Posted on- March 3, 2016 at 10:20 P.M.
(Written By Joshua Hill)
Lately the Minimum Wage has been a hot topic debate between the Political Left & the Political Right. The Political Left makes the argument that the Minimum Wage should be a livable wage as where the Political Right believes that the Minimum Wage should be either reduced or gotten rid of all together. In this post I will make the argument as to why the substance, facts, statistics, evidence, studies, arithmetic, data, etc... etc... supports raising the Minimum Wage, & I will show that the Minimum Wage should not only be raised, but when you raise the Minimum Wage it can help the economy significantly.
It's not like the Minimum Wage workers are lazy or not working hard. In fact a study in 2013 showed that if the Minimum Wage kept up with productivity of the American workers, it would be at $21.72 an hour. Bernie Sander's fifteen dollar Minimum Wage proposal is only a reasonable fraction of that. Also according to the same 2013 study, if the minimum wage kept up with inflation since it peaked in real value in the late 1960s, the Minimum Wage would be well over $10.00 an hour. Shouldn't the American people be paid for their hard work? Everyone with a job plays a part in keeping our society functioning, & anyone who contributes to that in a hard working way deserves to be rightfully compensated.
The reason we know that raising the Minimum Wage is beneficial to jobs & the economy is because we actually have records of states that have raised their Minimum Wage & states that have not. For example, In 2014 thirteen states had increased their Minimum Wage, & out of the thirteen states that increased their Minimum Wage, all but one (New Jersey) saw vehement employment gains. Furthermore, nine of the remaining twelve states were above the median for that period. The average change in employment for the thirteen states that increased their Minimum Wage was +0.99% while the remaining states had an average employment change of +0.68%.
(Fox News Source, Employment Gains For States That Increased Minimum Wage)
(Even in this case, an organization as vehemently biased as Fox News can't deny blatant hard facts)