persuasive speech on raising minimum wage

Minimum Wage Persuasive Speech

Preventing Minimum Wage Speech Overview: General Goal: To persuade - to create, change or reinforce attitudes, values, beliefs and/or behaviors. Specific Goal: By the end of this speech my audience will believe that minimum wage in America should be raised all around the nation. Introduction: (This is where you start talking) Attention Grabber: How many of us have worked a job that pays $7.25 - $7.50 a hour? Most minimum wage workers are under the age of 25. Relevance Statement: Most of us will work at a job that pays minimum wage at some point in our life. It is usually known as our first job. Since most of us are under the age of 25 I find this a very important topic to talk about. According to the U.S. Bureau of labor statistics in 2014 1.3 million workers of the age of 16 …show more content…

Speech Body Existence of Problem: The minimum wage rate is causing higher levels of poverty and unemployment. Evidence of Problem Existence: On a article Michael Saltsman wrote that President Obama has discussed raising the minimum wage rate to $9.00 per hour. He believes that "a higher minimum wage can reduce poverty without reducing employment." On another article listed on The Washington Post Mike Konczal stated "Dube uses the latest in minimum-wage statistics and finds a negative relationship between the minimum wage and poverty. Specifically, raising the minimum wage 10 percent (say from $7.25 to near $8) would reduce the number of people living in poverty 2.4 percent." Evidence of Problem Existence: Most of us can't get by on minimum wage pay and leaves people struggling at home. Chris Isidore stated on a article listed on CNN that "About 20% of American adults who have jobs are earning only $10.65 an hour or less, according to Osterman's analysis. Even at 40 hours a week, that amounts to less than $22,314, the poverty level for a family of

Pros And Cons Of Minimum Wage

Berlatsky, Noah. The Minimum Wage. n.p.: Detroit: Greenhaven Press, c2012., 2012. Joliet Junior College Library Catalog.

Minimum Wage Survey Paper

For my survey project, I chose to talk about whether or not it is a good idea to raise the minimum wage. My goal for my research is to prove that it is a bad idea to raise it. While it is convenient for minimum waged workers to get paid more, it would not be for the rest of us. It would result in everything becoming more expensive. My main focus is on keeping the minimum wage at its current value, nine dollars.

Essay On Raising The Federal Minimum Wage

A minimum wage increase from “$7.25 to $10.10 would result in a loss of 500,000 jobs”. ("The Effects of Minimum-Wage Increase on Employment and Family Income”) This claim is better because it shows how raising the minimum wage will decrease job growth instead of increasing it. But, the minimum wage should be increased because increasing will also increase economic activity and spur job growth, decrease poverty, and improvements in productivity and economic growth have outpaced increases in the minimum

Minimum Wage Should Not Be Raised

A controversial topic often debated between liberals and conservatives is the minimum wage issue. While many liberals advocate for raising it, a number of conservatives are persistent on keeping the rate constant; however, studies show that raising minimum wage would not alleviate this country’s poverty issue and would, in fact, increase the unemployment. For these reasons, the minimum wage should not be raised. Increasing the minimum wage would cause economic strain in many ways to workers already living in poverty. According to James Sherk’s article: ‘Raising the Minimum Wage Will Not Reduce Poverty’, raising minimum wage to seven dollars and twenty five cents would cause an estimated eight percent of current workers to lose their jobs.

Raising Minimum Wage Research Paper

Giving these points, minimum wage should be increase because is going to end poverty by sustaining families and by helping college kids with their loans. This is going to change the lives of people who right now are struggling, are struggling to feed their children, they are struggling with their loans or personal needs. All this can change, poverty should end, and college students will continue pursuing their dreams. So, take action on what you believe is right, and what’s right is being a helping hand in this

Four Reasons Not To Raise The Minimum Wage

When the minimum wage is raised, workers are priced out of the market and many of them lose their jobs. The U.S should not raise the minimum wage because there would be a major loss in jobs which would be very hard for the unemployed to maintain their

Persuasive Essay On Minimum Wage

A person working full time at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour earns $15,080 in a year, which is 20% higher than the 2015 federal poverty level of $12,331 for a one-person household under 65 years of age, but 8% below the 2015 federal poverty level of $16,337 for a single-parent family with a child under 18 years of age (procon.org pro#2). If you put the minimum wage at $9.00, people will be able to live comfortably without unemployment rates going up. However, raising the minimum wage

Minimum wage and poverty With everything going on with the Walmart workers picketing for fifteen dollars an hour wages, the topic is widely discussed with many people taking many different sides. The essay “Raising the Minimum wage will reduce poverty” By Sharon Parrott and Jason Furman, They go into how they think the minimum wage should be raised in order to decrease poverty in america, Of course there are reasons to raise it and reasons to not raise it. Yet with the multitude of reasons for and against it, it’s hard to make a decision that makes everybody content, Some of the reasons not to raise it include, Raising it can make prices for everyday items go up, Why go and spend thousands of dollars on college when you could get a decent job right out of high school, and Why let workers who work at unskilled jobs make as much if not more than the military. Some reasons for minimum wage raising is, The fact that the cost of living is higher means people can’t survive with minimum wage without federal care, And just helping people get back on their feet when they couldn’t find a job. The reasons Minimum wage shouldn’t be raised outweigh the reasons it should.

Raising Minimum Wage Essay

Low-wage workers and other employees support a raise in minimum wage. An article by Barbara Mantel states, “Supporters of an increase say raising the minimum would cause minimal job loss while putting money into the hands of low-wage workers who would spend it, boosting the economy. ”(Mantel, Barbara) The money a business pays an employee may be going back into the economy, however, the money doesn’t necessarily go back to the business. Businesses need a profit to pay for their supplies and necessities within their building, however, raising minimum wage will decrease that business’s profit, therefore, limiting them to how much supplies they can use.

Minimum Wage Pros And Cons

Introduction Minimum wage is the lowest hourly rate an employer can pay an employee for hours worked. The topic of raising the minimum wage is a sensitive issue for many people. The livelihood of many relevant stakeholders will be directly effected by policies created in regards to raising minimum wage, both positively and negatively. This paper will examine the history and current state of minimum wage. It will identify the issues connected to raising minimum wage, analyze the arguments for and against, and make recommendations based on the analysis.

The Consequences Of Raising Minimum Wage

America today is faced with its fair share of problems. There are low employment rates, debt, and inflation everywhere, riddling the economy with issues. There is absolutely no reason that any American citizen should want to pile upon the problem. Yet, some believe that it could be done by raising the federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour. Fortunately, history, economics, and common sense prove the minimum wage raise proposition wrong.

Argumentative Essay: Raising The Minimum Wage

During the Obama administration there has been a call to rise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour. Those who support the rise claim it is a only “fair” for workers to have a “living wage”. Those who against the rise of the minimum wage say it would have a negative effect on business, small business especially. Business should not mandated to provide to provide a minimum wage based on the governments’ say. In fact I believe the minimum wage should not be raised at all.

Essay On Increase In Minimum Wage

In the past three years, many politicians and labor unions have been pushing for an increase in minimum wage. Minimum wage is the lowest set wage by a law of a government body. An increase in minimum will benefit some people, and hurt others. An increase in minimum wage will cause benefit in the short run but will be very damaging to the economy in the long run. There should not be an increase in minimum wage because it is unhealthy to the economy in the long run and it will be the major cause of job loss, increase in inflation, competition, and the price level of goods and services.

Minimum Wage Should Be Increased

The concept that the National minimum wage needs to be elevated to $15 an hour hasn’t been completely considered because it would cause inflation for the economy; therefore, the lower class would still be functioning in poverty. A minimum wage job is low paying because it requires low skill; therefore the

Argumentative Essay On Minimum Wage

The people who make minimum wage very clearly express their theory that higher pay will benefit them and show many valid points on why it should be increased. Minimum wage workers work hard and "[s]ince the 1970s, productivity has risen dramatically... [y]et middle- and low-wage workers ' incomes have barely changed" (Dorn). These circumstances make it hard for low wage workers to stay above the poverty line when the average low wage worker makes only $15,000 annually (Dorn). Before inflation, the minimum wage was surprisingly much higher, "in 1968, the minimum wage was close to $10 per hour in today 's dollars" (Dorn).

More about Minimum Wage Persuasive Speech

Persuasive Essay Sample: The Minimum Wage Must Be Raised

“Trying to just Survive” were the words of a man interviewed about his view on the minimum wage (Lenahan). The minimum wage is a topic that divides those who live working minimum wage jobs and policymakers. The minimum wage has been a topic up for debate for a while as workers find the federal minimum wage of $7.50 simply unlivable anymore. At the same time, prominent political policymakers refuse to give in to the truth behind the workers' plea as they worry about significant business and inflation. Although raising the minimum would increase price inflation, raising the minimum wage is essential, as it would provide a livable wage for low-income workers while stimulating and growing the economy.

