Income inequality has become an increasingly talked about problem in America and rightfully so. At the end of 2012 the top one percent of families in the United States accounted for over 20 percent of national income compared to the top one percent accounting for 10 percent of national income in 1970 according to Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez from the London School of Economics. Common sense would suggest that in order to compress this inequality gap, poor people making more money would have a profound effect on decreasing the gap in income, however a closer look at this phenomenon suggests that this is not the case. In a capitalist society your income is a reflection of the value that you bring to your employer, which is a reflection of
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Simple economics suggests that if a business is increasing the wage of its workers, then it will obviously not be able to afford all of them and some of the workers will have to be let go. This is the hidden side of a minimum wage increase that is often overlooked, yes it is hard to support a family on a minimum wage salary, but it is even harder to support a family on no salary, and if every minimum wage worker gets a salary increase than this is the reality that some minimum wage workers are going to have to face. However instead of making the argument that one cannot support a family on a minimum wage income, the argument can be made that a parent shouldn’t be supporting a family on a minimum wage income in the first place. Minimum wage jobs should be for high school and college students who want to put gas in their car and have a little spending money for the weekend, not a parent who has bills and a child to take care of. This comes back to the concept that your income is a reflection of the value that you bring to your company, so the biggest problem in terms of inequality isn’t a wage issue, it’s a skills issue, America needs to invest in the skills of its workers and try to minimize parents who are working for minimum wage salaries. This can be accomplished by policies such as free community college, which was suggested under the Obama administration. Free community college is a fantastic economic tool to help increase the skills of low wage workers, which will result in an increase in wage for these
Simple economics suggests that if a business is increasing the wage of its workers, then it will obviously not be able to afford all of them and some of the workers will have to be let go. This is the hidden side of a minimum wage increase that is often overlooked, yes it is hard to support a family on a minimum wage salary, but it is even harder to support a family on no salary, and if every minimum wage worker gets a salary increase than this is the reality that some minimum wage workers are going to have to face. However instead of making the argument that one cannot support a family on a minimum wage income, the argument can be made that a parent shouldn’t be supporting a family on a minimum wage income in the first place. Minimum wage jobs should be for high school and college students who want to put gas in their car and have a little spending money for the weekend, not a parent who has bills and a child to take care of. This comes back to the concept that your income is a reflection of the value that you bring to your company, so the biggest problem in terms of inequality isn’t a wage issue, it’s a skills issue, America needs to invest in the skills of its workers and try to minimize parents who are working for minimum wage salaries. This can be accomplished by policies such as free community college, which was suggested under the Obama administration. Free community college is a fantastic economic tool to help increase the skills of low wage workers, which will result in an increase in wage for these