According to the dictionary minimum wage is defined as the “lowest wage permitted by law or a special agreement (such as one with a labor union).
” Also the purpose of minimum wage” is to protect workers against unduly low pay, equitable share of the fruits of progress to all, and a minimum wage in need of such protection”, according to ILO (International Labor Organization).During the Great Depression, the federal minimum wage started at twenty-five cent an hour. Now today’s minimum wage in Texas has increased by seven dollars which is now $7.25.
For many, many years citizens have been trying to get the minimum wage higher and every year our government declines. Sometimes the president will have to step in but, still have the same result of it not being higher. Over time period, there have been reasons why the government is not going to raise the minimum wage and many have argued on why the wage should be raised.As you can see that the results of the wage have not gone up, it has made living very difficult for some families. Even people without a mutual status also find it hard to daily living things. As quoted by our former president “We should raise the minimum wage so that no one who works full time has to live in poverty. (Barack Obama)” This quote clearly just explains that even though somebody can work hard, go to their job every day, and have plenty of hours they have worked but, only earn the bare minimum to get by. The checks that workers will receive are not enough to underpin all the living needs and bills will barely be paid on time.
“According to the the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers are not to require to pay “tipped employees,” such as restaurant servers more than $2.13 an hour in direct wages. However if the sum of tips plus $2.
13 falls below the minimum wage, or $5.15 an hour, the employer is required to make up the difference” (Ehrenreich 16). Some family members have to work more than one job to at least getting their bills paid excluding buying groceries, washing, and cleaning. The government doesn’t want to raise the minimum wage because the attendance at school with teenagers and the young adults will decrease at an alarming rate.
Young adults and teenagers will not have a reason to attend school due to the soar in the wage. There will be a major dropout rate going in many high schools. Students would choose to work and make money than to get their full education. This has been a very good argument on why the wage shouldn’t be raised. ” A time-varying measure of states’ unemployment rates. Based on considerable debate about whether minimum wage increases affect the unemployment rate for youth and adults, we allow for the possibility that the relationship between minimum wage rates and high school completion rates may be moderated by the unemployment rate” (Williams and Mills 2001). Others argue that they are not going to work because the wage is so low that there’s no need to go to work, for the little pay the government is giving them.
Unemployment rates will rise due to the people who are quitting jobs because of the minimum wage.”Nearly 25 percent of employees feel they are paid below industry average and nearly one third (29 percent) of temporary employees quit their last job due to poor wages” (Adecco USA Report 1). Some people feel that “the real minimum wage is zero”(Thomas Sowell). “More than half of respondents (58 percent) said a pay raise would encourage them to stay at a job they were considering leaving” (Adecco USA Report 2). Citizens want to enjoy working but not if they are giving their all for a small portion of money. Jim Clyburn quotes, “The bottom line is that five million low-income Americans working full time for minimum wage, deserve a raise.
” Another argument is that your wage is determined if your on a job temporarily or permanent. Really if someone was on a temporary job like fast food restaurants then theres is a reason for it, you won’t get paid more. But being on a job permanent you will get paid more hourly than the temporarily people. “Temporary work is often regarded as a new form of probationary work for evaluating potential employees (Gunderson forthcoming). In contrast, if workers are likely to be at such jobs more permanently, employers are more likely to find it cost-effective to make adjustments given the longer-run cost implications. This may be offset somewhat by the possibility that it may be more expensive to lay off more permanent workers to the extent that they have higher quasi-fixed costs of hiring, firing and retraining, but such quasi-fixed costs are likely to be more prominent for higher-wage, skilled workers’ (Hamermesh and Pfann 1996) compared with those who are more likely to be less-skilled permanent minimum wage workers.
” In this conclusion, these arguments explains give reason on why the wage is not going to raised and also why it should be raised. Many people want their money to go up but yet the cries and protesting still hasn’t made it possible.