Minimum wage workers struggle to make ends meet as they find that making 7.50 an hour is not enough for the cost of living anymore. According to “Should, the Federal Minimum Wage Be Increased?” As decided 13 years ago, the minimum wage is $7.25; in 1968, it was $1.60, when adjusting to inflation, that is equivalent to $11.16. When adjusting for inflation to today’s standard, the minimum wage is “53.9% higher than today’s $7.25 federal minimum wage” (Should the Federal Minimum Wage Be Increased). The 53.9% difference shows that the minimum wage must be revised as workers suffer from making essentially 3.91 an hour less than they would if inflation was adjusted. This dramatically impacts the workers' social mobility as workers are barely floating above the poverty line, without dependents. Factoring in two dependents would mean that “the federal minimum of $7.25 leaves an adult with two children thousands of dollars below the federal poverty threshold” (Raising the Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Businesses). The sad reality of the minimum wage and families who struggle with a single income on minimum wage is the struggle to make a decent life and fund their children's education and lifestyle. This adds to the growing concerns of starting a family. People struggle with monetary issues, live paycheck to paycheck, and worry about covering their essential bills. The minimum wage is a change that must be made to completely change the lives of everyday workers and increase social mobility in the United States. 

Additionally, increasing the minimum wage would help stimulate the economy while causing more worker productivity and a stable workforce. While initially, it could be a concern that raising the minimum wage would affect the job opportunities as a business would not want to hire employees due to the cost, this has been disproven. According to Raising the Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Businesses, “Leading economists have found that increases in the minimum wage have no discernible effect on employment.” Thus, proving that raising the minimum wage would not have an adverse effect on unemployment and workers getting laid off. Instead, it would help stimulate the economy more as workers would have to pay more taxes. It would add to the country's overall economic health as the goods and services would grow along with more economic prosperity. The country's overall GDP would increase, causing the country's standard of living to rise (Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Businesses). In addition, the raising of the country’s GDP would help businesses reduce their training cost as it would help employee turnover. Raising the minimum wage would allow companies to " increase productivity and customer satisfaction” (Should the Federal Minimum Wage Be Increased? 15 Pros and Cons). The increase in productivity and customer satisfaction would allow businesses to produce and sell more products, leading to a more stable income. 

It could be argued that raising the minimum wage would cause inflation because it would inflate the market, and prices would go up, which is true. However, the minimum wage has failed low-income workers. The minimum wage has not been raised since 2009. It has been 13 years since the federal minimum wage has been raised. Contrary to the minimum wage, “Since2009, inflation has increased by 11%” (Lenahan). As inflation has increased, minimum wage workers have still had to deal with the same 7.25 federal wage, meaning having to sacrifice time with their family and loved ones to afford to live. 

The time to act is now. The minimum wage should no longer stay stagnant while families suffer and income inequality is at an all-time high. Inflation is at its peak currently, and workers will no longer stand the abuse of their time and effort for a wage that is no longer livable. The minimum wage increase would not only help reduce poverty for workers, but it would allow the economy to grow and flourish.

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To Fight Poverty, Raise the Minimum Wage? Or Abolish It?

The minimum wage has stagnated at $7.25 an hour for more than a decade. is increasing it to $15 the best way to fight poverty.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today on The Argument, what’s the downside to paying people more? [MUSIC PLAYING] Among the most popular and blunt tools to fight poverty is a minimum wage, but it doesn’t actually do that. Because if you have a full-time job that pays the federal minimum wage of $7.25, you’re only making about $15,000 a year, not enough to rent a one-bedroom apartment in 95% of counties in the United States. Raising the federal minimum to $15 an hour is something progressives have been fighting for for years. They came close this month, but an amendment to raise the minimum wage was ultimately removed from Biden’s COVID relief bill. Is raising the minimum wage or having one at all the right way to battle poverty? I’m Jane Coaston, and I think it’s past time to raise the minimum wage. It’s not a way station for 16-year-olds. For millions of Americans, including parents with small children, it’s how they make ends meet. More people across the political spectrum are beginning to support a higher minimum wage, but it does have opposition. So I’ve invited two guests who are on different sides of the debate. Saru Jayaraman is the president of One Fair Wage and director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California Berkeley. Jeff Miron is the head of undergraduate and graduate economic studies at Harvard and head of economics at the Cato Institute. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Hi, Saru. Thanks so much for joining.

Thank you so much for having me.

And hey, Jeff, thanks so much for being here.

My pleasure. Thank you.

Here’s what I want to get out of this conversation. I want to have this conversation in two pieces. First, I want to talk specifically about the $15 minimum wage, hear both of your positions, and then get into what the arguments for and against a wage hike are. And then I want to zoom out and talk about raising the minimum wage as part of an overall suite of policies aimed at lifting people out of poverty. We’re going to go over some other options and talk about what’s actually being considered and what’s actually possible. So Saru, what’s your position on the $15 minimum wage?

So I think it’s important to understand the full scope of what’s being proposed. The Raise the Wage Act not only would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour over several years, but it would also eliminate the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers, which is literally a legacy of slavery, the sub-minimum wage for workers with disabilities, which is a direct reflection of the valuation of people with disabilities, and youth. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 for all workers and $2.13 an hour for tipped workers, and it is cents — literally less than $1 — for workers with disabilities. Our position is, of course, that that is not just low, it actually creates severe poverty, economic instability. It has created just horrific suffering during the pandemic. With — in the case of the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers, it’s also been a source of horrific sexual harassment because you have a largely female workforce living off of tips as a portion of their base wage, and that $15 is actually the minimum that’s necessary to live, particularly given that this workforce of minimum wage workers are adults. Median age is in the 30s. They have children, and they are struggling to survive, often working multiple jobs on these poverty wages. So we strongly support phasing in the raise of the minimum wage over time.

Jeff, where do you stand on this issue?

So I’m opposed to raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. I’m, in fact, opposed to government mandating any minimum wage at all.

You wrote in 2014 that the right minimum wage is not $10.10 or $7.25. It’s zero. Why?

For a bunch of reasons. First of all, the minimum wage is trying, mainly, to tackle an issue of people having low income. But it does not address, the people with the lowest income, namely, people who don’t have jobs in the first place. It’s raising the wage of people who are already employed who may have low or very low income, but they’re not the poorest members of society. In my view, government anti-poverty efforts should be focused exactly on the people who are the worst off. Minimum wage is very poorly targeted for doing that because it starts off by only affecting people who are employed who have jobs. Secondly, it’s going to, in some instances, have a very perverse effect if you’re trying to raise the wages, even if we accept that it’s focused on a group of people that have jobs. It’s going to cause employers to lay off some people or hire fewer people or work more unpleasant hours or cut other benefits or do various things that are going to make those jobs bad for some of the people that you’re trying to help, OK? In the case where it causes employers to hire fewer people, some people go from having a low wage to having a zero wage. That seems a very crude way of trying to alleviate poverty, even if the minimum wage has only a modest effect in reducing employment. There’s a huge, long controversy in economics about that. The bulk of the evidence does suggest there is a negative effect on employment, especially if you were to double the minimum wage, as is being proposed currently. But it may have other negative effects, such as raising the prices of the goods and services that these employers provide. That also is a regressive step, not a progressive step.

I’m just going to cut you off there because I really want to put this to Saru. Last month, the Congressional Budget Office put out a report on the impact of a $15 minimum wage, and it showed that a gradual increase to a $15 minimum wage could add $54 billion to the deficit, if you’re worried about that kind of thing. I know deficit spending — we don’t talk about that anymore. It’s not a thing. I don’t even know who she is. But it could also eliminate 1.4 million jobs because, as Jeff said, that could be added prices for food. That could be added prices in a lot of spaces that low-income people and all-income people might need. What’s your response to that?

You know, the press reported on that Congressional Budget Office report in a way that, I think, caused most people not to actually read the report. The actual CBO report, what it said is that we don’t know what the impact on jobs could be. The impact on jobs could actually be anywhere from 0 to close to 3 million jobs. We have no idea. And that 1.4 million number was an intermediate between zero and close to three. In fact, we looked at the seven states that require what we call one fair wage, a full minimum wage with tips on top, including California, which has passed a $15 minimum wage and full elimination of the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. Those seven states — and by the way, they’re not all blue states. If you look at those states that have raised the minimum wage, those seven states, in particular for the restaurant industry — we looked at from 2011 to 2016 — we saw that those states actually had higher job growth rates in the restaurant industry. They all actually have the same or higher growth rates in the restaurant industry, in terms of jobs, as the rest of the country. And so it just hasn’t borne out in the seven states that got rid of the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. It just hasn’t borne out in the evidence. In fact, the states with the highest wages have had the highest job growth rates in the restaurant industry. So what do they do when they get a minimum wage increase? They spend it, the economy is boosted, and more jobs are created. I also want to speak to the menu price issue because we’ve also studied this a lot. Actually, we’ve compared restaurants — the same restaurants, chains — in California compared to all other states, and the menu prices are exactly the same. These are publicly-traded companies. They wouldn’t undercut themselves. They wouldn’t grow in a state like California if they weren’t profitable.

Jeff, what do you think? Because I think that issue of, if you pay people more money, they have more money, they spend more money, that makes sense to me.

My best answer is that money came from some place. But let me also take a step further back, which is if you tell employers they have to pay a higher wage for some of their employees, what are the things that could happen? They could say, OK, that’s fine. I’ll just make less profits, OK? Or they could say, I’m going to reduce that kind of employment and substitute with higher-skilled people. I could substitute machinery for some of the less-skilled labor that I was paying this lower minimum wage at. They could raise their prices. It’s unlikely that they’re just going to do nothing and absorb that profit loss. They’re going to respond in some way, shape, or form, and all of those things make those markets less efficient, OK? It means that you’re distorting the decisions about whether to use, in producing a particular good or service, low-skilled labor or to substitute with a machine. Somebody is paying for it. It’s either reduced profits — OK, but then the business owners are going to respond in ways which try to recoup that, many of which are going to make those workers worse off, or at least undo some of the benefit they got from the higher wages, such as by adjusting their hours in ways that workers don’t like, cutting benefits, and all those sorts of things. So we can’t just give people more money without saying where we’re taking it from and then what the cost of that is and what the effects of that are going to be.

