Why Unions Want a Higher Minimum Wage February 25, 2013, 6:59 p.m. ET Labor contracts are often tied to the law—and it reduces the competition for lower-paying jobs. * By RICHARD BERMAN Organized labor's instantaneous support for President Obama's recent proposal to hike the minimum wage doesn't make much sense at first glance. The average private-sector union member—at least one who still has a job—earns $22 an hour according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a far cry from the current $7.25 per hour federal minimum wage, or the $9 per hour the president has proposed.
Tieaisja Nicole Powell Unit 9 Final Project Minimum wage essay College Composition 2 Minimum wage is considered low income. It affects the lives of people making minimum wage and also small business owners. It affects the employees because the cost of living continues to rise and minimum wage doesn’t. Small business are affected because raising minimum wage would mean they would have to hire less employees and raise the prices on the company’s products. Minimum wage is unacceptable because the cost of living will continue to increase.
Financial Services Department 12 January 2014 Raising Minimum Wage and Its Impact on the Economy Raising the minimum wage has been heavily discussed by the federal government, from President Obama's call to raise the minimum wage to The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013. So as raising the minimum wage gains more coverage, several economists and small business owners have argued that overall, raising the minimum wage will have a large negative effect. However with further research, raising the minimum wage actually has a positive effect on the economy, more specifically, on small businesses, unemployment, demographics, and the price level of consumer goods. With the idea of raising the minimum wage, a large focus has been placed small businesses.
Now, if you are unfortunate enough to not have the drive to excel then you either stay at your lowly wage or eventually give up. We have too many people on this planet to be handing out raises to those who don’t earn it. The government uses the hiking up of minimum wage as a powerful platform to instill the
Because many want to work, have family, but no degree; a lot of businesses open their doors when they can monetarily! “By setting an artificial minimum on wages, lawmakers unintentionally raise the unemployment of the most disadvantaged and make it nearly impossible for teenagers and other unskilled citizens to enter the labor pool,” says Stephen Chapman spouting openly concerning the argumentative pay raise(3 Meisner, et al). When the hourly wages go up the small business doors tend to close. Raising the minimum wage does nothing for them other than causing the cost of living to go up, and causes them to pay a little more in income tax. Just those two ideas alone put them having less money in the aftermath of the raise, than they did before this cold remnant of fairness hits too
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.
One disadvantage to increasing the minimum wage is the possibility of a continued shortage of jobs. As the minimum wage increases, more people would want to find a job more than ever. This could cause a shortage in jobs because their still wouldn’t be enough work but the demand will be higher. The graph below shows the minimum wages from 1938 to 2007, in comparison to the poverty levels. Even though this problem wouldn’t change by the increase in minimum wage, I believe that this disadvantage isn’t that important at the current moment because it takes a while to rebuild an economy.
Obama urged Congress to raise the minimum wage from the current $ 7.25 per hour to $ 9 per hour. The advantages of this point are to reduce poverty and improve the phenomenon of low wages. However, the minimum wages increased by 24% will lead to the increase in labor supply, reduced demand and cause large unemployment. Thus, it might occur that a phenomenon of low-wage improvement, but the unemployment rate is correspondingly increased. What make matters worse is that unemployment is the most vulnerable to afford unemployment hit.
Obama’s plans to make jobs through stimulus have failed. Everything in our economy is high: Utility bills, health premiums, and gasoline prices. Obama’s own plan to tax the small business owner more instead of giving him a break during these tough economic times. His TRILLION DOLLAR DEFFICIT will slow our economy; take away jobs and causes the wages to stall. His plan to raise taxes on small business won’t add jobs, it will eliminate them.
It was marketed towards the citizens of the United States as a tool to “put Americans back to work” without adding “a dime to the deficit”(Epstein, 2013). This legislation is proving to be unsustainable due to it being hard to price on an annual basis (Epstein, 2013). While unemployment rates have been going down, the increase in jobs leans more towards part-time rather than full-time work (Epstein, 2013). This can also be attributed to the change in unemployment benefit laws, which restricted the length of time you can claim