (a rate far less than what these charts say the wage should be), you are arguing in favor efforts to intervene in sacrosanct “markets” to maintain wages at an artificially low rate.
Put another way, you are taking the proverbial “hidden hand of the market” and using it to bludgeon workers as you argue to tilt the wage scales to favor wealth interests (not waged labor). That is, you would rather let corporate owners increase profits on the backs of the many workers who produce their wealth.
To put these charts into greater relief, if the minimum wage had grown at the same progressive rate as the earnings of the top one percent of Americans, the federal wage floor would be more than triple the current hourly minimum of $7.25 (over $21.00 per hour).
This clearly did not happen. Instead, the minimum wage has been lower than a poverty wage since 1982.
In 2015, President Obama called for increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by the end of 2015. He argued that after 2015, increases in the minimum wage should be tied to inflation, with the minimum wage rising in line with the consumer price index. While this incremental step is not sufficient in the eyes of many labor advocates, it’s still better than not raising the minimum wage and letting it remain flat.
The $15 minimum wage has become a campaign issue in the 2020 presidential race, where bills calling for the so-called “living wage” have been introduced in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. The CBO report (Central Budget Office) has reported data on the House version, which is very close to the measure that was introduced in the Senate by Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Today, more than 19 states and the District of Columbia have a higher wage floor (higher than the federally mandated minimum wage). New Jersey later followed as they became the 11th state to index their wage to the cost of living/inflation. (Graph courtesy of Sam Waldman at the American Prospect).
New York state also just implemented a $15 wage policy for state workers (City University of New York workers, who are also state workers, were surprisingly singled out by Governor Cuomo and excluded ).
Some local governments took things even further, like the Seattle/Tacoma commerce region, as they put into effect a local $15 minimum wage.
2020 Update:
Since the Fight for $15 was launched by striking fast-food workers in 2012, states representing approximately 21 percent of the U.S. workforce—California, Massachusetts, New York, and the District of Columbia—have approved raising their minimum wages to $15 an hour.
Additional states—including Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, Missouri, Michigan, and Maine— approved minimum wages ranging from $12 to $14.75 an hour.
Seattle’s experiment has been running for more that 5 years. Here are two studies published by the University of Washington that discuss results in two different industries (child care and food stores).
How many people earn the minimum wage?
The short answer is: Not many. But that’s also the wrong question.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.57 million Americans, or 2.1 percent of the hourly workforce, earned the minimum wage in 2012. More than 60 percent of them either worked in retail or in leisure and hospitality, which is to say hotels and restaurants, including fast-food chains.
If you want to honestly debate the merits of raising the minimum wage, however, you need to think beyond who earns it today. After all, there are millions of workers making $8 or $9 an hour assembling burgers or changing sheets who might be affected by a hike.
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that even if Washington increased the minimum wage to $10.10, some 21.3 million employees would eventually be guaranteed a raise, assuming they kept their jobs.
- According to 2019 analysis, gradually raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2024 would lift pay for nearly 40 million workers— 26.6 percent of the U.S. workforce.
- Two-thirds (67.3 percent) of the working poor in America would receive a pay increase if the minimum wage were raised to $15 by 2024.
- A $15 minimum wage would begin to reverse decades of growing pay inequality between the lowest-paid workers and the middle class.
- Failure to adequately increase the minimum wage accounts for 48 percent of the increase in inequality between women at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution since 1979 (page reference, Economic Policy Institute).
Of course, other companies could follow along with the federal increase and elect to adjust their wage scales upwards to reflect changes in the cost of living for wage earners across all occupations. This would address the complaints of those people fixated on the income of paramedics (or fill in the blank occupation) relative to burger flippers.
Speaking of paramedics, here’s one paramedic’s response to the controversy:
Raising the Minimum Wage Helps People of Color (POC)
One puzzle piece missing in the graphics presented here are the demographic variables of “race” and “ethnicity,” which tend to be deeply intertwined.
Since racial minorities are over-represented among the minimum wage workforce, raising the minimum wage to just $10.10 would effectively lift 3.5 million people of color out of poverty.
Nearly two-fifths (38 percent) of African Americans and one-third (33 percent) of Latinos would get a raise if the federal minimum wage were increased to $15
Many POC people qualify for food stamps, even though they work full-time jobs. Whenever this happens – and it happens a lot – U.S. taxpayers are effectively subsidizing giant corporations with their tax dollars, as they clearly earn sufficient profits that would permit them to pay their people a higher wage (Walmart, Amazon, etc.). Think of it as “Corporate Welfare.”
The Typical Beneficiary
The typical person who would benefit from a federal minimum wage increase is, according to analysis, a 35 year old woman who works full-time and takes care of children.
- Fewer than 10 percent of minimum wage earners are teenagers, while more than half are prime-age adults between the ages of 25 and 54 (this is where a lot of people went to work when they lost their previously held “good jobs.”
- More than half (58 percent) are women.
- 60 percent work full time.
- Nearly half (44 percent) have some college experience.
- 28 percent have children.
- The average worker with a spouse or child who would benefit from a $15 minimum wage provides 52 percent of his or her family’s total income.
Top Reasons to Raise the Minumum Wage
1. It Will Put Money Into The Pockets Of Hard-Working Americans. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 will raise wages for 28 million workers by $35 billion in total. Since many of those workers will turn around and spend that money, that is a huge boost for the economy.
2. It Will Reduce Income Inequality. The average CEO shouldn’t make 933 times more than a full-time minimum wage worker.
3. It Won’t Hurt Job Creation. States have raised the minimum wage 91 times since 1987 during periods of high unemployment, and in more than half of those instances the unemployment rate actually fell. Over 600 economists signed a letter agreeing that a minimum wage increase doesn’t hurt job creation.
4. It Is Unlikely To Significantly Impact Prices. A higher minimum wage would mean a DVD at Walmart will cost just one cent more.
5. It Would Help People Get Off Of Food Stamps. A study by the Center for American Progress found that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would help 3.5 million Americans get off food stamps.
6. It Will Save The Government Money. The same CAP study found that, in conjunction with helping people get off of food stamps, raising the minimum wage would save the government $46 billion over 10 years in spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as people earn enough on their own to no longer qualify.
7. It Will Improve People’s Economic Security. It is no longer the case that the people making the minimum wage are largely teenagers. In fact, now more than half of workers earning under $10.10 an hour are forced to support themselves on that as their primary income.
8. It Will Lift People Out Of Poverty. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office states that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would lift 900,000 people out of poverty. For full time workers earning the federal minimum wage, this bump would give them a raise of over $4,000 dollars — enough to take a family of three out of poverty.
9. Businesses Recognize That They Will Also Benefit. Many successful businesses, such as Gap and Costco, already pay their employees wages above $10.10. They do this so they can “attract and retain great talent“. And 60% of small business owners recognize that their businesses would benefit if we raise the wage.
10. Millions Of Children Will Be More Secure. If we raise the minimum wage to $10.10,21 million children will have at least one parent whose pay will go up.
Still Not Convinced?
I thought minimum-wage earners were mostly just suburban teenagers. Is that true?
Think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, which is funded by political donors, would like you to think this is true. Often, we find conservative groups argue that, contrary what is argued by liberals, most of the minimum wage workforce isn’t really made up of desperate parents struggling to make ends meet. They say the wage force consists of middle-class teens and married women who live above the poverty line that want to work part-time while raising young children. Now, they’re not all wrong about this, but they are deliberatly misleading us.
Teens, it has already been shown, are represented in this labor pool but they do not represent the largest demographic sub-group in the minimum wage work-force (between 10 and 12% of minimum wage workers are teens). So let’s dispel that once and for all; the vast majority of minimum wage workers aren’t teenagers!
Interestingly enough, 62 percent of those under 25, who are eargning these wages, are according to Heritage enrolled in school. This means that this group is doing precisely what everyone argues they should do – they are upgrading their skills to get a better job. In other words, they are not planning to make a career out of folding snack wraps.
Among minimum wagers older than 25, Heritage notes that the average household income is $42,000 a year. Is that poverty? Not unless you’re a single parent with eight children (or trying to pay rent as a single person in New York City). But is it rich? Of course not. In fact, it’s still well below the median household income of $51,000.
I get it. It’s complicated. But what does the research say about the impact of raising the minimum wage?
Ask a liberal economist, and they’ll likely point to a 2009 study of studies by Hristos Doucoullagos and T.D. Stanley that pooled together the results of 61 different research papers published over the decades. When averaged together, the results suggested that raising the minimum wage had close to zero impact on employment (to the extent that jobs might be lost). An increase of 10 percent in the minimum wage, they found, might reduce employment by about 0.1 percent, which they concluded had “no meaningful policy implications.” “If correct, the minimum wage could be doubled and cause only a 1 percent decrease in teenage employment,” they wrote.
So fears of jobs being lost or replaced with automation are largely exaggerated. According to the data, taking small losses to jobs would be a worthy sacrifice, considering the raises other workers would receive. In short, the change is almost certainly worth it.
If raising the minimum wage doesn’t kill jobs, who stands to benefit the most? The poor, or the middle class?
Mostly the middle class. As was discussed up top, most minimum-wage earners don’t live under the poverty line. So you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that most of the people who stand to gain from raising it are also not in poverty.
A 2010 study by Joseph Sabia and Richard Burkhauser, who fall on the solidly conservative side of this issue, finds that if the minimum wage were increased to $9.50 from $7.25, only 11.3 percent of beneficiaries would live in impoverished households.
So maybe it’s better to think of the minimum wage as a way of getting more money to the broader working class.
This might sound like a selfish question, but how much more expensive would my hamburgers get if we raised the minimum wage?
You’re not being selfish at all! If raising the minimum wages caused a lot of inflation in the economy, it might cancel out the benefit to workers.
Thankfully, the studies and evidence suggest that probably wouldn’t be the case. Sara Lemos reviewed the literature on this topic and found most studies report that a 10 percent US minimum wage increase raises food prices by no more than 4 percent and overall prices by no more than 0.4 percent.” (see Seattle study cited above).
But what about burgers specifically? Well, their prices would might go up a bit more. Based on data from 80s and early 90s, Daniel Aaronson estimated that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage drove up the price of McDonald’s burgers, KFC chicken, and Pizza Hut’s pizza-like product by as much as 10 percent.