I’m thinking about not necessarily minimum wage jobs, but we’ve all heard of or even had jobs where in exchange for getting paid more, there is an expectation that, like, yes, you make more money, but you’re supposed to work far more hours. The expectations change. If that’s true for jobs I’ve had, this sounds like it would also be true for minimum wage positions. Wouldn’t, as Jeff said, companies just find another way to exploit workers? If they’re paying them more, they could hire fewer people or force them to do different and worse labor.

Now, I would totally agree with Jeff that, yes, this does come from somewhere. This is why I fundamentally cannot agree with the idea that there can’t be a minimum wage. Because employers, corporations, businesses need to pay their fair share of the cost and the value of the labor that they’re profiting from. That is a concept that we, as a country, decided on when we ended slavery in the United States of America. We decided, as a country, morally, that we believe employers should pay for the value of the labor that they are profiting from. Now, in the restaurant industry in particular, at emancipation, the restaurant lobby did not want to pay for the value of their labor, and so they mutated tipping from being an extra or bonus on top of the wage to becoming a replacement for wages, which by the way, before emancipation, waiters were paid a full wage. So the whole idea of employers paying for their labor is something that we, as a nation, have accepted. Now, what happens when the minimum wage goes up in the restaurant industry in California or in the states that have raised wages? They don’t necessarily just reduce jobs. That hasn’t been borne out in the data. They do actually figure out, to your point, Jeff, greater efficiencies. They figure out that when you pay people more, actually, they don’t leave you. They stay. We did a study with Cornell where we interviewed 1,100 restaurant managers, and they told us that when you raise wages, you cut the cost of employee turnover because, guess what? When you pay people more, they don’t have to keep moving and looking for different jobs. They stay with you. That’s less turnover, which costs in terms of the cost of recruitment and hiring and morale and training new people. So it actually pays off to pay people well, and that is part of the overall cost of doing business.

OK, I have to object really strongly to the notion that imposing this minimum wage is going to make businesses more efficient by reducing turnover or encouraging them to substitute capital in an efficient way. If those things were efficient, if they were profitable, the employers would have done them already. If you can reduce turnover by paying a little bit higher wage, then of course, employers will do that. And many employers do do that, precisely for the reasons you explained, but not when they’re forced to do it by the higher minimum wage. Take the example of substituting machinery for a lower-skilled employee. There’s a cost to the machinery. There’s a cost of the employees, of the wages. You make the calculation of which one is more profitable, and you do the one that makes sense. If it made sense to substitute capital, you would have done it already. OK, so I don’t think that argument is the least bit convincing, and it just doesn’t make logical sense that there’s all this profit opportunity that these big public corporations, whose sole objective in life is basically to make profits, that they’re leaving all this money on the table by not paying a wage which would get them to a more profitable outcome.

But isn’t there an argument that part of making more money is the public appearance of being a good corporate citizen? We’ve had a lot of conversations recently about big corporations attempting to position themselves on specific political issues. I’m thinking of Apple getting involved with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act about five or six years ago. Isn’t an element where, yes, there is kind of the brute capitalism, we need to make as much money as possible, but also, it can be a good business maneuver to advertise yourself as having a good corporate culture by having higher wages?

But then again, you don’t need the government to make businesses do it. If it’s good for business to do something which looks socially responsible, whether it has to do with global warming or the wages you pay or the benefits you pay, then businesses will do it on their own because the way you describe it, it’s in the interests of the business. The net effect on profits after taking account of the somewhat higher costs for wages, but having better PR, having more people like your company, et cetera, they’ll take that into account, and they’ll do it on their own.

But I do want to put that question to Saru because I live in DC, where we have a $15 minimum wage. Florida, as you mentioned, has passed one that will go into effect by 2026. New York and Seattle both have a $15 minimum wage. So if you have private businesses that are saying, it’s a good idea for us to look good on this particular front by having a higher minimum wage, if you have cities and states that are making these decisions, why do we need the federal government to set a higher minimum wage for all?

So the truth is that we’re talking about giving people a very basic floor that would allow them to survive, allow them to get off of public assistance, allow them to feed their families when they work full time or more than full time. Look, here’s the problem with the argument Jeff is making of let’s just leave it entirely to the market, let’s have no minimum wage at all. If it were, efficient companies would do it. Well, guess what? There are lots of things companies do that are inefficient, that are based on their biases, their desires, their opinions. Racism and racial discrimination is not actually market efficient. So it is not entirely always efficiency that drives employer choices. And to the point of publicly-traded companies and if it were so great to pay people more, why wouldn’t they do it? I’ll tell you why. It’s because publicly-traded companies look at quarterly returns. And so there are a ton of efficiencies that arise from paying the minimum wage. The problem is that the publicly-traded corporations aren’t able to see it because they are so focused on short-term gains. So the problem with not having a federal minimum wage is that you leave the states with the highest populations of people of color at the lowest wages, and that exacerbates racial inequity in our country.

I want to focus on one thing that Saru said, which is that I’m arguing for leaving everything to the market. I haven’t said this yet, but I want to make clear that the argument against the minimum wage is not an argument against the social safety net. It’s an argument that the minimum wage is a terrible way of trying to have a social safety net. The libertarian view, my view, is that if you want to make poor people less poor, you should give them money via mechanisms like food stamps, housing assistance, universal basic income because those provide people with income without distorting private markets and without having the ancillary negative consequences that the minimum wage has. So they’re separate questions. One question is whether to help people who are not in a good financial position. The other question is how. My position is that the minimum wage is a terrible way in which to do it because it has all these ancillary side effects and because it doesn’t very successfully target the poorest people, whereas a universal basic income does explicitly target the very poorest people.

I do just have to address what Jeff said about leaving it to the market. You’re not saying leave it entirely to the market, but you are saying leave wages to the market, which means —

Yes, I am saying that.

— an employer could pay — meaning an employer could pay zero if they want to.

No, because people wouldn’t work for zero.

Well, people are working for zero right now, Jeff —

If employers have all this power, why don’t they set a zero wage?

Can I finish my point, please?

I apologize.

So actually, there are restaurant owners right now requiring workers to live off of tips. It’s illegal. Workers often don’t complain because they are scared to. They face retaliation. They are very vulnerable. They are women. They are people of color. And during the pandemic, these workers who receive zero dollars an hour could not get a dime of unemployment insurance because they were forced to live off of tips. And here’s the basic problem with having it rely entirely on government programs, social safety nets — some really big problems with that. One, workers want to be able to work and feed their families with their earnings. These workers, as well, want the dignity of being able to work in their profession — and these are professions — and not have to rely on government assistance, which is heavily stigmatized, difficult to access. And they want that dignity of being able to be paid. So you, Jeff, are asking taxpayers to cover these people’s livelihoods. But what I’m saying is that employers have to pay their fair share. They have to cover the value of their labor, of the people who are doing the work that brings them profit. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Hi, Jane. This is Reggie from Brooklyn. And the thing I’ve been arguing about with my friends and employer is whether we should use nuclear power to reach our climate goals. I think nuclear energy is the cleanest, most reliable way to bridge the gap between where we are now and our hopefully zero-carbon future in the time we have left.

What are you arguing about with your family, your friends, your frenemies? Tell me about the big debate you’re having in a voicemail by calling 347-915-4324, and we might play an excerpt of it on a future episode. So Jeff, you’ve said something that really interested me earlier, as a libertarian, is that you talked about the social safety net and the idea that we don’t need to raise the minimum wage. What we do need are better ways to support the poor that aren’t that, so talking about improving welfare programs. But you’ve mentioned two ideas in other work that you’ve done, the negative income tax and expansion of the earned-income tax credit. Now, I think for many people, they may have heard of the earned-income tax credit, but can you explain what the negative income tax would look like?

So a negative income tax, which is, in all important ways, the same as a universal basic income, says that everybody is guaranteed a certain amount of income per quarter or per year, some basis like that. And then they face some tax rate on all income earned. The simplest way to describe it, which doesn’t feel right to many people, is to say we send a check for $5,000 to every single person, including Bill Gates and, you know, Warren Buffett, but we then impose taxes. So if you have no income of your own, you receive that $5,000 per year, and that’s your total net income. If you earn $10,000 and there’s a 30% tax rate, you would get the $5,000 directly from the government plus the $10,000 you’ve earned, minus the $3,000 you would owe in taxes. You never owe any taxes on the universal basic income, on the negative income tax. So the idea is we put a floor on the amount of income that every single person has. And it gradually, as you earn income that didn’t come from the government, you pay taxes on that. But nobody will ever have any income below that floor that the government creates.

So what you’re saying here is that employers who make big profits, whether that’s a Walmart or McDonald’s or even a, like, company that’s doing really well in Washington DC, like a brewery, like the one that is being loud near my apartment, they do not have the responsibility to redistribute money. But the government — the federal government — through this program could redistribute money. They could send out checks for $5,000 to every American. Why do employers not have that responsibility but the government does? That seems — I’m confused.

It’s basically a practical answer that if the government does it in roughly the way I described, it’s consistent. It applies to everyone. It happens sort of year after year after year because it’s a government policy that’s in place and it continues, unless Congress changes its mind. But trying to get private employers to do it ends up mainly enriching private employers or some sectors relative to others. The housing industry gets richer than it would otherwise be because the government is subsidizing the building of housing projects. Certain farmers get richer than they would otherwise be because the government subsidizes food stamps. The transferring income to people approach doesn’t create any special favors for this industry versus that. It doesn’t allow you to go to Washington and lobby them to produce the — more of the goods and services that your industry produces because that’s allegedly helping poor people. It avoids all the inefficiencies created by having a centrally planned — central planner dictate what’s produced and how firms behave. If I could go back to one thing that Saru said, she said several times, we agreed, when we ended slavery, that we owe everyone a fair wage.

I don’t remember — or something like that.

We agreed that employers need to pay for the value of their labor, that they don’t get to —

When did we agree that?

That’s not in the Constitution. That’s not in a federal law.

Because we said —

Who agreed to that?

Because we said that employers should not be able to use free labor. That is what slavery was.

No, they should not be able to coerce free labor.

We agreed, as a country —

Outlawing slavery is not saying that someone can’t offer you a teeny wage and you agree to accept it. It’s saying that you can’t, using physical force, make people work for you for nothing.

And I would argue that because of the forced options that most people in this country on the minimum wage have, they are forced into very low-wage jobs, that their life situations have forced them into low-wage jobs that don’t give them the opportunities. When you’re working two and three jobs, you don’t actually have the time to go to college and get a degree and move up the ladder. So let me just say, one thing you said, Jeffrey, is just plain wrong. The idea that food stamps have not actually created inefficiencies and have not bred an industry or a sector that has profited off of food stamps is just plain wrong. The data shows that, actually, Walmart has profited quite a bit from food stamps. They —

That’s exactly my point.

OK, yeah, so —

I completely agree. That’s what I was saying. I totally agree with it.

Yeah, so Saru, like, the idea would be that you would have something that look kind of like Alaska’s Permanent Fund, which sends everyone in Alaska a check, or a dividend of some sort, which is that if you sent everyone in America a $5,000 check — everyone, every single person — and had that instead of food stamps, which as Jeff said, he argues have massive inefficiencies, you could wipe — use that instead of those programs. I’m interested to see your thoughts on that.

Yeah, my point is that we know, from situations like that, inefficiencies still will occur, even when people are given those checks. Because again, people at the lower end of the income spectrum have to spend those checks to survive on things like rent, which goes to developers, and food, which goes to grocery stores. There still will be inefficiencies. But here’s the bottom line. Employers — by doing that, by just providing everybody with $5,000, you completely remove any responsibility from employers to actually pay for, again, the people that are allowing them to create profit. The people who work for them generate the actual profit. And so employers should have the responsibility, rather than just taxpayers —

So I am saying that the employer should not bear this responsibility. I think it ends up being an incredibly inefficient way to try to accomplish the goal. I completely accept that some people have been forced by the conditions of the market and their luck and misfortunes of whatever their circumstances are to have very few opportunities, and I accept that there are people who have terrible circumstances. But I think the best way to do it is not by trying to make the employers responsible for it but letting their employers be responsible for maximizing efficiency and producing the most. First, that gives you the biggest economic pie available to redistribute to the people who deserve it, and they are not completely absolved because they pay taxes.

Not anymore.

No matter what the structure of the business taxes, they are ultimately paid by people, and the people are paying taxes that supports the transfers to those people who are deemed deserving by society’s judgments.

Saru, I noticed that you laughed a little bit when he talked about big corporations paying taxes. But I want to get at something. We appear to agree that there are, in our current system, a lot of inefficiencies that are bad. And we’re in a situation, and it is a situation, Jeff, as a libertarian, in which you are often in, which is that no one agrees with us and no one listens to us. No Republicans support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, so what are some other alternatives that could get us closer to poverty mitigation that could work with what we currently have in Congress, where we’re dealing with Democrats who are saying, we are supportive of raising the minimum wage, but the Republicans who are in Congress are not the people who are interested in thinking about poverty mitigation the same way we’re — you know, they’re not talking about a UBI. They are talking about tax cuts. When you’re thinking about either making the case for raising the minimum wage to Republicans or thinking about other ideas for poverty mitigation, where do you go?

So one thing that, actually, we have been able to agree with on — with some libertarians and Republicans is that we do need to reduce people’s dependence on public assistance, actually. And it is shown that raising the minimum wage reduces people’s dependence on food stamps, on other forms of public assistance. So raising the minimum wage reduces the burden on the taxpayer, on the government by allowing employers to pay their fair share and then reducing people’s dependence on public assistance. That is one area that we have in common with some Republicans.

Let me say a few things. First, I don’t want to leave the impression that libertarians advocate adding a universal basic income on top of the current social safety net. Libertarians think that if we could replace the existing social safety net with the universal income, that is plausibly an improvement. But many libertarians would still have severe qualms about the existing generosity of the current social safety net. They would say there might be — maybe there’s a role for some. It probably shouldn’t be federal. It should be left to states. It should probably be less generous — just so I don’t mislead. But on your question of what other things can be done to help people who are poor, libertarians have a few things that they emphasize quite a bit, which is repeal of regressive regulation. Lots of regulations are especially bad for poor people. This includes land-use regulation, which makes it hard for people to afford housing because you restrict the density of buildings, the heights of buildings, building more in inner cities. That forces people with lower incomes to live farther away, to have longer commutes, to have less access to jobs, to stores, and so on. Similar issues with occupational licensing, has effects of two kinds. One, it keeps relatively poor people from entering certain professions because they have to spend money or spend time getting degrees in order to practice those occupations. At the same time, those licensing restrictions raise the cost of the goods in those occupations of the — being produced by those occupations. And that, of course, has a bigger negative effect on people who are poor. And there are lots of other examples. Childcare regulation is another good one. There’s tons of regulation of childcare. Whom does that harm especially? Poor mothers, OK, who can’t easily afford daycare and be able to hold jobs because of the regulation, which raises costs so much.

Saru, I’m going to guess that you probably don’t think that these ideas should replace the fight for the $15 minimum wage and my efforts to join us all on one side of the argument. Eh, a little quixotic. But what’s your what’s your last point on this particular issue? Because I think that I agree with Jeff, the occupational licensing issue is particularly interesting because of how, in my own personal experience, it hinders African-American business owners. For instance, you can get into a very weird place with the licenses you need to do African hair braiding. But what is it about the $15 minimum wage that makes it your central issue and the central issue for this conversation?

The current debate is how much should the minimum wage be and should it apply equally to everybody in this country. And so therefore, 32 million Americans would get a raise from a $15 minimum wage. And by eliminating sub-minimum wages, we reduce racial inequity, legacies of slavery, and severe gender discrimination and harassment.

I just want to thank both of you so much for joining me. Saru Jayaraman is the president of One Fair Wage, a group that advocates for raising wages and working conditions for restaurant service workers. She’s also director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California Berkeley. Thank you so much for joining me.

Jeff Miron is a senior lecturer at Harvard and director of economic studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington DC. Thank you for joining me, Jeff.

My pleasure. Thank you for having me. [MUSIC PLAYING]

If you want to learn more about the minimum wage, I recommend reading the full report from the Congressional Budget Office published in February about what Biden’s bill to raise the minimum wage $15 an hour would actually mean for jobs and the economy. And for the policy wonks — I know who you are — I also recommend the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ February report on the characteristics of minimum wage workers. You can find links to both of these reports in our episode notes. Finally, some of you called in with your own stories about student loan debt after last week’s episode.

Hi, my name is Kendra. I’m an African-American woman who graduated from George Washington University in 1997. My experience has been chronic oppression due to student loan debt accompanied by low to no income over several years. There should be complete forgiveness for those who have suffered such a burden. I’m Janelle from Vermont, and I have over $50,000 of student loans. There’s nothing I can do but continue to pay and hope that when I die, the remaining debt doesn’t carry on to my children.

The Argument is a production of New York Times Opinion. It’s produced by Phoebe Lett, Elisa Guttierez, and Vishakha Darbha, edited by Alison Bruzek and Paula Szuchman with original music and sound design by Isaac Jones and fact-checking by Michele Harris. [MUSIC PLAYING]

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The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour hasn’t changed since 2009. Workers in 21 states make the federal floor, which can be even lower for people who make tips. And at $7.25 an hour, a person working full time with a dependent is making below the federal poverty line.

[You can listen to this episode of “The Argument” on Apple , Spotify , Google or wherever you get your podcasts .]

States such as California, Florida, Illinois and Massachusetts have approved gradual minimum wage increases to reach $15 an hour — so is it time to do it at the federal level?

On Wednesday 20 senators from both parties are set to meet to discuss whether to use their influence on minimum wage legislation.

Economists have argued for years about the consequences of the hike, saying employers who bear the costs would be forced to lay off some of the very employees the minimum wage was intended to support. A report by the Congressional Budget Office on a proposal to see $15 by 2025 estimates the increase would move 900,000 people out of poverty — and at the same time cut 1.4 million jobs.

[ Instagram Live : Watch host Jane Coaston and Kara Swisher discuss whether we need to raise the minimum wage .]

On today’s episode, we debate the fight for $15 with two people who see things very differently. Saru Jayaraman is the president of One Fair Wage and the director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Jeffrey Miron is a senior lecturer in the department of economics at Harvard University and the director of economic studies at the Cato Institute.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Congressional Budget Office’s February 2021 report on the budgetary effects of the Raise the Wage Act of 2021.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ April 2020 report “Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers.”

(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected] or leave us a voice mail message at (347) 915-4324. We want to hear what you’re arguing about with your family, your friends and your frenemies. (We may use excerpts from your message in a future episode.)

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“The Argument” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Elisa Gutierrez and Vishakha Darbha and edited by Alison Bruzek and Paula Szuchman; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; music and sound design by Isaac Jones.

Fact Sheet | Wages, Incomes, and Wealth

Why the U.S. needs a $15 minimum wage : How the Raise the Wage Act would benefit U.S. workers and their families

Fact Sheet • January 26, 2021

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This fact sheet was updated February 19 with a new section on tipped workers .

The federal minimum hourly wage is just $7.25 and Congress has not increased it since 2009. Low wages hurt all workers and are particularly harmful to Black workers and other workers of color, especially women of color, who make up a disproportionate share of workers who are severely underpaid. This is the result of structural racism and sexism, with an economic system rooted in chattel slavery in which workers of color—and especially women of color—have been and continue to be shunted into the most underpaid jobs. 1

This fact sheet was produced in collaboration with the National Employment Law Project .

The Raise the Wage Act of 2021 would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 and narrow racial and gender pay gaps. Here is what the Act would do:

• Raise the federal minimum wage to $9.50 this year and increase it in steps until it reaches $15 an hour in 2025. 2
• After 2025, adjust the minimum wage each year to keep pace with growth in the median wage, a measure of wages for typical workers.
• Phase out the egregious subminimum wage for tipped workers, which has been frozen at a meager $2.13 since 1991. 3
• Sunset unacceptable subminimum wages for workers with disabilities employed in sheltered workshops and for workers under age 20.

The benefits of gradually phasing in a $15 minimum wage by 2025 would be far-reaching, lifting pay for tens of millions of workers and helping reverse decades of growing pay inequality.

The Raise the Wage Act would have the following benefits: 4

• Gradually raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would lift pay for 32 million workers—21% of the U.S. workforce .
• Affected workers who work year round would earn an extra $3,300 a year —enough to make a tremendous difference in the life of a cashier, home health aide, or fast-food worker who today struggles to get by on less than $25,000 a year.
• A majority (59%) of workers whose total family income is below the poverty line would receive a pay increase if the minimum wage were raised to $15 by 2025.
• A $15 minimum wage would begin to reverse decades of growing pay inequality between the most underpaid workers and workers receiving close to the median wage, particularly along gender and racial lines. For example, minimum wage increases in the late 1960s explained 20% of the decrease in the Black–white earnings gap in the years that followed, whereas failures to adequately increase the minimum wage after 1979 account for almost half of the increase in inequality between women at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution. 5
• A $15 minimum wage by 2025 would generate $107 billion in higher wages for workers and would also benefit communities across the country. Because underpaid workers spend much of their extra earnings, this injection of wages will help stimulate the economy and spur greater business activity and job growth .

Raising the minimum wage to $15 will be particularly significant for workers of color and would help narrow the racial pay gap.

• Nearly one-third (31%) of African Americans and one-quarter (26%) of Latinos would get a raise if the federal minimum wage were increased to $15. 6
• Almost one in four (23%) of those who would benefit is a Black or Latina woman.
• African Americans and Latinos are paid 10%–15% less than white workers with the same characteristics, so The Raise the Wage Act will deliver the largest benefits to Black and Latino workers: about $3,500 annually for a year-round worker. 7
• Minimum wage increases in the 1960s Civil Rights Era significantly reduced Black–white earnings inequality and are responsible for more than 20% of the overall reduction in later years. 8

The majority of workers who would benefit are adult women—many of whom have attended college and many of whom have children.

• More than half (51%) of workers who would benefit are adults between the ages of 25 and 54; only one in 10 is a teenager.
• Nearly six in 10 (59%) are women.
• More than half (54%) work full time.
• More than four in 10 (43%) have some college experience.
• More than a quarter (28%) have children.

The Raise the Wage Act follows the lead of the growing number of states and cities that have adopted significant minimum wage increases in recent years, thanks to the ‘Fight for $15 and a union’ movement led by Black workers and workers of color.

• Since the Fight for $15 was launched by striking fast-food workers in 2012, 9 states representing approximately 40% of the U.S. workforce —California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and the District of Columbia— have approved raising their minimum wages to $15 an hour . 10
• Additional states—including Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Vermont, Missouri, Michigan, and Maine—have approved minimum wages ranging from $12 to $14.75 an hour . 11

Not just on the coasts, but all across the country, workers need at least $15 an hour today .

• Today, in all areas across the United States, a single adult without children needs at least $31,200—what a full-time worker making $15 an hour earns annually—to achieve a modest but adequate standard of living. 12 By 2025, workers in these areas and those with children will need even more, according to projections based on the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator . 13
• For example, in rural Missouri, a single adult without children will need $39,800 (more than $19 per hour for a full-time worker) by 2025 to cover typical rent, food, transportation, and other basic living costs.
• In larger metro areas of the South and Southwest—where the majority of the Southern population live—a single adult without children will also need more than $15 an hour by 2025 to get by: $20.03 in Fort Worth, $21.12 in Phoenix, and $20.95 in Miami.
• In more expensive regions of the country, a single adult without children will need far more than $15 an hour by 2025 to cover the basics: $28.70 in New York City, $24.06 in Los Angeles, and $23.94 in Washington, D.C.

Workers in many essential and front-line jobs struggle to get by on less than $15 an hour today and would benefit from a $15 minimum wage.

• Essential and front-line workers make up a majority (60%) of those who would benefit from a $15 minimum wage. 14 The median pay is well under $15 an hour for many essential and front-line jobs; examples include substitute teachers ($13.84), nursing assistants ($14.26), and home health aides ($12.15). 15
• More than one-third (35%) of those working in residential or nursing care facilities would see their pay increase , in addition to home health aides and other health care support workers.
• One in three retail-sector workers (36%) would get a raise, including 42% of workers in grocery stores.
• More than four in 10 (43% of) janitors, housekeepers, and other cleaning workers would benefit.
• Nearly two-thirds (64%) of servers, cooks, and other food preparation workers would see their earnings rise by $5,800 on a year-round basis.
• Ten million workers in health care, education, construction, and manufacturing would see a raise —representing nearly one-third (31%) of the workers who would see a raise.

Phasing out the egregiously low $2.13 minimum wage for tipped workers would lift pay, provide stable paychecks, and reduce poverty for millions of tipped workers.

• There are 1.3 million tipped workers throughout the country who are paid as little as $2.13 per hour because Congress has not lifted the federal tipped wage in 30 years. Another 1.8 million tipped workers receive wages above $2.13, but still less than their state’s regular minimum wage. 16
• Seven states (Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington) have already eliminated their lower tipped minimum wage . In these “one-fair-wage” states, tipped workers in these states are paid the same minimum wage as everyone else before tips. 17 For restaurant servers and bartenders, take-home pay in one-fair-wage states is 21% higher, on average, than in $2.13 states.
• Having a lower minimum wage for tipped jobs results in dramatically higher poverty rates for tipped workers. In states that use the federal $2.13 tipped minimum wage, the poverty rate among servers and bartenders is 13.3%—5.6 percentage points higher than the 7.7% poverty rate among servers and bartenders in one-fair-wage states. 18
• Eliminating the lower tipped minimum wage has not harmed growth in the restaurant industry or tipped jobs. From 2011 to 2019, one-fair-wage states had stronger restaurant growth than states that had a lower tipped minimum wage—both in the number of full-service restaurants (17.5% versus 11.1%) and in full-service restaurant employment (23.8% versus 18.7%). 19

Growing numbers of business owners and organizations have backed a $15 minimum wage.

• In states that have already approved $15 minimum wages, business organizations representing thousands of small businesses have endorsed a $15 minimum wage.
• Business groups that have endorsed a $15 minimum wage include Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, 20 the American Sustainable Business Council, 21 the Patriotic Millionaires, 22 the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, 23 the Long Island African American Chamber of Commerce, 24 and others.
• Growing numbers of employers have responded to pressure from workers and raised their starting pay scales to $15 or higher. These include retail giants Amazon, 25 Whole Foods 26 (owned by Amazon), Target, 27 Walmart, 28 Wayfair, 29 Costco, 30 Hobby Lobby, 31 and Best Buy; 32 employers in the food service and producing industries, such as Chobani, 33 Starbucks, 34 Sanderson Farms (Mississippi), 35 and the Atlanta-area locations of Lidl grocery stores; 36 health care employers including Michigan’s Henry Ford Health System 37 and Trinity Health System, 38 Ohio’s Akron Children’s Hospital 39 and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, 40 Iowa’s Mercy Medical Center and MercyCare Community Physicians, 41 Missouri’s North Kansas City Hospital and Meritas Health, 42 and Maryland’s LifeBridge Health; 43 insurers and banks such as Amalgamated Bank, 44 Allstate, 45 Wells Fargo, 46 and Franklin Savings Bank in New Hampshire 47 ; and tech and communications leaders such as Facebook 48 and Charter Communications. 49

Our economy can more than afford a $15 minimum wage.

