Raise Minimum Wage Essay

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Why do we need Minimum wage? Fare minimum wage. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 with a goal to ensure a "minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency and general well-being.” A major concern with minimum wage policy is its negative effect on employment rate. Seventy years of observation of minimum wage rates have given us enough empirical data to see that there is no such effect. In 1950, when President Truman raised minimum wage by 87% or, in 1967, when Congress raised it by 27% no negative effect on unemployment rate was recorded. Recent studies from 2010 by the head of Council of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger, showed that raising the minimum wage doesn't destroy minimum wage jobs; it in fact helps fill job vacancies.…show more content…
Minimum wage worker works as an office clerk, as a hostess, cleaner. Much of what they earn goes to very essential needs like food, rent, and clothes. The price of those essential needs is growing each year. Minimum wage in a decade grew only on $1.75, which is meager when we consider real buy power of these minimum wage. Rent and utilities prices never went down, but minimum wage did. Gap between minimum wage and living wage creates more obstacles for low wage worker, and makes minimum wage policy meaningless. Very low wages can discourage workers to work at all and go into full dependency from government. Keeping up minimum wage with inflation rate is as important as having minimum wage. Real buying power of money is calculated each year. If we look at buying power of minimum wage (at its highest) in 1968 in 2012 dollars it is 10.55$. Today minimum wage rate is 7.25 $. The buying power of todays minimum wage is incredibly below 1968 minimum wage. Does it mean that our produce is cheaper now or we need less food to survive? Obviously this is not the

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