Assuming that holds true today, it means that bringing the minimum wage to $10.10 would tack $1.60 onto the cost of your Big Mac. That said, there is international evidence—Mickey D’s makes a killing in high-wage countries like Australia and France, where it’s against the law to pay their workers poverty wages—that suggests the price hike could be even lower.
My dad owns a small business (restaurant) and he said he would go out of business if he had to pay his workers $15 hour.
In what has been a major development since the late 1970’s, the United States effectively made the transition from a manufacturing-based to a service-based economy. This has been good news for American restaurants, who, unfortunately, have not shared much of their new-found wealth with their employees, who studies have shown work under some of the worst conditions in the U.S., suffering from low wages and high levels of sexual harassment, wage theft, etc.
“There’s no question that every variety of sleazy scam is at work on the floor, in the front of the house,” said chef-turned-author (and my sometime employer) Anthony Bourdain, whose memoir of a twenty-eight-year restaurant career, Kitchen Confidential, published in 2000, shines a light on some of the unsavory facets of the business.
The average weekly earning for an employee in a full-service restaurant was $274, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s an annual income of $14,248, which puts a family of two or more below the poverty line. Only a small fraction of American restaurant workers have health insurance or paid sick days, and stories of wage theft, both inadvertent and intended, are common.
A study, out of Cornell University, examines the effect of minimum wage increases on the restaurant industry specifically—an industry that is labor-heavy, employs lots of low-wage workers, and can be relied upon to lobby intensely (National Restaurant Association) against any sort of minimum wage increases. Here is a bite-sized takeaway of the findings:
Is the current restaurant model being subsidized by underpaid employees? The data says – YES! What is the true cost of dinner in a restaurant, and is the dining public willing to pay it? WIll restaurants benefit from a higher minimum wage? Potentially, according to many studies, the answer is yes.
Economic studies indicate that a higher minimum wages do not in fact decrease employment. David Card and Alan B. Krueger’s 1994 study, “Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania,” published in the American Economic Review, is a landmark piece of research that refutes job-loss claims. A paper by Arindrajit Dube, William Lester, and Michael Reich that built on Card and Krueger’s research design, “Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders,” published in the November 2010 issue of Review of Economics and Statistics, “found that increases in the minimum wage raise workers’ earnings without reducing employment,” according to a summary by the National Employment Law Project (NELP).
Simply put, studies have shown that when working people have extra money in their pockets, they almost always SPEND it – and not on luxury items like yachts, which is what the rich do, they spend it on consumption items. This includes having more money to go out and pay for a meal, which they might have previosly not been able to afford to do. That translates into more business for restaurants.
Bear in mind now, many restaurants have reliably benefitted from business model currently set at a notch or two above slavery. Letting go of that model is going to be difficult for many of them. Introducing a new model, one based on a living wage, is scary. Yet it is one that offers new found benefits to restaurants that are good at what they do.
The bottom line: if your business model is viable only because of wage slavery, you don’t deserve to be in business.
Why should we pay good wages to unskilled workers? (article written by E. McClelland)
Let me tell you the story of an “unskilled” worker in America who, as it turns out, lived better than most of today’s college graduates.
In the winter of 1965, Rob Stanley graduated from Chicago Vocational High School, on the city’s Far South Side. Pay rent, his father told him, or get out of the house. So Stanley walked over to Interlake Steel, where he was immediately hired to shovel taconite into the blast furnace on the midnight shift. It was the crummiest job in the mill, mindless grunt work, but it paid $2.32 an hour — enough for an apartment and a car. That was enough for Stanley, whose main ambition was playing football with the local sandlot all-stars, the Bonivirs.
Stanley’s wages would be the equivalent of $17.17 today — more than the “Fight For 15” movement is demanding for fast-food workers. Stanley’s job was more difficult, more dangerous and more unpleasant than working the fryer at KFC (the blast furnace could heat up to 2,000 degrees). But according to the laws of the free market, though, none of that is supposed to matter. All that is supposed to matter is how many people are capable of doing your job. And anyone with two arms could shovel taconite. It required even less skill than preparing dozens of finger lickin’ good menu items, or keeping straight the orders of 10 customers waiting at the counter. Shovelers didn’t need to speak English. In the early days of the steel industry, the job was often assigned to immigrants off the boat from Poland or Bohemia. “You’d just sort of go on automatic pilot, shoveling ore balls all night,” is how Stanley remembers the work.
Stanley’s ore-shoveling gig was also considered an entry-level position. After a year in Vietnam, he came home to Chicago and enrolled in a pipefitters’ apprenticeship program at Wisconsin Steel. So why did Rob Stanley, an unskilled high school graduate, live so much better than someone with similar qualifications could even dream of today? Because the workers at Interlake Steel were represented by the United Steelworkers of America, who demanded a decent salary for all jobs. The workers at KFC are represented by nobody but themselves, so they have to accept a wage a few cents above what Congress has decided is criminal.
The “no skills” argument holds more or less that if the teenager cleaning the grease trap wants more money, he should get an education. While we can agree this sounds at least superficially logical, it has little connection to economic reality. Workers are not simply paid according to their skills – they’re paid according to what they can negotiate with their employers. And in an era when only 6 percent of private-sector workers belong to a union, and when going on strike is almost certain to result in losing your job, low-skill workers have no negotiating power whatsoever.
Won’t raising the minimum wage cause more unemployment, as companies reduce head-count to cope with increasing labor costs?
“Increasing the minimum wage will cause more unemployment” is the prototypical “Econ 101″ trope that turns out to be much less straightforward (or flat out wrong) in real life.
Okay, Fine. Explain to me again why paramedics, who actually save lives, don’t make $15/hr. Why should fast food workers make $15/hr?
This question reflects a classic divide and conquer strategy. It’s the basis for a false equvialency narrative that infuses many anti-labor arguements, who want to pit workers against each other. The narrative wants us to believe that fast food employees are being selfish/greedy, because they don’t possess comparable work skills. And so they should not expect to be paid a wage that exceeds that of paramedics. Unfortunately, this analogy is not only misleading, it is flat-out wrong.
Pitting groups of workers against each other is a tactic used to justify keeping wages low. Paramedics’ compensation has nothing to do with fast food employees’ compensation, other than the fact that BOTH are not being paid a fair wage by their employers and BOTH deserve to be paid more!
When this logic is accepted, however, our attention gets deflected away from the fact that BOTH are being exploited by their respective employers. BOTH are routinely asked to perform tasks that exceed and/or do not reflect the material reality of their job function/compensation.
Pitting workers against each other takes our focus away from something far more important – the relationship with the EMPLOYER.
These facts tend to get muddled when workers instead opt to compete in what amounts to a “Hunger Games” race to the bottom.
It’s the Economy Stupid
Changes in the economy, some recent, and others trending for quite some time, are making it difficult if not impossible for the average person to get ahead.
Now, you might say to yourself “well, I’m not average, I’m above average, so I will be okay.” Really? Think about this. Look around. Is it easier to believe that everyone around you is lazy (obvs. not you) and not that people born into wealth, power, and privilege are willing to do whatever it takes to keep the money flowing into their pockets and maintain the status quo that made them rich?
Lean on social science as you go forward. Don’t just think about your individual-level personal observations and experience. Instead, think about how those individual experiences are likely shaped by the larger structural forces that are potentially at work here. These are, more often than not, infinitely stronger than any one individual, desire and hard work notwithstanding.
This is important, because how you think about this may ultimately determine your own success. You have two choices really – 1) you can work to help bring about positive social change that enables everyone’s success; or 2) you can side with those who want weaken worker benefits to the detriment of us all.
In the first scenario, you at least have a chance to master your own destiny. In the case of the latter, this only serves to foster the social reproduction of pre-existing wealth and privilege; it helps those with wealth and privlege to leverage their dominance and secure their social class interests.
To put it bluntly, when you choose this second course of action you become at best what some have termed a “useful idiot” to the powerful monied classes, who are more than happy to use you as a tool in their efforts to oppress other people, who despite their race and country of origin, are not really a lot different from you.
Don’t Like Low Wages? Get an Education
Again, the “no skills” argument holds water when we assume that the teenager cleaning the grease trap only wants more money for low skills. They “should get an education” is offered in response to the demand for higher wages. But here again, while the argument sounds superficially logical, it has little connection to economic reality. As it turns out, 60% of minimum wage workers are in fact pursuing an education while working. But let’s put this argument into historical perspective.
How easy is it for somebody earning a minimum wage today to pay for college compared to someone who worked in the 1970’s? How long would you have to work at minimum wage to pay the average in-state tuition and required fees at a U.S. public university?
In the early 1970’s it was less than 300 hours, or about seven and a half weeks of full-time work. Now? More than 1,000 hours, or 25 weeks.
How Much College Would a Summer’s Minimum Wage Pay For?
In light of these statistics, working a minimum wage job for an entire summer covers approximately 25% of tuition costs at a public university; less at a private university. And this, of course, assumes the person earning the minimum wage is a teen, who doesn’t have to use their wages to pay for other living expenses like rent or child care. If they do have to pay for those things, then the likelihood that they can work their way out of their minimum wage job by going to school outside the job is well – you do the math. It’s virtually impossible and, moreover, is cruel to suggest that they can do so (and when they can’t say they are lazy because they’re not working or trying hard enough).
“Old Economy Steve” – my favorite meme!
Summary
Simply put, it’s an economic no-brainier for Congress to raise the minimum wage – at least to around $10/hour. It will put more money into the pockets of hard-working Americans and will not negatively impact businesses and job creation. Raising the wage is a critical step in creating an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few.
The fact that many of today’s college graduates have the same standard of living as the lowest-skilled workers of the 1960s proves that “race to the bottom” market ideologies, which stipulate we should simply let the market dictate what people should be paid is the wrong attitude. And by this I mean, it doesn’t work for our economy and it doesn’t work for workers or the businesses they work for (okay maybe a few rich owners).
None of the data produced outside of the politically biased realm of think tanks and the lobbying industry supports keeping the minimum wage artificially low.
If we want to fix our economy and restore what we’ve traditionally thought of as the middle class, we have to stop thinking of ourselves as middle class, no matter how much we earn, or what we do to earn it. “Working class” should be defined by your relationship to your employer, not whether you perform physical labor. People with college degrees can be “working class” (and some are even poor). Unless you own the business, you’re working class.
Sources
This post reflects data and information that originally appeared and was published in two articles. The first article is by Edward McClelland, “The ‘middle class’ myth: Here’s why wages are really so low today.” He is also the author of “Nothin’ But Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times and Hopes of America’s Industrial Heartland.” McClelland cites passages from another work you might check out – “Methland: the Death and Life of an American Small Town,” by Nick Reding.
Economic Policy Research website.
Bureau of Labor Statistics website.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment Statistics, May 2016.
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) website.
Projections for the consumer price index were applied to the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator, which measures the amount of income a family needs to attain a secure yet modest standard of living in all counties and metro areas across the U.S.
High-End Food, Low-wage Labor, by Laurie Woolever, 2012.
“Should We Raise the Minimum Wage? 11 Questions and Answers.” Published in “The Atlantic,” by Jordan Weissmann – Center for Economic Policy Research.
“These Charts Show How Much College A Minimum Wage Job Paid For, Then And Now,” by Greg Schoofs
Sylvia Allegretto and David Cooper, Twenty-Three Years and Still Waiting for Change: Why It’s Time to Give Tipped Workers the Regular Minimum Wage, Economic Policy Institute, July 10, 2014.
Ken Jacobs, Ian Perry, and Jenifer MacGillvary, The High Public Cost of Low Wages, University of California Berkeley, Labor Center, April 2015.
Cooper, Raising the Federal Minimum Wage, Appendix Table 3. See also Laura Huizar and Tsedeye Gebreselassie, What a $15 Minimum Wage Means for Women of Color, National Employment Law Project, December 13, 2016.
Doruk Cengiz, Arindrajit Dube, Attila Lindner, and Ben Zipperer, “The Effect of Minimum Wages on Low-Wage Jobs: Evidence from the United States Using a Bunching Estimator,” LSE Center for Economic Performance Discussion Paper 1531, February, 2018.
Paul J. Wolfson and Dale Belman, “15 Years of Research on U.S. Employment and the Minimum Wage,” Tuck School of Business Working Paper No. 2705499, 2016.
David Autor, Alan Manning, and Christopher L. Smith, “The Contribution of the Minimum Wage to U.S. Wage Inequality over Three Decades: A Reassessment,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics vol. 8, no. 1, January 2016.
Raw data for college tuition and minimum wage statistics can be found here.
Discussion Questions
Do you think it makes sense to pass along all of the profits gained from productictivity increases to business owners (not sharing any of that money with workers)?
Have you ever worked for minimum wage? If so, who did you work with?What were the social demographics of your workforce? Were your co-workers predominantly young, old, male, or female? Or was it mixed?
If you worked in such a job, did you feel that you were paid a wage appropriate for the amount of work that you did?
Do you think that fast food and other minimum wage workers perform needed services? Do you see yourself personally enjoying benefits from what their labor provides? Do you think those workers should be paid “slave” wages because you like to eat cheap hamburgers and chicken?
Do you think it is mathematically possible for a person making the minimum wage to pay their household costs as well as save money to attend college? Have you ever tried to do this?
Do you think it’s fair that taxpayers are forced to subsidize the low wages of extremely profitable corporations (again, because many of their employees can’t live on their wages; to work there, they must file for food stamps and other benefits)?
Have any of these statistics helped you to think differently about the minimum wage as a social problem?
My views on the price for minimum wage job have changed ever since I have started working as a lifeguard sophomore year of high school. Since I was only in high school I was not fully exposed to the reality that people go through to rely on minimum wage as an official source of income. By paying people minimum wage it makes an unsaid statement that the company does not value their employees for the work that they accomplish. If companies were told to make the mandatory minimum wage $15 then the employers would feel a sense of self worth that would possible motivate them to work hards and be more passionate about their job. $15,000 is not a feasible wage for people who are working 40 hour weeks to be living off of. More specifically families with more than one person to support need a larger wage to simply provide basic needs such as food, electricity, and medical care. Personally I can not support my college needs from my current lifeguarding job that pays more than the minimum wage. The issue of inadequate wages is an issue that can easily be fixed and had countless beneficial results.
In terms of work experience most of what I have done is purely voluntary. The one “job” I usually do, and have done for years, is working for my family-owned assisted living that my parents built. Being part owner I get a paycheck regardless each month, but when I do work (mainly in the summer) my co-workers are usually young/middle age women. They are paid for the hours worked and definitely paid over minimum wage, most of the time more than the wages of other assisted living companies. Which bring me to my first point; I believe there should not be a government mandated minimum wage. Wages should be determined by market wages, where there is a mutual and advantageous agreement from employer to employee and from market to market so an unskilled worker at a fast food restaurant that could be easily replaced by a machine is not making the same as a paramedic whose far more educated in that field with a real platform for getting/being educated. It’s not hard to see that many companies will eventually go to technological advances like self check out.
Another problem is that minimum wages are usually not based on economic analysis and become arbitrary. Why does the government say $7.25/hour or why do people ask for $15/hour? Then again, economists would rather an unskilled worker working for less than minimum wage than not working at all, purely for experience and production of jobs/money to stimulate economic growth.
With regard to Jens Rushing’s sentimental Facebook post, those ideas, when looked at, won’t really help. The argument of a CEO making millions more is based on how much the company makes itself and how many employees there are. For example, the biggest employer in the country is Wal-Mart, where the CEO makes around $20 million. So lets take his salary and give it all to the employees. You just gave the 2 million Wal-Mart employees an extra $10 for the year (money that in a year you could find lying on the street or between your couch cushions). So, blaming or attacking CEOs for making it to their position and arguing over their pay does not really pan out, furthermore the amount of education and years it took them to become CEO should also be a factor. There are other factors that most economists agree upon about minimum wage regulations, some of which I found here: http://www.aei.org/publication/ten-reasons-economists-object-to-the-minimum-wage/
As a society many people believe that their job description makes them entitled to the amount of money one earns. The man on his Facebook post was judging people on due to the fact that his job description was more than flipping burgers. As a society, I believe as the minimal wage increased and other resulting jobs should follow. So if, the electrician makes currently $13 an hour, his wages should also get increased. I believe increasing the wage gap will decrease the wage gap more and get poor Americans out of a life full of struggle.
In my personal experience I have worked a few job but one that comes to mind is at a hair salon I worked at pretty much all throughout high school. My job consisted of many things such as, reception, working the register, sweeping, washing towels, washing clients hair, inventory, scanning/filing, and so much more. So overall my title was basically the managers assistant. I live in Maryland and the current minimum in is $8.75 and over the years of working there the most I have gotten paid is $10.40. I think that a lot of what I did, required a certain skill level and did deserve a higher pay. I think that because I was the youngest worker and was looked at as just an assistant the level of work I did was overlooked. On the other end, looking at all the other women 25 years or older including my mother, who work there full time and get paid not that much more than I did, is just ridiculous to me. Many of these women can barley make it on their own and basically live pay check to pay check.
This reminds me of a book I read, “Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich. In this book Ehrenreich finds out for herself if she could live off of a minimum wage income. She moved to many different places throughout America and would stay in mostly motels. The jobs she worked included, waitressing, a maid at a hotel, Walmart, etc. She found that even with supporting only herself and buying just her basic needs she could not sustain herself on a minimum wage income and often found herself having to use her personal resources. I found this very interesting considering that many people who work full-time minimum wage jobs have families to support and then end up having to get government help.
Overall I believe that the information presented is very eye opening and there should defiantly be a living wage. The work of many minimum wage jobs does not get the credit it deserves therefore does not get the pay it deserves. Even though certain jobs do not have the same educational credentials as others does not mean that they should be valued less. This will continue to be an issue because most of these jobs are replaceable and even when things like strikes happen, it is only a minor set back for corporations like Walmart for example.
I agree on all the positive points that are addressed by raising the minimum wage. Yes, it would increase the money supply in the economy and it would ultimately benefit different areas of societies. However, there are still skeptical aspects that the author addresses, that I’m still not completey convinced. The author minimizes the affect of labor cost by increasing the minimum wage and how it wouldn’t increase the cost of products or increase the unemployment rate as drastically as it’s being told. However, with the increase of minimum wage, companies have a lesser incentive to pay more for their labor. Another aspect that wasn’t touched too much in the article was the advancement of technology and productivity of companies such as restaurants and grocery stores. It had already been put into use, the use of self-check-out stations. This advancement eliminates the middle person, the cashier, and allows the customer to buy their items quicker and with more efficiency. I’ve seen this at Panera Bread, they have small screens for you to order and pay at the same place. It also takes up less room in the physical restaurant because there isn’t a need for a person to be standing behind a bulky register.
These jobs that people are fighting for a higher minimum wage are minuscule skilled jobs that can be easily replaced by technology and machines. Yes it would help a lot of people right now to increase the minimum wage, but soon those jobs wouldn’t even exist. I suggest these people to move on. It’s easier said than done, because in order to receive higher paying jobs these people need to go back to school and the cost of tuition is ridiculous. However, it would be better to start now then a couple years later when they are forced to do so.
I have worked for minimum wage for many years starting from high school and into present day. Actually, I just received my first job at the age of 21, which pays above minimum wage at $14 an hour. While I was working these jobs I was working with people who were supporting themselves and children on the same wage that I was. I was disheartened to think that I was using my $7.25 an hour to pay for fun recreational activities and taking hours away from someone who was using that same money to provide food for their family. It is also crazy to think about the times where I was asking my parents for money to go to the movies because my pay check wasn’t enough. If I didn’t have enough money to do the things I wanted, how did the people who needed that money to survive get by? During my shifts, I would put in so much work I would even break a sweat sometimes, and as every hour would go by I would mentally add up another $7.25. However, while doing this I realized that an hour of my hard work was only worth seven dollars, which is severely low. That was not even equivalent to one meal at chipotle. The average family of four spends roughly $289 dollars on groceries a month (on the high end) which equates to about $15,000 a year. For a person working making minimum wage, that is their entire salary for a year. This statistic in itself should be the reason why minimum wage is increased to $15 and hour. If a family working on minimum wage can barely afford the groceries they want and need there is no way a student working on minimum wage would be able to save and afford college. Living in Australia for 6 months, where minimum wage is almost $18 an hour and almost all high school students go to University is a whole different world. Granted everyday things like groceries are more expensive based on minimum wage however, they still live differently. Based on the statistics in this article, something needs to change. Either minimum wage needs to increase or more jobs and hours need to be available.
