The Pros And Cons Of Minimum Wage

The minimum wage issue has been highly debated for some time. According to the Minimum Wage Overview Cover Story, in 1937, as the U.S. was recovering from the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his blessings on several economic programs in an attempt to stimulate the slumping economy. One of those platforms was the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 or FLSA for short. Congress set the first minimum wage at twenty-five cents an hour and eventually increasing to forty cents an hour by 1945. This same act also sets in place time and a half or overtime to be paid to anyone that works over the standard work week. In 2007, the minimum wage was raised, gradually, from five dollars and fifteen cents to seven dollars and twenty-five cents …show more content…
This situation means that the least paid professions are such that either youth, people without education or people in need work in these positions, since at the moment minimum wage does not allow one to have a comfortable living, but gives a chance to survive or is a good option as a part-time job for students. Every person understands that without people who work for the minimum wage everyday life will not be as comfortable as it is since there would be way fewer services provided on every step, from restaurants to streets. Moreover, every single lowest salary is another workplace that supplies somebody with a job, meaning that there will always be demand for such positions, saying that working conditions should be carefully taken care of. At the moment minimum wage does not allow one to pay for life with the only salary, saying that people with such income today live below the poverty line. The situation here seems to be controversial. On the one hand, there is a deep understanding of the role of jobs with low salary and services people provide while working, but no decent reward is given to these, creating a situation where no stimulus to work for the minimum wage on the position that is strongly needed. Moreover, social benefits for such jobs are also unavailable in most cases, so there is a need for increasing minimum wage to assure that every job pays …show more content…
One of the most influential factors that are used to support such opinion is the idea that higher minimum wages will result in decreases in the number of workplaces, since higher salaries will result in the higher expenses on the workforce, meaning that minimization of the human involvement may take place. Moreover, optimization of business processes will become one of the most popular services, saying that jobs will be cut. Another issue that is likely to become topical is related to growing prices for everything, since business owners are not expected to pay extra money from their pocket voluntarily, so buying the power of every person within the nation will decrease instead of increasing it for a small group of people. In other words, the higher minimum wage is the first step towards the economic struggle for the whole country and is not a salvation that will make anyone benefit. Every supporter of the idea of increasing minimum wage has to understand that such action may hit their pocket. People will pay for social programs not only from taxes, as they do now, but directly from their salaries. Every product will be a part of the price, thus making everyone responsible for the choice of paying more to a small group of people to make their life better. This situation looks like a forcible