• Workers earning the current federal minimum wage are paid less per hour in real dollars than their counterparts were paid 50 years ago . 50
• Businesses can afford to pay the most underpaid worker in the U.S. today substantially more than what her counterpart was paid half a century ago. 51
• The economy has grown dramatically over the past 50 years, and workers are producing more from each hour of work, with productivity nearly doubling since the late 1960s . If the minimum wage had been raised at the same pace as productivity growth since the late 1960s, it would be over $20 an hour today . 52

Research confirms what workers know: Raising wages benefits us all.

• High-quality academic scholarship confirms that modest increases in the minimum wage have not led to detectable job losses . 53
• After the federal minimum wage was raised to its highest historical peak in 1968, wages grew and racial earnings gaps closed without constricting employment opportunities for underpaid workers overall. 54
• Comprehensive research on 138 state-level minimum wage increases shows that all underpaid workers benefit from minimum wage increases, not just teenagers or restaurant workers. 55
• Multiple studies conclude that total annual incomes of families at the bottom of the income distribution rise significantly after a minimum wage increase. 56 Workers in low-wage jobs and their families benefit the most from these income increases, reducing poverty and income inequality.
• By providing families with higher incomes, minimum wage increases have improved infant health and also reduced child abuse and teenage pregnancy . 57

An immediate increase in the minimum wage is necessary for the health of our economy.

• Raising the minimum wage now will tilt the playing field back toward workers who have dangerous jobs and little bargaining power during the pandemic. 58
• Providing underpaid workers with more money will directly counter the consumer demand shortfall during this recession. 59
• Even the Congressional Budget Office’s 2019 study of the impact of raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025 clearly showed that the policy would raise incomes of underpaid workers overall and significantly reduce the number of families in poverty. 60

Low wages threaten the economic security of workers and their families, who then turn to social benefits programs to make ends meet.

• In states without laws to raise the minimum wage to $15, nearly half (47%, or 10.5 million) of families of workers who would benefit from the Act rely on public supports programs in part because they do not earn enough at work. 61
• These workers and their families account for nearly one-third of total enrollment in one or more public supports programs. 62
• In states without a $15 minimum wage law, public supports programs for underpaid workers and their families make up 42% of total spending on Medicaid and CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program), cash assistance (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF), food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP), and the earned income tax credit (EITC), and cost federal and state taxpayers more than $107 billion a year . 63

Notes and Sources

This fact sheet is an update of Why America Needs a $15 Minimum Wage , published by EPI and the National Employment Law Project, February 2019.

Unless otherwise indicated, the figures presented in this fact sheet come from a forthcoming EPI analysis of the 2021 Raise the Wage Act .

1. Kate Bahn and Carmen Sanchez Cumming, “ Four Graphs on U.S. Occupational Segregation by Race, Ethnicity, and Gender ,” Washington Center for Equitable Growth, July 1, 2020.

2. The analysis is based on the 2021 Raise the Wage Act.

3. Sylvia Allegretto and David Cooper, Twenty-Three Years and Still Waiting for Change: Why It’s Time to Give Tipped Workers the Regular Minimum Wage , Economic Policy Institute, July 2014.

4. Estimated effects of the 2021 Raise the Wage Act throughout this fact sheet are from a forthcoming Economic Policy Institute analysis of the legislation and include benefits for both directly affected workers (those who would otherwise earn less than $15 per hour in 2025) and indirectly affected workers (those who would earn just slightly above $15 in 2025).

5. Ellora Derenoncourt and Claire Montialoux, “ Minimum Wages and Racial Inequality ,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 136, no. 1 (February 2021); David Autor, Alan Manning, and Christopher L. Smith, “ The Contribution of the Minimum Wage to U.S. Wage Inequality over Three Decades: A Reassessment ,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 8, no. 1 (January 2016).

6. See also Laura Huizar and Tsedeye Gebreselassie, What a $15 Minimum Wage Means for Women and Workers of Color , National Employment Law Project, December 2016.

7. For racial/ethnic wage gaps, see Appendix Table 1 of Elise Gould, State of Working America Wages 2019 , Economic Policy Institute, February 2020.

8. Ellora Derenoncourt and Claire Montialoux, “ Minimum Wages and Racial Inequality ,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 136, no. 1 (February 2021).

9. Alina Selyukh, “ ‘Gives Me Hope’: How Low-Paid Workers Rose up Against Stagnant Wages ,” National Public Radio’s All Things Considered , February 26, 2020; Kimberly Freeman Brown and Marc Bayard, “ Editorial: The New Face of Labor, Civil Rights is Black & Female ,” NBC News, September 7, 2015; Amy B. Dean, “ Is the Fight for $15 the Next Civil Rights Movement? ” Al Jazeera America , June 22, 2015.

10. Economic Policy Institute calculation using Current Employment Statistics data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Values calculated using the listed states’ share of total U.S. nonfarm employment in calendar year 2019 (prior to the COVID-19 pandemic). For recent minimum wage changes, see the Economic Policy Institute Minimum Wage Tracker, https://www.epi.org/minimum-wage-tracker/ . We include the District of Columbia in this list even though it is not a state.

11. Yannet Lathrop, Impact of the Fight for $15: $68 Billion in Raises, 22 Million Workers , National Employment Law Project, November 2018.

12. Based on calculations from the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator , which measures the income a family needs to attain a secure yet modest standard of living in all counties and metro areas across the country.

13. Congressional Budget Office projections for the consumer price index were applied to the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator .

14. Economic Policy Institute analysis of the legislation, forthcoming.

15. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment Statistics, May 2019 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates United States (online database).

16. Economic Policy Institute analysis of Current Population Survey outgoing rotation group microdata, 2017–2019

17. Economic Policy Institute analysis of Current Population Survey outgoing rotation group microdata, 2017–2019

18. Economic Policy Institute analysis of Current Population Survey outgoing rotation group microdata, 2017–2019

19.  Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, 2011–2019.

20. Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, “ Federal Business for a Fair Minimum Wage—$15: Signatories List in Formation ,” accessed January 22, 2021.

21. Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, “ Federal Business for a Fair Minimum Wage—$15: Signatories List in Formation ,” accessed January 22, 2021.

22. Patriotic Millionaires, “ Endorsed Bill: The Raise the Wage Act ,” accessed January 22, 2021.

23. Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, “ Celebrating Juneteenth ,” June 18, 2020.

24. Kate King, “ New York Boosts Minimum Wage and Some Businesses Balk ,” Wall Street Journal , January 4, 2021.

25. Arjun Panchadar, “ Amazon Raises Minimum Wage to $15, Urges Rivals to Follow ,” Reuters , October 2, 2018.

26. Abha Bhattarai, “ Amazon Boosts Minimum Wage to $15 for All Workers Following Criticism ,” Washington Post , October 2, 2018.

27. Melissa Repko, “ Target Raises Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour Months Before its Deadline ,” CNBC , June 17, 2020.

28. Michael Grothaus, “ Walmart Is Giving 165,000 Employees a Pay Raise Between $15 and $30 per Hour ,” Fast Company , September 18, 2020.

29. Lucia Maffei, “ Wayfair Sets $15 Minimum Wage for All U.S. Workers ,” MassLive , January 8, 2021.

30. Sarah Nassauer and Micah Maidenberg, “ Costco Raises Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour ,” Wall Street Journal , March 6, 2019.

31. Hobby Lobby, “ Hobby Lobby Raises Minimum Wage ” (press release), September 14, 2020.

32. Gillian Friedman, “ Best Buy to Join Retailers Paying a $15 Minimum Wage ,” New York Times , July 22, 2020.

33. Chobani, “ Chobani Increases Employees’ Starting Wage to at Least $15/Hour ,” (PR Newswire release), Vending Marketwatch , October 30, 2020.

34. Janine Puhak, “ Starbucks to Raise Minimum Wage to $15 for US Employees over Next Three Years ,” WDRB.com , December 12, 2020.

35. Sanderson Farms, “ Sanderson Farms Increases Pay Rates for Hourly Employees ” (press release), June 3, 2019.

36. Kara McIntyre, “ Lidl to Raise Atlanta-Area Starting Pay to $15 An Hour ,” Patch (Atlanta, Ga.), January 5, 2021.

37. Henry Ford Health System, “ Henry Ford Among the First Michigan Health Systems to Raise Minimum Pay Rate to $15 Per Hour ” (press release), October 9, 2020.

38. Michael Kransz, “ Michigan Health System with 8 Hospitals Increases Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour ,” MLive.com , October 19, 2020.

39. Betty Lin-Fisher, “ Akron Children’s Hospital to Raise Its Minimum Wage to $15 ,” Akron Beacon Journal , October 3, 2019.

40. Kelly Gooch, “ Ohio Children’s Hospital to Boost Minimum Pay for 3,000 Employees ,” Becker’s Hospital Review , October 3, 2019.

41. Michaela Ramm, “ Mercy Announces Minimum Wage Increase, General Pay ,” The Gazette , December 22, 2020.

42. North Kansas City Hospital, “ North Kansas City Hospital and Meritas Health Raise Minimum Base Wage ,” December 21, 2020.

43. LifeBridge Health, “ Lifebridge Health Raises Minimum Living Wage for Hospital Team Members to $15 an Hour ” (press release), Greater Baltimore Committee, January 8, 2021.

44. Amalgamated Bank, “ Fight for $15 ” (web page), accessed January 22, 2021.

45. Amanda Mull, “ Corporations’ Social Crusades Often Leave Out Workers ,” The Atlantic , June 28, 2019.

46. Wells Fargo, “ Wells Fargo to Raise Minimum Hourly Pay Levels in a Majority of Its U.S. Markets ” (news release), March 4, 2020.