I work a minimum wage paying job lifeguarding over the summer and in New Jersey the starting salary is $8.44 and hour however at my job every summer your work your salary goes up $0.50. The demographics of my workforce was predominantly white young high schoolers. While almost all of my coworkers are friends from high school there are two of three people who are out of college. It was also a mix of both male and females. I feel that working a minimum wage job for a high school student is not that big of a deal while yes making more than minimum wage such as $15 an hour would be great for a high schooler, I think it is more important for older people to get this minimum wage boost.
I’ve technically worked for minimum wage when I got paid around $2.30 at a restaurant, but my tips usually generously compensated for the steady income that I wasn’t making. I never felt slighted, but it did suck when the restaurant was slow, and I didn’t make any money. That being said, I think that American capitalism is the the greediest, most toxic thing in the world aside from governments controlled by warlords and dictators. One must always remember that capitalism’s best friend is slavery, and when slavery becomes illegal, an alternative must be found. I’m not an economist, so I don’t know all of the possible effects of raising minimum wage, but I do know that people used to be able to pay their way through college with a job that paid that much, and it is absolutely impossible now. That’s not the reason that I think it should be increased, but it is surely a great example of how much inflation has outpaced wage increases. For American capitalism to work, people need to be kept as low as possible so that others can continue to rise and be successful at their expense. Countries shouldn’t create difficulties for their citizens, and should at least provide the means to live comfortably off of minimum wage. As a German, seeing the German minimum wage might not seem like much, but since food staples there are far cheaper than they are here, it balances out a decent amount. The only things that are truly expensive in Germany are luxuries that people don’t necessarily need such as electronics and clothes. Here, everything is so ridiculously expensive that people can’t survive unless they only eat cheap fast food and need to live with several roommates. That’s a hyperbole of course, but there is a disconnect that needs to be fixed. If the minimum wage can be increased without any adverse effects, there really isn’t a reason not to except for typical capitalist American greed.
I have worked many minimum wage jobs throughout my high school and college career, and my co-workers have been predominantly young, while some have been of mixed ages. I have worked at an ice cream shop making minimum wage, which in New Jersey was $7.25 at the time, as a high school student. There, I had multiple co-workers who were in their mid-thirties, making the same wage as I was or possibly a dollar or two more, trying to support themselves as well as children. I witnessed the hard work these people put in day after day, and I watched them struggle to make ends meat.
In my opinion, a person working over 40 hours per week, no matter if the job is shoveling snow, serving ice cream, cleaning tables, whatever the case may be, should make more then $15,000 per year. Most people will argue that it is “their own fault” because they did not pursue an extended education, but that is not always an affordable option in the first place. Everything is obviously situational, but I do not see how a person who is willing to work long hours and pursue a college education, can even have that possibility.
Personally, I think everyone should have the right to a livable wage but I also think there is little bit of trade of with an increase of minimum wages and the amount of jobs that will be available in the market. The demand for laborers will probably fall slightly with the introduction of a higher wage but at the same time it’s highly beneficial in helping those in the labor force. Looking at the article many things are more positive than negative when thinking about the possibility of a minimum wage increase. What especially caught my eye was the reduction of income inequality. Income inequality is a huge problem in the U.S. and if the introduction of higher minimum wage can fix this it should be more widespread. I’m also a little bit surprised to learn that an increase on minimum wage wouldn’t really have an impact on the price of goods for me as a consumer. Another thing I like about this article is the attention it brings to the no skills argument. People tell others to get an education but fail to realize that education costs money. Someone who earns minimum wage will not be enough to cover even 25% of tuition. This says a lot about how low wages keep people at the bottom.
In the past summers, I have worked minimum wage jobs. When I was a senior in high school, I worked at a summer camp. I thought the job was pretty easy because we were expected to be there at nine every morning and we got out at four. It was considered a travel summer camp because we would travel to different locations such as Dave and Busters, Catamount Adventure Park and other places. For the councilors, the job was really easy, we just had to make sure all of our campers were in the right location and then we would just sit and hang out while the campers went off to have fun.
My co-workers were just like me, they were in high school and there were four male councilors and four female councilors. It was split like this so that the boys groups had male councilors and the girls groups had female councilors.
In my personal opinion, I do not think that it is fair at all that low skill workers are paid below subsistence wages. Unlike me and my other coworkers, these people actually have families they have to support. Even for me, making minimum wage, I felt like I was flying through my money. I was unable to save money because I had to buy certain things for college so I cannot imagine what these people have to do to raise a whole family. I do not think that it is mathematically possible at all for these people. They have to pay taxes, mortgages on their houses, pay for doctor visits, groceries and all other things. It is totally impossible for them to pay for all of these things on a minimum wage budget.
I had never heard minimum wage discussed in terms of taxpayers subsidizing low-wage employees prior to reading this article. It made me angry to here that companies like McDonald’s urge their employees to sign up for public programs such as Medicaid, food stamps, and housing assistance because of their low wages. McDonald’s is a multi-billion dollar company that could easily afford to raise their minimum wage or offer their employees benefits. However, it has decided to allow hard working taxpayers to absorb this financial burden instead.
I also found the section about pitting low-wage workers against each other interesting. I think it is very easy to place blame on other workers demanding higher pay but if you follow the chain of power it becomes clear that corporations and CEOs are at fault. One worker demanding higher pay is not reducing another’s low pay or preventing him/her from demanding the same.
I was in high school when I started my first minimum wage job. I never thought too much about if I was getting paid enough, because I was not trying to live off this salary. Many people I worked with were also my age, so we were using our paychecks for leisure activities rather than living expenses. I think the minimum wage should be higher because the article points out that its virtually impossible for a high schooler to pay for college tuition on a minimum wage job, and people working full time still are able to qualify for food stamps.
People getting paid minimum wage in the fast food industry, for example, are hard working, and still deserve a wage high enough where they are not living close to poverty. These jobs are valuable because many people enjoy fast food and rely on it for being cheap and easily accessible. A higher wage will let them afford an education where they can learn more skills and advance to a higher paying job.
“The Fight for 15” is an important article, that deals with the problem and argument about minimum wage in the United States. The US government has decided that the national minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. However, 19 states have realized that this wage is too low and have raised the hourly wage. When examining and talking about profit, I do not think that it is right for owners of companies and investors are entitled to keep all profit for themselves. Meaning that workers should get some of the profit too, because they are the ones that make the object are item possible to sell and make money, and the workers are working just as hard as the owners, if not working harder. When workers receive a company’s profit, their wage would increase, helping not only them, but their families, their lives, and the society that they live in. The government would save money, people would get about of poverty and people would be more economically safe, with the rise of minimum wages. Furthermore, I think that it is unreasonable that for some businesses, that people without an education get paid the same amount of money, as college graduates. It seems like the bargain was unnecessary, just because of how much people pay to go to school. After investing money and time to go to school and college, I would be annoyed if I ended up working in a fastfood restaurant or in retail. It would seem like a waste of time and money to go to school for four years, when I could have been making money, even if it was only in retail.
For the past 3 summers, I’ve worked as a lifeguard at a local pool in my hometown. I earned minimum wage every summer without a raise, compared to other people I knew who worked at other local pools. I worked with mostly high-school to college aged kids and we would rotate guarding the pool. The job is overall pretty easy, but in-order to be qualified for the job you have to go through a lengthy certification process and then continued to be re-certified every year you wish to come back. The certification and the re-certifications are not paid for by my employer, but I am expected to continue paying for the re-certification every year if i wish to return. For the other people I know working as lifeguards, their re-certifications are always pair for by their employers, so this always bothered me. This has always made me believe that jobs such as lifeguards or paramedics who are there to save peoples lives, and need proper certifications to qualify for the job, deserve more than minimum wage. I do believe that minimum wage should go up for all jobs, but I’ve always thought it was crazy that a job requiring you to save or protect peoples lives would have the lowest legal income.
In todays society it’s highly unlikely for someone to save up enough money to attend college. Depending on the circumstances, a high school student could save up a decent amount of money working a minimum wage job through school, but no where near the amount they would have to pay for four years of college. For someone living on their own, or have children, it would be near to impossible to save up enough money working just a minimum wage job and having to pay off other expenses.
This article is particularly interesting to me because I worked a minimum wage earning job in high school and as a high schooler, I worked countless hours to make barely enough money to afford things l needed. When I put it into perspective, I realized that I didn’t have nearly as many expenses that a lot of older people would have. For example, I didn’t have to pay rent or a mortgage or similar things like that that someone who wasn’t in high school would probably be forced to have to deal with. Especially if someone was a single parent, I don’t know how they would afford to support themselves, nonetheless their other family members. Figuring out how to find an ideal balance that benefits the maximal number of people is very difficult and it is something that I never considered with the current economy.
The piece about the paramedic was specifically interesting. He makes a valid point, in that his job is a very big deal and I can see how people who have jobs in that profession would be upset that others are making more money. However, they shouldn’t put these people down as if they are better than them. Just because they benefit from the law that the government passed, doesn’t mean that they should be looked down upon even more than they are.
As someone who worked part-time in retail for many years, I felt that I was never fully compensated for the work that I was doing. I worked for footlocker, one of the nation’s leaders in the sportswear and lifestyle clothing industry. I felt that for a multi-million dollar company, I should be making far more than $6.65/hr in addition to commission. I found that I would often work long nights where few customers would make a purchase. I was competing with my coworkers each day for sales in order to scrape up enough money to fill my gas tank. The holiday season always provided me with a massive check but required that I work roughly 30 hours per week in order to make approximately $250 in that given week. The holiday season was brief and took me away from my family with little reward for sacrifice. I felt as though I wasn’t valued as much as I could be. That being said, the federal minimum wage should not be raised. A raise in minimum wage would create a rise in demand for labor, this would then create a lack of paying positions and a lack of need of workers. A raise in federal minimum wage also negatively affects small business, that rely on the low wages in order to stay afloat and compete with the larger businesses that surround them. Most of the people that I worked with were teens. These people were worker to help pay for gas, school and for spending money. If the job doesn’t suit you, move on. Quit. Do what myself and many other fortunate and/or hard working Americans have done, go to school. Show the same ambition that you have at the workplace, in your studies. Get an education so you can get a job that will pay you much more than minimum wage ever would. A private in the U.S Army makes an hourly wage of $9. A person working retail or for a chain fast-food restaurant should not make more money than someone who is prepared to fight for that very freedom that allows one to fight for increased wages.
