Should The Minimum Wage Be Raised?

Marcus_Antonius

I shall contextualize both sides of the argument and would like to hear rebuttals which contribute positively to this argument at hand. As of July 2015, Minimum Wage within the United States has been increased to 7.25 USD (With the exception of multiple federally advised states: California - 11.00 USD, Florida - 8.25 USD etc.)

The first minimum wage change within the United States was in 1933 following the National Industrial Recovery Act, which set a nationwide Minimum Wage rate at roughly 25 cents (4 dollars worth at 2012 currency). Over the course of the 20th and into the 21st Century, Minimum Wage has increased dramatically in numerical speak, growing from 1 USD in 1956, to 1.25 USD in 1962, to 4.25 USD in 1992, to 7.25 USD in 2015. Although numerically the dollar has increased, the REAL FIXED set of value of the dollar has grown from 4 USD in 1933 to 7.25 USD today.

Certain Argument against Minimum Wage include:
- Restricts Small Businesses from hiring more workers to do manual labour. This comes as a result of having to pay individual workers more, thus restricting the recruitment of excess workers seeing as the business' economic profit margin has been reduced from expending more on their staff.

- Youth Unemployment increases. After an increase in Minimum Wage, the youth unemployment always dramatically increases as a result of higher competition among the market for Minimum Wage Jobs. Businesses are now less keen to hire an inexperienced individual to work for them and are now incentivized to hire individuals who has minimal experience and are worth 7.25 USD (or whatever current Minimum Wage). This has a detrimental generational effect on unemployed youth, who are unable to successfully maintain a family, and a cycle continues.

- Less open hours for certain small businesses. Small businesses cannot afford to pay for excess wages brought upon by an ever growing government, so rather than cutting staff, they cut the time for which workers have to work, resulting in a shorter opening time.

- Businesses moving from the United States to foreign countries, where more lenient laws exists. A loss of jobs within the source nation begets from this, greatly effecting youth unemployment, investment and unemployment as a whole.

All in all, minimum wage jobs are by no means intended for individuals to earn a living from, hence a minimum wage is not needed. These jobs are intended for those seeking a job with little experience to gain hours in order to climb the ladder of society, or rather, be presented with an opportunity to do so.

Argument in favor of Minimum Wage:
- Individual workers are restricted by the options presented with them. Theoretically, a mutually inclusive market in which workers are entitles to decisions of whether to choose a job is present, however many on the other side of the argument find it hard to imagine a world where low income workers are presented with various alternatives to a job that they in fact are unsatisfactory with.

- A set minimum wage is needed in order to prevent a Monopsony from taking over the labour market (A Companies domination on the hiring of workers)

- Worker dissatisfaction and crude working conditions would be ever present in a market without a minimum wage. Sweat shop workers would become abundant within countries like the United States if no minimum wage is set.

- Minimum wage naturally needs to be increased every few years in order to compensate for the ever growing inflationary currency that exists within every country.

These are the two arguments often presented when arguing this matter. I should like for everyone to engage in a civil debate.

AmericanFurryBoy

A minimum wage of somewhere around $7-15 is good. We need minimum wages so that we don’t have slaves or “indentured” servants. This pay rate allows people to afford the basic things. Food, an apartment/house, bills, etc.

MayCaesar

Minimum wages distort the free market and prevent people from making consensual low-wage labor contracts. Employers are forced to hire fewer people and load them with heavier work in order to maintain the desired level of profit; and low-skilled employees have a difficulty finding a job, because the government requests that they be paid more than employers are willing to pay them. The nature of the market is that in the end the amount of value one produces does correlates with their wage, and if the wage is more than the market demands, then the employee will be forced to produce higher amount of value one way or another.

Minimum wages is one of the policies that exactly lead to people becoming "indentured" servants. Having to work overtime with no extra payment. Having almost no paid vacation. Not being able to quit the job due to the difficulties of finding a new one.

On a free market, employees contest for good job positions, and employers contest for good workers. Employees are encouraged to work on their skills to be able to get higher wages and be more employable, and employers are encouraged to improve work conditions and to offer higher wages in order to get better-performing employees.

Employers that fail to provide competitive work environment get thrown out of the market. Employees that fail to develop sellable skills get thrown out of the market. As it should be.

This is one of those cases when a well-intentioned policy leads to the exact opposite result of what it is supposed to achieve. Rather than instituting minimum wages, the government should simply free up the contract-making process and focus instead on getting both sides to abide by the terms of the contracts. Nothing will benefit both employees and employers more than that.

piloteer

@Marcus_Antonius

That was a well written argument for both sides of the issue. I just wanted to point out that in your arguments against raising minimum wages, I didn't see anything about how the price of goods increase when the minimum wage is increased. When manufacturers have to pay higher wages, they raise the prices of their goods to offset the losses. The first minimum wage that was tied to the national industrial recovery act, may have actually been an attempt to purposely increase the cost of goods because the FDR administration believed it could help with the recovery. During the great depression, the cost of goods had decreased drastically. The cost of grain and produce got so low that the farmers would lose money if they went through the process of growing and harvesting and shipping their goods to market. I'm not claiming that Roosevelt didn't have workers rights in mind also, but the primary reason for the wage increase was an attempt to get higher prices for manufacturers and farmers.

There's some evidence that suggests that raising the minimum wage actually makes it more difficult for the working class to climb the economic ladder. If the cost of labor increases, the price of goods increase and so does the cost of living. There's a reason why the farming industry uses immigrant labor. People with work visas, or illegal immigrants aren't required to be paid whatever the minimum wage is. The farming industry as a whole has been very vocal about letting immigrants remain in the country because if they were replaced by domestic workers who must be paid the minimum wage, the cost of produce could drastically increase. Some say as much as 4 times higher for certain crops. That's clear evidence that the cost of labor and the cost of living are directly tied to minimum wages.

YeshuaBought

I think so because workers have earning the right to a living wage.

John_C_87

@Marcus_Antonius ;

The value of a dollar is actual fixed and what you are describing as a value is actual expense in the general economy. Expense which has increased over economic periods, not time as the impartial receipt of the Federal Reserve Note describes that rise by its economic impartiality as time itself is a fixed value on area. (different argument can be made here as well as a significate change had been made here as well.) A Constitutional argument by united state in relationship to a minimum wage legislation is set by the united state it creates in an economy, governing states are taking employees as their-own for profit, just using private employment as insulation, the independent is sacrificed between the two governing state and private employer. This is by the way in relationship to how governing style has changed.

There is no common defense provided by legislator of State House detailing how taxation of income is not being controlled by unregulated democracy using law as simple way to increase taxation revenue. This increase is then placed In front of a spending curve to fix the numerical value using algebra for the appearance of overall size of economy, over stability if economy.

A minimum wage should not be raised or lowered it should be explained how in basic principle it is constitutional and held constitutional. Yearly. The reality of any State minimum wage is it is running in the negative as Education which as job training cost has been moved to the entry points of employment to the laborer force as a form of debt and is hidden by complex mathematic schedules.

There is also the idea of new intellectual ways of public counterfeiting which can act on the economy as the principle of impartial receipt are not followed in the progress speed to bigger size in economy. This is more in line with constitutional argument over loss of value in the overall work energy of employees in relationship to dollar value between numerical axiom in balance between any spending curves.

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