47. Scott Souza, “ Franklin Savings Bank Raises Minimum Wage in NH To $15 ,” Patch (Merrimack, N.H.), October 31, 2019.

48. Tomi Kilgore, “ Facebook Raising Minimum Wage to $20 Per Hour for Bay Area, New York and D.C. ” MarketWatch , May 13, 2019.

49. Charter Communications, “ Charter Statement Regarding Plans to Permanently Raise Minimum Wage to $20/Per Hour over Next Two Years for All Hourly Employees ,” April 6, 2020.

50. David Cooper, Raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $15 by 2024 Would Lift Pay for Nearly 40 Million Workers , Economic Policy Institute, February 2019.

51. David Cooper, Raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $15 by 2024 Would Lift Pay for Nearly 40 Million Workers , Economic Policy Institute, February 2019.

52. David Cooper, Raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $15 by 2024 Would Lift Pay for Nearly 40 Million Workers , Economic Policy Institute, February 2019.

53. Paul J. Wolfson and Dale Belman, “ 15 Years of Research on U.S. Employment and the Minimum Wage ,” Tuck School of Business Working Paper no. 2705499, 2016.

54. Ellora Derenoncourt and Claire Montialoux, “ Minimum Wages and Racial Inequality ,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 136, no. 1 (February 2021).

55. Doruk Cengiz, Arindrajit Dube, Attila Lindner, and Ben Zipperer, “The Effect of Minimum Wages on Low-Wage Jobs: Evidence from the United States Using a Bunching Estimator,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 134, no. 9 (May 2019).

56. Arindrajit Dube, “ Minimum Wages and the Distribution of Family Incomes ,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 11, no. 4 (October 2019); Kevin Rinz and John Voorheis, “ The Distributional Effects of Minimum Wages: Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data .” U.S. Census Bureau Center for Administrative Records Research and Applications Working Paper 2018-02, 2018.

57. George L. Wehby, Dhaval M. Dave, and Robert Kaestner, “Effects of the Minimum Wage on Infant Health,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 39, no. 2 (Spring 2020); Kerri M. Raissian and Lindsey Rose Bullinger, “Money Matters: Does the Minimum Wage Affect Child Maltreatment Rates?” Children and Youth Services Review 72 (January 2017); Lindsey Rose Bullinger, “The Effect of Minimum Wages on Adolescent Fertility: A Nationwide Analysis,” American Journal of Public Health , March 2017.

58. Peter Dorman and Lawrence Mishel, “ A Majority of Workers Are Fearful of Coronavirus Infections at Work, especially Black, Hispanic, and Low- and Middle-income Workers ,” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), June 16, 2020.

59. Cristian Alonso, “ Beyond Labor Market Outcomes: The Impact of the Minimum Wage on Nondurable Consumption ,” Journal of Human Resources , forthcoming.

60. Ben Zipperer, “ Low-Wage Workers Will See Huge Gains from Minimum Wage Hike, CBO Finds ,” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), July 9, 2019.

61. Ken Jacobs, Ian Eve Perry, and Jenifer MacGillvary, The Public Cost of a Low Federal Minimum Wage , University of California Berkeley, Labor Center, January 2021.

62. Ken Jacobs, Ian Eve Perry, and Jenifer MacGillvary, The Public Cost of a Low Federal Minimum Wage , University of California Berkeley, Labor Center, January 2021.

63. Ken Jacobs, Ian Eve Perry, and Jenifer MacGillvary, The Public Cost of a Low Federal Minimum Wage , University of California Berkeley, Labor Center, January 2021.

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Should We Raise The Minimum Wage?

Cardiff Garcia

Stacey Vanek Smith

Should We Raise the Minimum Wage?

Burr vs Hamilton. The Celtics vs the Lakers. Godzilla vs King Kong. To this list of famous rivalries you can now add: advocates of raising the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour... versus opponents of raising it.

We have been watching economists duke it out on social media and in their papers, arguing for and against the idea. This is a topic where things can get heated, but it's also a really important and nuanced debate.

To show what's at stake, Stacey and Cardiff take sides on the minimum wage debate. Get ready for a fight over the minimum wage... with maximum rage!

Articles on Minimum Wage:

Characteristics of minimum wage workers (2019) , from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

How Increasing the Federal Minimum Wage Could Affect Employment and Family Income , from the Congressional Budget Office

Minimum Wages and Racial Inequality (paywall), by Ellora Derenoncourt and Claire Montialoux

Impacts of Minimum Wages: Review of the International Evidence , by Arindrajit Dube

City Limits: What do Local-Area Minimum Wages Do? , by Arindrajit Dube and Attila S. Linder

Racial Inequality and Minimum Wages in Frictional Labor Markets , by Jesse Wursten and Michael Reich

The Disparate Impact of a National $15 Minimum Wage , by Paul H. Kupiec

Myth or Measurement: What Does the New Minimum Wage Research Say about Minimum Wages and Job Loss in the United States? , by David Neumark and Peter Shirley

The Distributional Effects of Minimum Wages: Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data , by Kevin Rinz and John Voorheis

The Economic Impact of a High National Minimum Wage: Evidence from the 1966 Fair Labor Standards Act , by Martha J. Bailey, John DiNardo, and Bryan A. Stuart

History of Changes to the Minimum Wage Law , from the Department of Labor

Why $15 Minimum Wage is Pretty Safe , by Noah Smith

The Minimum Wage Pushback , by Noah Smith

Minimum Wage Tracker , from The Economic Policy Institute

$15 Minimum Wage Subverts Biden Recovery Plan (paywall), by Michael R. Strain

How Can Price Theory Help Us Navigate the Minimum Wage Debate? , by Brian Albrecht

Pay Is Rising Fastest for Low Earners. One Reason? Minimum Wages. , by Ernie Tedeschi

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• minimum wage

Home — Essay Samples — Economics — Minimum Wage — Argumentative Essay On Minimum Wage

Argumentative Essay on Minimum Wage

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Minimum Wage Persuasive Speech

Hello. How are you doing this morning? I have been so astonished with how delightful everyone’s speeches are I almost had a heart attack. I have three points I’ve heard throughout the conference, which correlate with my topic. One is the difference in opinions everyone has on minimum wage across the country. The second is that (based on inflation) minimum wage will need to significantly increase in the future. I have an interest in knowing about the minimum wage . Actually, what I find is that most people have an interest in the minimum wage. Don’t you? I find this quite intriguing. If you ask someone what he or she is paid and they made less than you, there’s a lot of judgement. Chances are they make more than minimum wage though. The third …show more content…

People always want more money. They have a point, though. As inflation increases the minimum wage hasn’t been. Did you know that, at $7.25 an hour, the minimum wage is too low to live on? Minimum wage should be increased throughout the country. That was all, by the way. Thanks for listening. So, ten minutes left. My first job was… no. I read a surprising statistic from the Department of Labor that said 21 states set their minimum wage as the same thing as the federal minimum. There are even states with a minimum wage lower than the set federal one. That is when the federally set one comes into place. There once was a quote by Chris Rock that said, “I used to work at McDonald’s making minimum wage. You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? “Hey if I could pay you less, I would, but it’s against the law.” And he is right. What TED celebrates is equality in pay. As the next generation grows up there will be talk of raising the minimum wage again for the 24th time in history. Arguments for and against it will spread across the country like a wildfire. I for one think that it should be possible to live off minimum wage. Thank you for

Minimum Wage And The Wage

There are a lot of people around the world who struggle with money and a satisfactory way of life. Whether they be in the United States or across the globe, there is a standard minimum wage set for the working class of their country. In the Unites States, there is a federal minimum wage of seven dollars and twenty five cents per hour worked. Almost every state has another set minimum wage, which typically is a little higher than the federal minimum wage, but it cannot be lower than seven dollars and twenty five cents. Countries set minimum wage laws, to ensure there is a basic quality of life amongst its citizens. As the minimum wage goes up in certain states, the quality of life also improves. The problem with a higher minimum wage, is now people are getting paid higher for entry level jobs which are meant for teenagers and people new to the workforce. If the minimum wage keeps increasing across the country, teenagers and young adults will have a much more difficult time finding jobs.

Persuasive Speech For Raising Minimum Wage

IV. Today I will be speaking about the problems with the established minimum wage and the benefits of raising it.

Minimum Wage Argumentative Essay

The minimum wage debate has been a hot topic over the past year, especially with the Presidential Election. This is a divisive topic that people rarely agree upon. There are essentially two sides you can take when it comes to this argument. Either people are for minimum wage or are against raising, or even having, a minimum wage. Proponents of the minimum wage are typically politicians who are lobbying for the vote of the people who feel that a minimum wage is critical to their wellbeing, and those who sympathize with people who earn “minimum wage”. Minimum wage is destroying America’s free market economy and someone needs to take action and find a better solution to this problem. Without anyone acting on this problem now, it can potentially be worse in the long run. Raising the minimum wage in the United States will do more harm than good to society because of the long-term effects.