A few years ago, I was working at a summer camp where I was paid below the New Jersey state minimum wage. All of the counselors there were somewhere between the ages of 17 and 23, and then we had an older woman as our boss. Besides our boss, no one there was looking to make a living off of their pay, but it was still appalling to me how little money they were paying us. We were all hired to be positive energies and influences for this group of elementary school students, while being entrusted to look out for their safety and well-being. All of this came to mind while reading the quote from the picture in this article that said someone paying you minimum wage is like saying “if I could pay you less, I would, but it’s against the law.” So, since I felt so slighted by this at the age of 17 just trying to save up a few dollars for gas money, I can only imagine how insulting this must feel to people trying to support themselves off of a minimum wage paying job. At my current job, I make a little over minimum wage, but it really helped me realize how much work those seemingly “easy” or “no-brainer” jobs require. I am a receptionist and cashier at a car dealership, and before I worked there, I didn’t think people in those positions had too much to handle. I learned the hard way that this part time job would be much more stressful and hectic than anticipated. So, I think before anyone deems the labor of fast food and minimum wage workers as unneeded or simple, they need to really learn what goes into a day full of customer service and production, and I think they’d be shocked to see how hard these people actually work.
I found this article to be very interesting because I am currently working a part time job; therefore this argument directly involves me. I work as a waitress at a café and earn $7.25 an hour in addition to tips. Although this is below Maryland’s minimum wage of $8.75 an hour, I find that the combination of tips and hourly wage typically ends up equaling about $15 an hour each day I work. I think my scenario of making so much money from hourly wages and tips is extremely unique, especially in the service industry. While I use this money on groceries, electricity bills, and extra spending money, a large majority of my coworkers rely on this job as their primary household income. Many of my coworkers are in their 30s, and some even have children to support. I feel that this income is adequate for me as a student, however I know that many of my coworkers struggle to meet their basic needs on their paychecks. I have another friend that works as a waitress in North Carolina, and she explained to me that if the staff receives tips that are higher than minimum wage when divided among all of the workers they do not earn an hourly wage. In this scenario, my friend only makes a few dollars above $7.25 an hour. Supporting a family or meeting basic needs would be extremely difficult on this income alone, therefore she also feels directly affected by this minimum wage argument. I agree that as time changes, prices of basic goods rise, and the cost of living are increased the minimum wage also needs to be reconfigured. There must be a universal minimum for workers to be paid to ensure that all citizens are able to have a career that supports a comfortable lifestyle.
When I was 18 years old, I worked a retail job at Journeys shoe store for minimum wage. I was the youngest worker there with co-workers ranging from 24-42 years old. The “mode” age, the most reoccurring, was 25 years old and this job was their only source of income. The assistant manager of the store was 27 years old and commuted 2 hours every day by public transportation to our store location. She was single, but a hard worker that struggled here and there to find side jobs for herself to accrue savings.
Based on the number of hours I worked, and the up-selling that was required of the job, I felt that I was not making a wage equivalent to the work I performed. Aware that there are other shoe and accessory stores that pay commission for a certain range/number of sales, as a top selling employee averaging sales over $500 for a 5 hour shift, I believed I deserved more than 7 dollars an hour before city taxes. I also felt that the commission based pay or wage that considered the sales aspect would motivate employees to sell more, which would THEN benefit the company. The most astonishing part, as I now reflect on it four years later is that I was a teenager with no bills or need for money beyond spending on frivolous things. I was not even thinking about my 27 year old assistant manager or 42 year old manager with spouses and rents, bills and commutes to include in their living expenses.
Holding this job and several other low-wage jobs amongst this demographic of people, I would not consider them “low skilled” or unqualified for appropriate wages. While my opinion is strictly circumstantial, the workers I’ve have got to know in retail and restaurant environments could not afford an education to pursue the degree required for higher wage. Often my coworkers held these low paying jobs to pay for community college classes, trade certifications, or city worker exams. I believe that a substantial increase would help them afford their cost of living and the degrees for higher paying jobs, which would then give them livable salaries, and a contributing role in the economy.
While I have been exposed to this topic and argument before, I was never presented the SEVERAL benefits of increasing minimum wage. The paradoxical situation I find through this article is that the same people that do not want to increase tax provisions for social welfare programs do not want those on social welfare programs to earn a salary that would deny their eligibility. I believe that if they are to deny support for one, such as increased wages, then they cannot deny support for the other. It is unreasonable, to the say least, that they expect low-wage employees to afford ANY quality of life in this way.
Prior to reading this article, I was not aware of all the positive outcomes that could come with raising the minimum wage. Not only would it put more money in the pockets of deserving Americans, but it would benefit our entire country. This increase would save the government money (contrary to the misconceptions) and improve American’s style of living by improving economic security and lifting people out of poverty. This is especially important since the cost of living is constantly increasing. How is one expected to adapt to these changes without taking up a second job. These people are working endlessly just to make ends meet. I think that the minimum wage should be raised to $15 an hour because the current wage does not meet what is needed to live in this country comfortably. I was surprised as to how the minimum wage in the United States compared to other countries. For instance, individuals in Denmark make approximately three times that of an American worker. Therefore, I think it is necessary for the United States to make such changes, especially considering it would benefit the country as a whole.
It is surprising that with all of this information from economists that the government still has not made a change in the minimum wage issue. If all of the evidence suggests mostly benefits will come from increasing the minimum wage to a livable standard for people, then there should be some changes made.
I was surprised to see the statistics of how many people work in jobs that pay minimum wage and the different demographics of these workers. With all of this information it is clear that a change needs to be made to help these workers earn a better living for themselves and their families.
With the amount of time and effort these workers are putting into their jobs, they deserve more than the bare minimum.
The minimum wage should be raised to $15 an hour because it would be a more livable pay. These workers work endlessly, most of them work full time and do overtime if they can get it and still they don’t make enough to survive. Large corporations have more than enough money to pay their workers a better wage and not doing this just shows the lack of respect they have for them. Their workers devote years of their life to a company and they should be able to get paid a sustainable amount of money. Although raising the minimum wage won’t solve a lot of America’s economic issues, it would help to aid those who are need in help. With the cost of living rising (especially in big cities), it would be beneficial to raise the wages for those who live there. Since the majority of people who work minimum wage are those who need to support their families (and not teens who just want extra money), the argument for $15 an hour (and hopefully more) is more valid.
Over the summer, I had 3 jobs. For each one, I personally did not have a problem with the minimum wage that I was receiving. I live in New Jersey, so the minimum wage there is different for different types of jobs. Some of my best friends worked at a summer camp and what they got was WAY too little. Though, I never experienced working at a summer camp, I could see how they felt like it was unfair to them. My stepsister worked at retail and would complain to me every day that she does not make enough for the minimum wage either. Some of my friends were annoyed while others were furious with what they were making. To me, money is money. I’m not sure how to explain what I mean as I am typing this, but I’ll try to explain. Whatever amount of money your job gives you, is still money, and it is still something that you are making. Because something is worth so much more than nothing.
After reading this article about “The Fight for 15” changed my perspective completely. I do believe that the minimum wage across the nature should totally be increased to $15. People apply effort to work every single day. For every job doesn’t matter if you are a summer counselor, work in retail, or even work as a nurse in a hospital. It doesn’t matter what job you work for, but it would be fair that everyone receives the same amount of minimum wage worldwide. Because all these people are still getting their butts out of bed or from doing anything that counts as lazy and going to work to make a living for their family. As stated in this paragraph, the large majority of people working minimum wage jobs are obviously just not about teenagers, but it is about everyone, everyone who is looking to support a family. This just cannot be cut with a single digit minimum wage. Something has to change and make a difference about it.
Minimum wage should be raised to $15 an hour across the nation because people work hard enough to get their job done. A job someone who’s coming out of college wouldn’t want to take just because it is not “worth it”. Most of the time, people who work at these places like Mc Donald’s, Starbucks, etc. are immigrants and they need the money to survive in this country. They don’t get paid enough money for what they deserve, I think $15 per hour is a reasonable amount of money to pay someone for minimum wage job. I also think that minimum wage should be the same everywhere across the country because if people move states then their pockets might have bad consequences that can lead them to bankruptcy. Increasing the minimum wage in the United States will increase the economy of this country because people who have some degree of education will be making more money also and hopefully we reach the point where the working class will be making enough money to live well and poverty will not be a problem anymore.
Poor People Who Can Do Work
It was interesting discovering between the ages of 18- 64, 35% of the poor are ineligible to work. I thought it would a grander percentage of people unable to work because of the commercials about veterans and retired patron unable to support their selves. 65% of people in the United States needing jobs is a great deal, so I now can understand why Americans engage politicians, recently presidential candidates, about creating more jobs.
Of the people working, 44.3% of Americans are working full time. Less than 50% are working full time and of those jobs I can bet they are not make a desirable amount. People can’t make a living being full time at Target and Starbucks, when they are only paying employees nine dollars an hour.
As I matured into an adult, I saw the need to finally force myself into the work force. As I come from a single parent home, it was imperative that I start to add to the family income, no matter how small an impact I could provide. I chose to work at the small summer camp in my town. Since there were few employees, one would think that there might be a surplus for pay at this expensive-to-attend camp, yet I only collected 3 cents over the minimum wage of $8.25. I loved the work, despite the struggle it gave myself and my co-workers. Though I was in need of the money, there were those I worked with that could have needed it even more imperatively than I did. I saw the pain in the school teachers that worked this summer job, as well as the college students in this failed attempt to put a dent in their student loans. As I was still in high school, I saw any income as an accomplishment; now I see my “worth” as a slap in the face. I worked hard. We all did. We deserved more, but there was no more to give. Minimum wage is a debilitating problem in the United States. It is not fair, and we can all see how it must be changed, though from personal experience I also see how the issue has been a problem for so long.
