The Pros And Cons Of The Minimum Wage

Improved Essays
According to wikipedia “a minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers may legally pay to workers. Equivalently, it is the price floor below which workers may not sell their labor.”

The U.S. federal minimum wage was first established during the Depression in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. It started at merely 25 cents and it has risen to $7.25 per hour.

Along with establishing minimum wage, the Fair Labor Standards Act also banned oppressive child labor and the maximum workweek at 44 hours.

Many believe that the minimum wage is something that only teenagers earn, but that is simply not the case. 48.2% of the 3 million workers who were at or below the federal minimum in 2014 were ages 16 to 24, though only 24% are
…show more content…
The federal minimum wage was meant to promote economic development and stop the original "race to the bottom" of employers moving to cheaper labor states in a downward spiral.
Ever since President Roosevelt first instituted the idea of a minimum wage there has been debate about it. He believed “...That no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has the right to continue in this country.” Furthermore, he actively advocated for “living wages… more than bare subsistence” in which he defined as “the wages of decent
…show more content…
When minimum wages are increased, there are several things that employers must do in response to the increase. Firstly, they have to increase the wages of all workers who were being paid minimum wage to match the new minimum. Second, they have to slightly increase the wages of some workers in order preserve the wage hierarchy. Lastly, They have to pay their own wage bill. If businesses wanted to cover the cost of a 10-percent raise in the minimum wage by raising their prices, they would only have to to raise prices by less than 0.1 percent.
Minimum wage raises pose no inflationary threat. The potential minimum wage’s effect on inflation would be raise the rate of inflation by less than 0.1 percent. This would raise the average annual inflation rate of about 2.6 percent to just about 2.7 percent. This change is so minuscule that the rate is effectively unchanged by the wage increase. The potential impact on inflation that this poses is smaller than the margin of error for the Department of Labor’s estimate of

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Raising the minimum wage to anything beyond the current $7.25 per hour could have devastating effects on the job market, if the decision is made carelessly. That’s why careful consideration is the key to any good decision. There are benefits, and there are disadvantages to a wage…

    • 743 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Minimum Wage Increase = Bad Idea There are many hard working Americans that deserve an increased amount of salary. A raise for a couple of those hard working employees would be justified, they deserve it.…

    • 2038 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Texas Minimum Wage Essay

    • 348 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The minimum wage created to help stabilize the economy after the Great Depression by establishing a minimum standard of living. The FLSA intentionally did not link the minimum wage to the rate of inflation; it can only be raised with the United State’s Congress's approval. The minimum wage is especially utilized in the fast food industry because of the absence of unions and many of the employment positions are for unskilled workers and require low human capital. In some states, the state minimum wage is higher than the federal minimum wage, for example, California, while in other states the federal and state minimum wages are the same.…

    • 348 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Minimum wage is a relatively new concept in the labour market. It was created with the idea that minimum wage will be a stepping stone into a better paying job in mind. As the years have gone by, minimum wage jobs have evolved from supporting teenagers and giving them the necessary experience in the work field to supporting families. It’s this change in dynamics that fuels the argument that minimum wage should increase to a living wage. What people fail to realize is that minimum wage exists for a reason and should it be increased; the positive impacts are outweighed by the negative impacts in the economy.…

    • 592 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Minimum wage is the lowest wage allowed by law or by special agreement. the federal minimum wage for covered over time paid employees is 7.25 per hour; which was enforced july 24, 2009. these type of employees are called non exempt employees under the FLSA act. Employees must pay them one an a half times their regular pay when they work over fourty hours a week. in my opinion, we should not have minimum wage laws nor should we raise them.…

    • 261 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Social Problem Minimum wage was first created in 1938 during the Great Depression under Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) presidency. Minimum wage started off as $0.25 an hour and has been changed for a total of 22 times by the year 2009. Initially, minimum was introduced to cover women and minors, due to the fact that white men were able to rely on the union as a safety net and that they earned higher wages (Kaufman, 2012). Currently in Louisiana minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Although the current minimum wage is significantly higher than what it used to be at $ 0.25, it still does not suffice to meeting the modern individual’s needs in 2017.…

    • 636 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In 1938, the minimum wage was established as part of the fair Labor Standard Act. Over time, of infrequent and inadequate adjustment the minimum wage, no longer serves as an adequate wage floor. One of the most controversial issues in the U.S. is if minimum wage should be increased to $15 or not. People believe that if minimum wage was increased it would help out with day to day living.…

    • 969 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The first federal minimum wage was initially introduced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1938 after a law called Fair Labor Act. This law required employers to pay their employees overtime. The minimum wage was set at twenty-five cents an hour, which is about $6.20 per hour…

    • 2332 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Raised Minimum Wage

    • 1046 Words
    • 5 Pages

    When the minimum wage was introduced in 1938 with the Fair Labor Standards Act it was met with acclaim. This is because it eliminated underage child labor which was widespread in the 1930’s. It also stated that the minimum wage would increase with inflation inflation the minimum wage would also increase, which it has over the last century. However, aAs of late the minimum wage has not kept pace with…

    • 1046 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Minimum Wage History

    • 1540 Words
    • 7 Pages

    History of Minimum Wage Minimum wage in the United States was founded in the year 1938 in the Great Depression when President Franklin Roosevelt was in office. Minimum wage was set at twenty five cents per hour and was increased by the congress at least twenty two times the most ever since the year 2009. In the year 1890 wages of Americans were a total of $380 which was below the poverty line of $500 per year at the time. America got the idea from looking at examples from Australia and New Zealand who introduced minimum wages in the 1890s. In the year 1912 minimum wage started in Massachusetts and after words elven more states would join the laws of minimum wages that covered women and minors and not men between the years of 1913 and 1917.…

    • 1540 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Raising the minimum wage will just cause artificial inflation in the cost of goods. This not only hurts the minimum wage worker, but it hurts the entire consumer market. Consider this logical hypothetical situation. The lowest paid employee at a company is making minimum wage at $8 per hour, the next higher employee on the scale is the shift manager making $10 per hour, the assistant manager at $15 per hour and the general manager earning $25 per hour. If the federal government raises the lowest paid minimum wage employee to $15 per hour.…

    • 2029 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Minimum wage to a child/teenager may not seem very important, in fact to a young child/teenager it may just seem useless, but to anyone that is in the workforce, and works countless hours a week, it is your life. Minimum wage affects the way someone lives, and has since it was created in 1938. That minimum wage was introduced as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA also covers things like youth employment standards, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and standards for government employees at the local, state, and federal levels. But prior to the FLSA, at least one state had passed its own minimum wage laws.…

    • 666 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    It turns out that increasing the minimum wage means decreasing job opportunities. If the minimum wage increased, people will face lots of problem such as- it would result in the job loss evidence of job losses, hurt low-skilled workers, little effect on reducing poverty, and it may result in the higher price for consumers. Most Americans agree the current federal minimum wage is not enough to live on. It is hard to imagine some families are surviving on just $15,000 a year.…

    • 1438 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    But the minimum wage remains at $7.25. If it had kept up with inflation since 1968, it would be almost $10.70 today. (Jack Quinn) The minimum wage should be increased so that people can survive. With the cost of living going up, so should wages.…

    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Minimum wage has been a highly controversial topic in the United States for eighty years now. Federal minimum wage is set at $7.25 currently and there are many debates on raising it from that to $12 or $15. Many Americans think this is a good idea and its going to yield a higher yearly income, this is true. On the contrary is is also going to inflate the prices of the goods we purchase. Raising the minimum wage to $15 would not be morally justifiable according to utilitarianism and comparing inflation to what MacKinnon calls living wage.…

    • 838 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays