JOSH HILL POLITICS

JOSH HILL POLITICS

 Commentary News For The Intellectual

LIVING WAGE, MINIMUM WAGE, OR NO WAGE???

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%.


Another argument that is made by those on the Right is that if you raise the minimum wage, businesses won't be able to make enough to pay their employees & will in return be forced to fire workers or shut down completely. This claim is simply not true. The people who make this argument are missing the fact that if you stimulate the economy from the bottom up, it will create new customers, & as a result those same businesses would be collecting an increased revenue under a higher minimum wage. If you give minimum wage workers a livable wage, then that means they have more expendable income & can therefore spend more money to stimulate the economy which has been proven time & time again to create more jobs. It's only when a handful of unfathomably rich individuals hoard all of the money that jobs begin to stagnate. The Minimum Wage should be a livable wage that is tied to the cost of living, so when the price of goods & services rise the Minimum Wage also increases to accommodate. One more thing to keep in mind, when a company doesn't pay their employees a livable wage, the difference is often made up through social programs like welfare & food stamps. I really don't believe because of corporate greed, that the taxpayer should have to make up the difference. These are not the types of people to sit at home & take advantage of the system. These people have jobs, they work hard, they're productive members of society who deserve nothing less than to be justly paid for their work.

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