The stereotype that pimply teenagers only need $7.25 per hour blinds many people from realizing that 89% of workers earning minimum wage are over the age of 25. If you continue doing the math, a worker who on average works 40 hours a week making minimum wage would live on a yearly salary of $15,000. In a society where my coffee at Starbucks alone costs $5.25, it is unrealistic to believe someone could comfortably live off of $15,000 a year.
In today’s politics the wage gap is constantly brought up as another way our society is split, however a simple thing such a raising minimum wage could aid in solving that problem while simultaneously saving the government money. The Facebook post, attached to this article, of the paramedic speaking about the McDonald’s pay raise specifically stood out to me as this person argues it is ok that she and someone who makes fast food earn the same salary. I found their argument to be extremely humbling and I think if more people could see past their personal monetary situations they would realize that a majority of the population is suffering as well. Instead of arguing over who should make more, they say, time is better spent fighting to raise your own wage, earning what you believe you should. The top 1% see an increase in their wages, it is time for the people who are washing hair at salons or scooping ice cream for bratty kids to be “greedy” and say that their jobs warrant them the right to earn a comfortable living (stepping off soapbox now).
I’ve worked at a minimum wage job for the past two summers. My job was very simple, I stood at the front desk of the gym, signed people in, and scanned any purchases. Most days, I was on the computer or on my phone. I could go a good amount of time without having to interact with a customer. All I do, when they walk in, I would say “hi how are you?” In addition, last summer, they even got a self scanner, so I didnt even have to swipe customers in, they could just do it themselves. Towards the end, unless people bought something, which they rarely did, all I did was sit on my computer, and greet gym-goers as they came in. My fellow coworkers were all white, in their 20s and a pretty even mix of male and female. Most workers were using this job at the gym as a tempory job, as they were working to further education or their resumé. I feel if I earned more than $7.25/hour, I personally would feel like I did not earn it. It was the easiest job in the world to me, get paid to sit on your phone and greet customers.
During my junior and senior year of high school, I worked as a tennis instructor at a local tennis camp. Throughout the school year I would work three to four days out of the week for about three hours and during the summer, I would work about five hours from Monday through Friday. Depending upon the number of employee absences, you were asked by a supervisor to fill in extra hours if needed. Eventually, I was filling in for multiple hours but still was receiving the same amount of pay if I were working my normal five hour shift. Unfortunately, due to the insufficient pay, I began babysitting neighbors’ children and earning twice as much than at the tennis camp. After my first year of instructing, my went $8.00 to $8.50, which was still under the minimum wage of $8.83 in New Jersey. As I continued to work at the camp, I noticed that some of my co-workers had families to support. How are my co-worker’s expected to support their families with an income that is below minimum wage? Until wages are increased to an amount which is somewhat sustainable to live off of, people will continue to suffer. People will continue to be unable to support themselves, as well those with family.
Throughout my years as a high school student, I was a summer camp counselor. The camp was over the course of six weeks and was a forty hour work week. Each year my pay check would increase but when I first started, I was paid 1600 dollars. This total amounted to $6.67 an hour. During my last year, my hourly wage increased to $7.90. I was significantly underpaid as the minimum wage in New Jersey is $8.83. In order to supplement the low wages I was making at camp, I babysat on nights and weekends. The counselors were all high school and college students who did not depend on their summer income to live. As a result, no one challenged the idea that we were being paid below minimum wage. For many this is not the case, as they depend on their minimum wage paycheck to keep their family afloat. Unfortunately, the yearly income from a low-wage job does not sufficiently cover a family’s living costs. The minimum wage should be parallel with the cost of living, in order to give all citizens and equal chance at survival. Due to this unjust system, basic necessities have become a luxury to more than half of the country’s population. There are more benefits to raising the minimum wage than there are drawbacks. It is due to greed and ignorance that we have yet to raise the minimum wage to $10.
As a sophomore and Junior in high school, I worked as a waitress at a nursing home for retired sisters who belonged to the mercy order. This job required me to escort some of the sisters in, especially the ones in wheelchairs or scooters, help them pick their order, avoiding allergies that they may have forgotten, and then bring them their meals. It was a job that required patience, compassion and care for each woman that I served, but was rewarded with a paycheck that didn’t resemble my hard work that I showed everyday. There was only two teenagers working at this minimum age job, me being one of them. It was mostly middle aged African American women who were working to support their families. Not only did I notice that this was not enough for them to support their families because it was barely enough for my needs as a teenager, but I also realized that this payment resembled the quality of work. I believe that if these women were payed more, they would put more effort and care for the elderly into their work. If workers at these low income care giving jobs, were payed more they would feel compelled to give as much effort as they could to the people they are caring for, rather then just doing the bare minimum because they only get payed 7.25$/hr.
Having worked a variety of minimum-wage jobs, I find this article very interesting. I have worked in restaurant waitressing for the past 5 consecutive summers. We work really hard and often work long shifts, typically 11am until close (which is around 10pm). On average I work around 35-40 hours per week during the summer. I have received a waitressing wage (which is less than minimum wage since we receive tips). This year the New York state minimum waitressing wage was changed from 5$ to 7.50$ an hour. At first glance, this still seems like nothing but as I worked with the new wage this past summer I saw how big of a difference it made. My paychecks after taxes would be taken out were insignificant and I would solely base my income on the amount of tips I received that week. This summer my paychecks made a significant impact on the amount of money I was making. Although I was happy about the change the owners of the restaurant were not. My managers were told to cut off working hours for employees at 40 hours and no one was allowed to work over time. This was frustrating when a coworker would ask me to cover their shift and I would be forced to say no because it would put me into overtime. Small changes like this were strongly enforced just this summer. A business right near my house even decided to change the way they did business. They eliminated tipping at the restaurant and instead have guests pay an 18 percent surcharge in the dining room. The responses were varied but mostly negative. A lot of people called this change cheap and only in the restaurants best interest. The restaurant owners explained that the change was “for their own economic survival” saying that it “had to happen.” They also explained that labor cost was the business’ largest expense. As a waitress myself, it was disappointing to hear that a job that is based on customer service is slapped with an unwavering price. There is no longer an incentive to provide adequate customer service.
The post by Jens Rushing, the paramedic making $15/hr. it makes sense that any job that takes up someone’s life deserves a living wage but why would anyone be motivated to do become a paramedic and make $15 an hour if they can get paid the same rate by doing a job that is much less demanding like flipping burgers. Your pay should be determined by the skills your job requires. If its not, the government might as well set everyone’s hourly rate at the same amount because there would no longer be an incentive to work hard.
Top reasons to reduce minimum wage
1. It Will Put Money into The Pockets of Hard-Working Americans. Which is great but it doesn’t explain the impact on businesses paying that much more in wages. What will that do to the economy?
2. It will reduce income inequality. This is an important factor, CEO’s in America make the most money out of CEO’s in any other country which is getting ridiculous.
3. It won’t hurt job creation. The fact that some state it does hurt job creation just seems like something rich businesspeople say to try to confuse everyone.
4. It Is Unlikely to Significantly Impact Prices. once again the money needed to pay the higher wages has to come from somewhere so couldn’t some companies choose to institute higher prices.
5. It Would Help People Get Off of Food Stamps. This seems self explanatory, people are making money so they can afford to buy more. However according to the video it needs to be raised incrementally to $15/hour due to inflation in order to work.
6. It will save the government money and also taxpayers because we currently pay for those in poverty to have access to health care etc.
7. It Will Improve People’s Economic Security. The fact that most people making minimum wage are the breadwinners in a family is astonishing and that fact alone should convince us to increase minimum wage.
8. It will lift people out of poverty, but only 900,000. Which is a lot but why only them? What did they do differently?
9. Businesses Recognize That They Will Also Benefit. When companies pay their employees above minimum wage they are more likely to have better employees but not every company needs this business model
10. Millions of Children Will Be More Secure. After reading the statistic that 12 million children will have a parent whose pay will go up, none of the other arguments seemed as strong. This is the only argument that made an impact on me. These are families we are talking about and if a couple more dollars and hour can change their life and make mine a tiny bit more difficult, that’s ok with me.
I worked at a minimum wage job from the 11th-12th grade at the mall in Abercrombie kids. My co-workers were predominantly white, middle-class, and on par with Abercrombie’s target- very attractive. In my short time being employed by this company, I never worked with anyone over the age of 25- managers included. The “models” (your average retail associates) got paid minimum wage to clean up the store, meticulously arrange clothing displays, and show good customer service. For a part-time after school job, I figured this was fair pay and never really gave it more thought than that. However, toward the end of my time at Abercrombie I soon realized how difficult it was for some to make ends meet. Although they were young, a decent amount had college degrees (one even had her masters in education!). It was quite horrifying to witness my co-workers, whom I even considered my friends, being barely able to pay for a car and their student loans. As an ex-minimum wage worker, I truly believe that these individuals should be paid more for their hours. It shouldn’t matter that these individuals had family that could’ve supported them, because their families aren’t required to. The people that are trying to live off of $7.25 in Pennsylvania simply cannot. It’s next to impossible for me to try to rationalize how anyone can continue to badger these workers, stating they need to give up frivolous spending and work “harder”. What does that even mean? How can you be expected to work “harder” when you’re already living with your parents or in a crummy apartment, thousands of dollars in student debt, and barely able to pay for a car to get you to your job? I am truly baffled and terrified to live in a country where someone with a degree (of any kind) can be subjected to terrible wages. I cannot even fathom what that then means for those without degrees. It is sad, but worse it is pathetic. The United States of America should not only know better, but do better.
Having worked a minimum wage job for the past four summers, I have some level of personal understanding with this income. While I excitedly opened my checks, happy to have any sort of money in my account, it has made me reflect on the people who are dependent on this money as their source of income. I took this money to buy a couple of clothes and meals out, but families are reliant on this money to pay bills and support families. I found the statistic that the minimum wage, should it have continued to increase, would be $21.72 today. The cost of living continues to increase, so why can we not increase our minimum wage? While I am not necessarily “fighting for 15,” I do feel that there should be an emphasis on increasing the minimum wage. Just because other professions make lower wages, doesn’t mean that minimum wage shouldn’t increase. If anything, I feel that there should be a call for increases in all occupations, as the cost of living continues to go up. While this is an unrealistic ideal, we all benefit from low-paying jobs, and everyone deserves to be able to live based upon their job.
