You agree with raising the minimum wage

Topic: You agree with raising the minimum wage (so your counterargument is against it)
The argument should use formal diction (e.g., 2nd person pronouns) and have at least one opposing viewpoint to which you will refute (you can concede, too)

ANSWER

Raising the Minimum Wage

Introduction

Today, the minimum wage stands at $7.25 per hour. Even though there has been a rise in nominal wages and prices for other United States’ workers, the minimum wage has been like this since 2009 (Manning, 126). For decades, the purchasing power for the minimum wage has been decreasing. Increasing the minimum wage would benefit many families and people in the United States in various ways. It is said that the minimum wage has been stagnant for a decade and years, yet life costs have changed over these years. Life essentials cost has surprisingly gone higher, yet the minimum wage has stayed in the same place. For instance, the grocery price has gone more elevated, and today, it costs 20% more than it cost ten years ago. Similarly, the price of a gallon of gas has gone more increased by 25% (Binders & Christos 15). With the cost of living increasing, so should the minimum wage for American citizens to survive. Raising the minimum wage of citizens has many positive effects on the people and even small businesses.

First, increasing minimum wages is beneficial to households s it improves family incomes more so those households led by women. Many homes in the United States depend on women’s revenue more than single mothers. With higher minimum wages, there is an increment in families’ incomes at the salaries that play the leading role in reducing the country’s poverty rate. Increasing the minimum wage by 10% lowers poverty rates for non-elderly individuals by 5%. Generally, women in the US are paid less than men; hence the minimum wage impacts more on women who are, in most cases, the breadwinners of their homes.  There is already wage inequality in women, and having this minimum wage is affecting them as well. Therefore, increasing the minimum wage will improve women and their children’s lives as it will be easier for them to afford their lives and that of their children. It may not bring an end to wage inequality between men and women, but it will make life easier for women-run households. It will also reduce the poverty levels for these individuals.

Secondly, I support the increment of minimum wages because raising and improving the minimum wage workers’ living standards. It does this by giving them a more suitable income level, incomes that may help them maintain the cost of living. It is not fair that it has been a decade since the minimum wage was determined (Tsao et al. 1039). Things have changed, and the economy is no longer the same. People pay more for the same things they got ten years ago. Unfortunately, the minimum wage has stayed constant over the years. Therefore, increasing these wages will improve the living standard of these people. A person may have been working in an organization for ten years. Maybe when she started, she was a single woman with no kids, and life may have been better. During this time, life was easy, and things were affordable. However, in the last ten years, this individual got married and maybe had three kids, but unfortunately for her income, it has been constant. This individual may be forced to look for more hours at work or get another job to sustain their daily needs. Increasing the minimum wages for individuals will improve their lives and that of their families. It will help them live a more comfortable life and reduce the straining rate.

Apart from personal benefits, increasing employee minimum wages is beneficial to businesses. It is so because the intangible use of the increment will lead to tangible benefits for an organization. It is so because the minimum wages raised increase employee morale. In most businesses, the owners are never aware of what encouragement they should put in place to motivate them and maximize their efforts in the workplace (Zheng & Benson 27). This is often one of the challenges employees face, especially with the low wages that employees receive. These employees are never motivated to put their all in the job they do because they feel it is not helping them leave their poverty. There will be no morale, and some may opt to quit as they do not see the difference between working and not. Therefore, increasing the minimum wage is a perfect way to motivate the employees to work extra hard in their jobs. Improving employee morale contributes to tangible results in the organization. These may include reduced training costs and hiring, which will increase employee retention in the organization.

Increasing minimum wages is also essential to the economic growth of a country. The government may not realize it but raising the minimum employee wages helps in a country’s GDP growth. It does that because the more a person is paid, the more they spend. The more they spend on various products in the country, the more tax they produce, which results in the country’s economic growth (Sabia 7). It will lead to them buying more products for their household upkeep and their children. Increasing employees’ wages put more dollars in their pockets; hence their spending is likely to go high. They will find a reason to spend on various products, and they will be eager to try new ones that they did not previously use.  It increases their spending, and there will be money flow to retailers and many businesses that contribute to the country’s economic growth. It is vital to understand that the more a person earns, the more their spending is and vice versa. A person who makes less will restrict themselves from overspending, and they will only purchase the things they need. Therefore, apart from paying bills and buying the basic needs, these individuals will not live a luxurious life, and their spending will be from groceries to invoices and the necessities.

Despite the various advantages of raising the minimum wage, one may argue about why increasing it is not a good idea. For instance, raising minimum wages may be suitable for employees as it allows them to improve and change their living standards. However, increasing the minimum wage increases inflation in a country. Raising the wages would cause an increment in salaries and wages. As a result, it will increase the operating expenses of an organization. These companies will then increase the product and service prices to cover the increased labor costs. Growing product and service prices mean the cost of living increments. The organizations are likely to take advantage of this opportunity to get more money from their consumers, and the best way to do it is through increasing their product services. People may not realize it, but increasing the minimum employee wages would also result in loss of jobs. It is so because, with increased minimum wages, many businesses will have no choice but to cut jobs so that they maintain profitability. Since the increase will impact them as they will have no choice but to increase the wages, they may be forced to reduce the number of employees they have to maintain or increase the organization’s profitability. According to the CBO report written in 2019, if minimum wages are increased to 15 dollars an hour by 2025, more than one million jobs would be lost by then (Whiting et al. 199). The numbers could be higher if companies focused more on outsourcing jobs to less expensive markets.

Conclusion

Generally, raising minimum employee wages will improve the lives of many citizens, businesses, and the government as a whole. It works by increasing the economic growth of the country and improving the living standards of many people. For instance, the more a person is paid, the more they spend purchasing new products they don’t need. They would be buying more products and living more comfortably compared to before when their minimum wage was little. As they do this, they pay taxes through the goods they purchase, and while doing this, there is constant cash flow from buyers to retailers and businesses. All these results in economic growth as the more they are buying, the more the taxes. However, apart from the advantages of the minimum wage increase, there are disadvantages associated with it. Most people assume and get excited when they learn about the wage increment and forget the weaknesses. For example, it may result in the loss of jobs for many people. This will be so because businesses may have no choice but to dismiss some of the employees to maintain profitability. Still, the minimum wage should be increased as the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, and people need to have better pay as things are changing more and more every day.

Work Cited

Binder, Carola, and Christos Makridis. “Stuck in the Seventies: Gas Prices and Consumer Sentiment.” Review of Economics and Statistics (2020): 1-42. https://scholarship.haverford.edu/economics_facpubs/228/

Manning, Alan. “The truth about the Minimum Wage: Neither job killer nor cure-All.” Foreign Aff. 97 (2018): 126. https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/abstract.asp?index=6396

Sabia, Joseph J. “Do minimum wages stimulate productivity and growth?.” IZA World of Labor 221 (2015).

Tsao, Tsu-Yu, et al. “Estimating potential reductions in premature mortality in New York City from raising the minimum wage to $15.” American journal of public health 106.6 (2016): 1036-1041. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4880275/

Whiting, Mark E., Grant Hugh, and Michael S. Bernstein. “Fair work: Crowd work minimum wage with one line of code.” Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing. Vol. 7. No. 1. 2019.

Zeng, Zhaocheng, and Benson Honig. “A study of living wage effects on employees’ performance‐related attitudes and behaviour.” Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences/Revue Canadienne des Sciences de l’Administration 34.1 (2017): 19-32.

To get your original copy of this completed paper, please Order Now