There shouldn’t even be a “Fight for $15” to begin with. America is well aware of the inequality issues that ravage our economic structure, and the continued displacement of families in our working class. These are the very people that work ungodly hours for ungodly wages and still find themselves unable to meet their basic needs on a monthly basis. It is because of America’s inability to take care of their own, that this fight has begun. Unfortunately, “the powers that be” couldn’t care less…….and that includes Donald Trump who wants to “make America great again”. Yeah…..Right!
How could one of the most prosperous countries in the world, have dirt low minimum wage pay with no job security? the first time i experienced a minimum wage job i just graduated from high school, i only worked 4 hours a week. i asked myself how am i suppose to live off of this change every week. now i work 40 hours a week i get over minimum wage but its not $15 an hour and i now i think, if they want me to do all of the work that i’m required to do an burn me out its not happening. i rather burn myself out trying to create my own business than push for the CEO’s business that generates income off of my ideas and my strength. we get angry at the fact that Mc Donald employees are gradually earning $15 an hour and people that are licensed and certificated in a specialty field will now probably earn less than a Mc Donalds employee that just “flip burgers”. but we aren’t scrutinizing the CEO’s of the business that we work for,or creating our own business to find our own financial success because we just don’t know how to start. Most of the minimum wage workers work multiple jobs and they aren’t teenagers they are people that are in their late twenties and even thirties and above trying to feed their families.
I experienced my first corporately owned minimum wage job just last year. I worked at Dollar Tree- a company which solely offers part time employment for its entire staff except the store manager. I was immediately shocked by the demographics of the Dollar Tree workforce. People of middle class backgrounds have a pre-fixed notion that jobs in retail most consist of college kids but Dollar Tree was a conglomeration of all ages. There were three cashiers all over the age of 35, all of them had children and two woman were even working multiple minimum wage jobs. Shamise was the oldest in our workforce, she happened to be 58 and got laid off from her nursing job. I noticed that all of the older workers would generally go food shopping at the store after their shifts were over and they would all generally pay with an EBT card.
The job of cashier is certainly not one that a person chooses autonomously. Any service related job is a means to an end but the exploitation within this kind of work is why it deserves better pay. A part time worker was only allowed a 10 minute break and if our shifts would exceed 6 hours, it was the boss’ decision on when we could take our state mandated 30 minute break. We had to be on our feet all day and the ten minute break only allowed us a time to use the bathroom and drink water. According to sociologist Robert Leidner, the worker has become commodified. At Dollar Tree, the speed of our work equated to how good we were as workers thus we have become the interchangable units of the corporation’s machine. This concept demeans the worker to have any sense of self while working causing the job to be extremely robotic and alienating. Service jobs are not easy and they are more similar to a form of capitalistic slavery than they are “teen jobs”.
By raising the minimum wage, perhaps the older workers at Dollar Tree would not have to live off government assistance in order to simply buy food! Living in NYC, even $15 probably would not even suffice once you consider the price to commute and rent. Allowing the minimum wage to stay at $8 an hour will only create a larger vacuum of the working poor who have become zombified due to their lack of acknowledgement for their hard labor and lack of pay.
The ideal society is the one in which all citizens would have the same political and economic opportunities; and where the industries’ owners would understand that all people living in a community deserve to be treated fairly. Unfortunately, in a capitalist system where corporations are controlled by private owners who invest in order to generate profits,the workers will always be exploited.For it seems to be very difficult for these investors to understand that their earnings are positively correlated with the labor force qualified for a part which would be received in the form of satisfactory wages.it is inconceivable that some individuals are working full time in addition to some extra hours only to pay bills without any other possibility to even eat decently.
Although certain jobs require high level of education in addition to certain other skills,no matter what an individual is doing regardless his/her race or social background, he/she deserves to be paid justly. By no means the companies’ owners are entitled to keep all the profits themselves because without the workers there would not be any profits at all.
My very first job was as a fast-food restaurant worker earning minimum wage. I recall my coworkers and supervisors all being people of color like myself, and the majority of whom were females. At that moment, years ago, I felt that I was somewhat ambivalent about my pay rate, not only because I didn’t necessarily need the money, as I was still being supported by my family, but because I didn’t have much an idea of what my expectations should be regarding pay. I did feel that the quality of work I did was at best, unsatisfactory and recall vividly how wrongly many clients treated my fellow coworkers. Just being behind the counter or whatever partition in this facility, automatically rendered us inferior and made us prone to attacks, insults and a general disregard. I particularly remember the great disregard and disrespect that even our supervisors experienced.
Looking back at this topic now, I am glad to know that restaurant workers are significant raise in their wages. I feel that many of these fast food workers find themselves in a horrible loop where they deprive themselves of opportunities because of the many hours that they must commit to such a job in order to earn a living, and ironically, they still can’t afford to live. I look down on capitalism nearly entirely as I feel that those at the top, the ones who own businesses and corporations such as fast food establishments, exploit every opportunity to increase their profit margin, and in doing so steal the talent and the time of the working people. In my opinion, this is what profit is, a systematic manner in which greedy professionals make a dime off of the hard work of others.
Simply put, I will conclude by saying that if anyone is obligated to work ANY number of hours, it should be guaranteed that they earn a living wage. Anything less than that, is inhumane.
As a full time student, with a fair share of experience in the below living wages, I have to say It’s not that difficult to understand why the need for this has led to protests, awareness campaigns and the fight for fifteen hashtag. Most of these employers make millions of dollars investing in stock value rather then in the actual employees who are the main source of revenue. Yet when it’s time to show actual interest the well being and living standards of their employers. Interestingly enough, we as the working class, trying so desperately to hold on to middle class status, without being able to enjoy our middle class incentives and “privilege”, due to the lack of goof living standards. When you have someone working like a slave due to an increase in worker productivity yet a heavy decrease in survivable wage, then emotional, mental, and even physical stress will most likely ensue. For example, when I worked at Uniqlo, they were very reluctant on giving anybody under 22 hours a week although a lot of their recruitment was done at colleges with full time students in the area. Many of us were desperate and jumped at the idea of being paid $10 an hour. Then we had to stay past our agreed and scheduled shifts to clean up and pack the store items into perfection. I eventually left the job because of exhausting hours, and getting a sprain in my ankle due to a tear in my muscle. The lack of break time, and any of my superiors investment in my well being as I limped around the store surely added to my stress while I was forced to keep up with crazy standards in retail such as perfectly folding 7 shirts so they all came out EXACTLY the same way in under 60 seconds. I quit due to the physical stress on my body rendering me unable to walk, and my management was upset to see me leave due to my “hard work ethic”. Unfortunately a claim for a doctors visit was out of the question and the store didn’t provide part timers with health insurance so my first paycheck covered the costs of working in a an environment that exploited its workers. These are the results of letting a company get away with not paying a living wage, they continue to exploit their workers to the last penny, to the last bone.
I was actually a bit surprised to read that it was a general assumption that most minimum wage earners were teenagers. I cant speak for other states but every time I’ve walked into a fast food restaurant in New York around half the employees seemed to be well passed their teens and more like middle-aged. Not only are they older individuals but statistics show that a good portion of them have children to support and work full time. It just isn’t possible for full time workers to support themselves, let alone other people, on an hourly wage of what it costs to buy a value meal at McDonalds. This ensures that you’ll have employees working to the bone just to barely make ends meet, and are taken advantage of consistently because the companies they work for refuse to address the wage issue. Additionally, Many people may not have the education to really escape minimum wage jobs or the time, and money to actually pay for school resulting in a cycle of exploitation so “working hard and finding a good job” is easier said than done when all other options require a substantial amount of money and one is already working full time just enough to keep a roof over their head. Large corporations earn more than enough money to substantially pay their employees what they deserve and raising the minimum wage to $15 would obviously immensely benefit the employee but in turn, also the employer. Satisfied employees create a satisfied, possibly even happy work environment, which would only further benefits the company and brings in more customers, thus more revenue.
Many people are under-employed because they are forced to take a job to make ends meet. It is not that the employee does not know their value in the job market but sometimes job seekers become desperate because they have children to take care of and bills to pay, so they settle for a job that pay less they their value, hoping it will only be for a short period. However many times this expected short-term employment becomes long-term employment.
Employers should realize that it they pay their employees a fair salary it will benefit the organization as this will result in less staff turnover and less money will be spent on constantly training new employees.
It the minimum wage is increased to $15 or more per hour it will not only benefit the workers at the lower end of the salary scale; eventually all employees should see an increase in their salary as employers will be forced to increase the salary of other workers and this should have an overall positive effect on the economy, as each person’s standard of living will eventually increase. There are really enough resources in the world for every individual to be fairly comfortable, if only we were not such a selfish society.
The very idea of a federal wage floor is one that has no concern for the worker. The idea that someone is being paid a minimum means that the only reason they are being paid that wage is because anything lower would be illegal. I worked at slightly above the minimum wage at 14/15 years old, but at the time I did not think much of it. The wage I was being paid did not bother me due to situation since for me it was simply spending money. However, my fellow co-workers were adults who had to support their own families and were working at my job full time (many of whom had a second job). The increasing gap between the rich and poor has always been a concern of mine, but it wasn’t until I got older that I realized how devastating it is. A proposed minimum wage of $9/hour brings a full time worker to a an annual income of only $18,720 pre-taxes. Even $15/hr brings a full time worker with a 40 hour work week to only about $31,000 annually pre-taxes. The minimum is not a livable wage. There is no way around it. It is an injustice to pay people who put in their own time and effort lower wages as employers deem their jobs unworthy though these same employees bring in millions in revenue. Even those who are not being paid the minimum wage are usually not being a subsistence wage. My co-workers who were working 40-80 shouldn’t have to be on the welfare system due to a lack of jobs and/or lack of advanced degrees. The thing that bothers me more is the fact that a good portion of these employers can afford pay their employees fair wages. This brings up the question of entitlement and rights. I believe that employers are entitled to their profits if and only if their employees are being paid justifiable wages. The employees are entitled to fair wages, which is exactly why the government has to step in and put their foot down since we live in a profit driven society. The ones on top want to spend the least whilst earning the most-so we need to stop blindly subsidizing welfare for employees that could easily be paid fairly. There is some moral obligation to feel as though our fellow citizens deserve to live comfortably for the simple reason that they are human. The economists have have worked out that the wages aren’t consistent with inflation-but we don’t need an economist to tell us that subsistence wages are needed for proper living.
I believe the minimum wage today in (NYC) is a joke. It is not enough for anyone to live “comfortably” even as a sinlge person. As a previous Walgreens employee, the minimum wage was $7.25 at the time and their stores hired their employees at $8.00. Although that was higher than the minimum wage, it was no where near the American dream. Eventually the minimum wage went up to $8.50 which was right after everyone got a raise. So while the annual raise of 10 to 25 whole cents was applied to everyones wage, the new minimum wage bumped them up another quarter, but unfortunately left the employees another 11 months before they saw a increase in their pay. Many employees stated they should have their raise applied to the new minimum wage leaving them at $8.60-$8.75, but no surprises at all, the company doesnt work that way.
Interesting enough, when I reapplied and started at $9.00, due to taxes I took home less money than when I worked lower wages and I would NEVER support the idea of paying people lower than what they are being paid. The rich should definitely be taxed (as well as stop making rules at the corporate level that usually do not work and the workers on the floor have to suffer from it) and those who make so much money probably wouldnt even realize they paid taxes or higher taxes.
As far as my coworkers, they ranged from teens to 60+. Many were in college or dropped out due to it being unaffordable. While the cost of education is another rant, the wages I had (and hours) at Walgreens took me 3 months to pay for ONE summer class and an empty bank account. The narrative of many of the Walgreens employees and probably many other companies is, “I was once in your shoes and 12 years later, look at me, now I’m an assistant store manager. So keep working hard! ;D” In my opinion, skilled or unskilled, many people should not have to compromise so much that they’re afraid to leave their job because they’ve been there for so long and not sure they’ll get hired elsewhere. The image of the “revolving door” in many companies/ work places leave people to continuosly be in competition with one another and continously disillusioned.
As of now the current minimum wage is not enough for a person to sustain a normal life. We are led to believe that the people who are earning minimum wage are teens who live with their parents and are making money just to have on the side. But according to statistics the major demographic of low wage workers is in fact not teens but adults. It is important for everyone to know that the majority of adults have carry these financial burdens on their pathetic salary and not teens who live with their parents. We need Support among fellow citizens but the only problem with raising minimum wage to 15$ is that some people feel that unskilled workers should not be paid as much as them. This is outrageous because instead of focusing on how to get their pay raised they protest against the poor. This is working out in favor for capitalists who don’t wish to raise wages, until these blind people stop focusing their anger on the wrong groups of people we won’t be able to achieve beneficial change as a whole. I believe no matter what your job is everyone should have a minimum wage that allows for comfortable living conditions. We shouldn’t condemn people for having low- skill jobs because more than likely it’s our societies fault for them being there and not theirs. Fight for the 15!
When the big topic of minimum wage is out there, is always something to discuss especially if in the United States is happening. For examples, I have worked in a supermarket for a minimum wage for a long time. I have noticed that the people working there were teens and old ladies. When I was getting paid that amount of money I didn’t realize that much because I was very young and they took advantage of that. I couldn’t said much since I needed that money to help out my family. I totally think that many companies do profit from other’s workers. In my personal opinion I do think that fast food restaurants get paid less than the minimum wage and they do the job twice more than they are suppose to. Many people don’t realize that their taxes are getting covered to paid other peoples benefits.
I think that workers must be paid by the amount of work they perform not by their experience or education. On the other hand, these kind of people get more benefits by getting food stamps. Having an education and investing on it can get you a better jobs, benefits as well having a better life.
Minimum wage in the U.S is a big issue that not only affects workers but also all of us. Unfortunately, economists and politicians have done a good job to mask the consequences of living in a system that is based on exploitation and inequality.
European countries have much higher wages that range from $12 and up. Cost of living keeps going up but wages stay the same. I believe we need to fight to raise minimum wage, as well as get employment insurance or other benefits and create opportunities for growth in the work place that reflect the advanced society we claim to be.
Low paying jobs put workers on the bottom of an almost unbreakable chain (the worker gets payed so little that workers do not have enough money to make ends meet). Unable to cope with the pressures of a low income life-style, he/she is unable to afford an education to improve their current condition. With no other choice, they are suppressed by the system that they work for. Consequently, there are a series of issues; these workers feels socially incompetent, exploited (because all the extra-hours of work needed to get some money), they lack energy, and are stressed and unhappy about their situation. Many times, unhappy employees take their frustrations on consumers and their productivity goes down. Additionally, there’s a negative impact in a business that can’t keep their employees. As Forbes report, “90% of employees are willing to consider changing jobs and unsatisfied employees are 11 times more likely to move to a new organization in the next year, according to 24 Seven.” Furthermore, there’s an increase of homelessness and crime in low income groups.
How can this be good for anyone? We all benefit from the services and products provided by minimum wage workers, however it should not be at the cost of exploitation and underpayment. I agree that someone has to do those low pay jobs, but it should be paramount that any worker gets payed fairly and has the opportunity to grow.
Many times when we think of minimum wage, we think of teenagers working their first job, and for the most part this makes sense and a suitable pay. However, there are adult workers working minimum wage jobs -barely making ends meet. Many argue that these adults should have gotten an education or find better job. The problem with this mindset is that we’re over looking the problem at hand which is the minimum wage must be raised. How is one expected to live in a city where the cost of living is constantly increasing but the pay is not. As we fight for an increase in minimum wage, we fail to realize that CEO’s of each company are making an incredibly larger amount of money that the workers; it is time to realize where the money is mostly going to and how exactly it is being distributed
If you believe that someone deserves to work for a minimum wage below $10, then you are living in oblivion. Chances are you are working a job that makes more than minimum wage and are still struggling to make ends meet. If that’s the case, then you’re being pretty selfish to say that someone deserves to live on an a wage of $8.75 an hour. Your anger is severally misplaced onto the people you view as being “below you.” The cost of living continues to go up steadily, while minimum wage has yet to make a significant change to keep up with increased living costs.
It is easier for you to see and judge the person behind the counter handing you your value meal then it is to see the CEO’s sitting in their offices rolling around in your money. So really what we are doing is turning on each other which is distracting us from the real problem. It is impossible for any human being to live a half decent life with a minimum wage at or below $10, none the less to support a family. If you feel as though their work is not valuable consider this: What happens if next time you are on the road traveling or on a lunch break you pull into your local mcdonald’s and no one is there to flip your burger. Now what? Now you are probably angry that there is no one there to serve you your $1 hamburger and you now have to go out of your way to a diner to spend $10 or maybe you skip lunch completely because that $10 is out of your budget right now. These people have value that is easy to over look when you are at the other end of the counter. It is easy to be blind to the work that they are doing when you can not experience it first hand. These workers have the same value as any other worker. This goes for anyone making under $15 and hour. It is beyond ridiculous to judge what a wage should be for someone through comparison of their work to anothers. It is time for us to open our eyes and realize we are all on the same boat. We are all trying to make ends meet the best we can with what we are given as the cost of basic living supplies continue to go up. You have alot more in common with the person behind the counter than you realize.
I have worked two completely different minimum wage jobs so far in my life. At age 17, for one year I worked in a Hallmark card store. At age 19 I began waitressing. At my first job I earned $8 an hour, just 75 cents above minimum wage at the time. Since my second job was as a waitress I earned below the standard minimum wage per hour, however, the tips largely made up for it, averaging my hourly wage to from $15-$20 an hour per week. This wage was much easier to live on than the mere $8 an hour. Since I was living on a wage that was at least $15 an hour I forgot that the actual minimum wage was significantly lower than what I was making. I strongly believe in the raising of the minimum wage to $15 an hour especially since the large corporations can afford to page their workers more than they do. The minimum wage workers are often the ones providing the service that the company offers and their wage should reflect the time they dedicate to providing whatever the service may be. With the cost of living continually rising the minimum wage should rise with it. As stated above, the large majority of people working minimum wage jobs are not teenagers but people looking to support a family. This cannot be done with a single digit minimum wage.
In my opinion, the owners of companies are not entitled to earn profit without paying the workers sufficiently for the work they contribute to producing the profit. Without the workers working many hard hours at their jobs, the owners would not be able to earn such a great amount of profit as they are making today. It is exploitation of workers by not paying them the amount they deserve after they work they contribute to earn such a great profit especially at a time where the cost of living is so high. In addition, oftentimes, minimum wage workers are performing services that are needed, such as serving food, cleaning up in places such as hospitals, where it is very much needed, or even child care providers. Most citizens do benefit from the people that are performing these jobs, however, many still do not think the workers deserve to be paid more. This is interesting because these people do not realize that their taxes are then used to support these people that are earning such low wages. It is not fair that taxpayers should be forced to compensate for the low wages, while the owners of the companies are profiting the most from the service of these workers. In addition, it is not fair that people who are employed full time would still need to be receiving benefits from the government, while they are workers hours just as long or longer than any other worker.
I held a minimum-wage job at age 17, and another during sophomore year of college. For the amount of work I did at the daycare and the clothing store, the wage was appropriate. I did not need to work but I could focus on my education, while earning a meager allowance. I didn’t mind the low-wage. Now however, I firmly believe the NYC minimum wage should be raised to $15. Not for me particularly, but for the impoverished. The cost of living, especially in NYC, has risen. Food, rent, and transportation are steadily climbing in expense. Supporting a family is even more pressure. In turn, common necessities have become a luxury for unskilled workers. Pay should be adjusted to accommodate these higher costs of living and increasing inflation. A $9 minimum-wage merely reinforces the corporations’ exploitation of the proletariat and maximizes profit for those already wealthy.
At one point when I was young and ignorant and first entered the workforce, I too was paid minimum wage. Being 16 years old, with absolutely no job experience before and little to no knowledge of what responsibilities a job entailed, I understand why it can be acceptable for a young kid to get paid minimum wage. Especially since they do not have bills to worry about. Having some side money while still focusing on school was the only thing I cared about. However with this being said, I don’t think that it is right for people who work in fast food restaurants to make more money than someone who risks their life everyday for other people, for example. Fast food restaurants are entailed for young kids to start off working to get their feet wet in what it means to have a work schedule and responsibility and it should be a starter job that can eventually teach them skills to move on to a more skilled, better paying job. Even though it seems older people are working the counters of these fast food restaurants, I don’t feel that their level of work and level of responsibility that they deal with justifies the right for them to get paid $15 an hour.