Persuasive Essay On Minimum Wage

The federal minimum wage needs to be increased to keep up with inflation. Most wages are increased to keep up with inflation, but those at minimum wage tend not to see one so the employer can cut costs. Fortunately, some states have already fought this by raising their minimum wages to keep up with the cost of living in that area. If the minimum wage was changed with inflation, it would have been $11.16 in January of 2016 (“Should the Federal”). The lack of wage raises, along with the reduction in purchasing power, greatly affects the poor. Obviously, they have much less money to begin with; taking anything away from the poor hurts them greatly. According to Senator Bernie Sanders, “Since 1968, the minimum wage has lost more than 25 percent of its purchasing power (“Should We Raise”).” This loss in purchasing power will only continue. Inflation always

Analysis Of In The Minimum Wage Debate By Rex Huppke

Rex Huppke, a journalist for the Chicago Tribune, deftly discusses the pros and cons of raising the minimum wage in the last of a two-week series in “In the Minimum Wage Debate, Both Sides Make Valid Points”. Although I am for raising the minimum wage, Huppke’s presentation of the opposite argument does make one think beyond the gut reading that everyone deserves more money. Huppke’s argument that a large number of minimum wage earners are student of the elderly leads me to believe that a tier of wages would take care of the issue. For example, anyone working less than 35 hours a week would be paid at a certain rate; with full time getting an increase. I am not concerned by the argument that a higher minimum wage leads to lay-offs or price increases when most products sold in America are manufactured by cheap foreign labor. There is already a huge profit margin that could sustain such an increase. Rather than give discounts on goods and services, thus preventing employees from exercising the right to shop, stay or eat wherever the employee chooses, these employers trap workers into giving back the very money they have “slaved” for.

Minimum Wage And The Wage Essay

The United States has a history of changes to the minimum wage law. “Early in the administration of the FLSA (Fair labor Standards Act); it became apparent that application of the statutory minimum wage was likely to produce undesirable effects upon the economies of Puerto Rico and the Virgin islands .In 1949, the minimum wage was raised from 40 cents and hours to 75 cents an hour for all workers. A 1955 amendment increased the minimum wage to $1.00 an hour with no changes in coverage. The minimum wage increased to $2.00 an hour in 1974, and $2.10 in 1975, and $

Essay on Pros and Cons of Minimum Wage

The argument for minimum wage has remained remake consistent over the years. Some people are against minimum wage and the other think minimum wage can help you in a certain way. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Unites States federal government passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. The law has been amended almost every year to expand coverage of the wage floor and to increase the wage itself. Many of the fifty states have enacted their own minimum wage laws, some of them set even higher than the federal level. Minimum wage jobs don’t only help adults at hard times it help teenagers and college students. I learned that the proponents for minimum wage believe the raw value of one’s labor to a business

Outline For Persuasive Speech On Minimum Wage

A. Since July 24, 2009, the federal minimum wage has been $7.25, but as of 2016 the living wage – the hourly rate a single person must earn to support themselves or their family – is quite a bit higher.

I decided to write about how I felt regarding the federal government's involvement in controlling the minimum wage and that I felt they are disconnected in their understanding of the impacts on communities when they raise the minimum wage. I work for a manufacturing company in the U.S. and I understand wholeheartedly what the impact of salary increases due to our bottom line. In very competitive markets the difference between success and failure can be separated by the difference of only a few dollars per part, and while in other countries, their manufacturing bottom line is subsidized by their governments we are forced to generate profits the old-fashioned way through supply and demand. This is why I decided to take a stance in my persuasive essay and challenge the status quo of the Department of Labor and Wages. No longer should the federal government dictate a national minimum wage but should allow each state to establish their own minimum wage based on the economic condition of their counties and their state, as a whole.

The Minimum Wage Act Of 2007

There has been many conversations about what the positive impacts can come to America 's lowest income workers as a result of an increase in the minimum wage, and there has also been equally as many discussions over the negative effects the increase can have on similar people. This paper’s purpose is to combine each viewpoint and objectively analyze the arguments for and against an increase in the minimum wage. I will first discuss the benefits for an increase, then the disadvantages, and in the last paragraph, I will

Persuasive Speech Outline For Non Rising Of Minimum Wage Essay

Significance (why important to them?): A lot of people believe that because you 're getting paid a higher minimum wage that it’s benefiting you but in reality that’s not the case. The purpose of my speech is to persuade you to support the non-rising of minimum wage.

Fair Labor Standards Act Of 1938: Federal Minimum Wage

In addition to this, states can set their own minimum wage. According to the FLSA, if states enact laws that are more protective than what is provided by the FLSA, the state law applies. As of 2015, 29 states and D.C. have minimum wages above the federal minimum wage. Ten states and D.C. currently index minimum wage increases every year. The District of Columbia currently has the highest minimum wage at a rate of $10.50 an hour (Natonal Conference of State Legislatures , 2015).

Same Minimum Wage for All Citizens

Whether minimum wage should be state or federally mandated is the question that state representatives all across the nation are questioning. The minimum wage law changes by each job, every state, and people who get the short end of the stick are wondering 'why?' There is no doubt that minimum wage should be the same for all citizens. All employees should be treated and paid the same depending on the department and their position. It is extremely unethical that ordinary people obtain a larger salary than those who have more experience. Minimum wage should be the same for every person that start a new job. As a legal adult in today's society, I recognize how the nation financially struggles on a day to day to basis which leads me to believe

Minimum Wage Should Be Raised For A Better Standard Of Living

Almost 3.3 out of 76 million workers in the US receive minimum wage (Source: BLS reports). Activists for raising the minimum wage claim that the federal minimum wage of $7.25 is the reason they are living in poverty, and that the wage must be raised for a better standard of living. Many people who take on minimum wage jobs are young and work in companies that don’t carry much prestige; however, they still take pride in their work and demand higher pay (BLS reports). On the other side of the issue, there are claims that raising the minimum wage will actually have more drawbacks than benefits such as hurting the economy (Opposing Viewpoints). The

Effects of Increasing Minimum Wage Essay

• 4 Works Cited

The idea of having a federal minimum wage is a good one. The idea is to protect low and unskilled workers from discrimination and allow all workers to earn a living wage. The recent debate on the floor, though, is whether or not to raise the minimum wage from the current $7.25 per hour up to $10.10 per hour. President Barack Obama made this proposal during his annual State of the Union Address on January 28, and following this there were many hot debates about it. The debates focused not only on the advantages and the disadvantages of increasing the minimum wage, but also the alternatives to increasing it.

Related Topics

• Minimum wage
• United States
• Supply and demand

109 Minimum Wage Essay Titles & Examples

🤫 secrets of a powerful minimum wage essay & thesis, 🏆 best minimum wage essay topics & examples, 📌 most interesting minimum wage topics to write about, 👍 good minimum wage research topics, ❓ research questions about minimum wage.

Your argument is the most crucial aspect of your minimum wage essay, whether you are taking a stance for or against raising it. Thus, you will have to cover the unemployment and poverty causes and effects, which create the borderline for people’s bare existence.

However, explaining the mechanism behind the issue is only one of the facets. You will need to pay attention to creating a remarkable minimum wage thesis statement, outline, and more. Here are all the things you need for successful essay writing:

• Structure. Ideally, you should write your outline before you begin writing instead of during the process. It should reflect your argument and allow for the creation of a smooth transition between subtopics. Being coherent and easy to read ensures your readers interest in any topics you may mention.
• Ideas. These may come from your previous research, thoughts, or brainstorming. The more thought you put into your argument, the more minimum wage essay ideas you may gather and present to your readers. Doing so helps you create an excellent essay that is ready to counter-argue any problem.
• Thesis statement. One concise and on-point sentence should embody your whole paper, giving your readers a glimpse of what to expect from your work and what conclusions you hope to draw. If you are not sure of the quality of your thesis statement, then you can read sample sentences online. Continuously ask yourself whether the examples that you have found help the essay writer condense their argument.
• Title. Grabbing your readers’ attention is possible when you have understood how to create well-written minimum wage essay titles. Without them, your essay may be overlooked and forgotten, so do not be afraid to experiment with differently worded titles so you can judge, which may have the best effect on a potential audience.
• Conclusion . Finalizing your work and drawing coherent resolutions from it is the goal of all minimum wage essay questions. Do not reference any of the research you called upon in this paragraph, but instead make obvious the links between your used sources and final verdict. Your conclusion should be most representative of your work and leave a good impression on your audience.

Apart from these structural elements, you should also pay attention to the research aspect of your paper, integrating different credible titles into your bibliography.

This action demonstrates a comprehensive knowledge of minimum wage essay topics, as well as highlights the congruency of your thoughts with the academic community.

You may use different sources, from books and journals, from contemporary poverty speech performances to deportation laws.

You should not confine yourself to your outlined timeline and can mention modern-day implication of minimum wage, especially if it adds to your argument and does not forget your central issue.

Sticking to your argument is an essential aspect of essay writing. Asses each sentence you write and remove it if it does not suit your thesis statement. Your readers will notice all loose-ended and pointless arguments, which are irrelevant to your central theme.

Removing them will only increase the quality of your essay, allowing you to get better marks by being both coherent and comprehensive.

If doing so has dropped your work below your aspired word count, then you should review your outline and look for ways to develop your argument differently.

Do you want to write an essay that is better than merely “excellent”? Check IvyPanda’s essay samples to find out how!

• Minimum Wage: Pros and Cons, Effects of Increase Labor union laws and minimum wage laws have contributed a lot to the current trend of structural unemployment in the United States of America.
• Effects of Minimum Wage Increase The proposed increase will indeed benefit workers by raising their overall living standards by granting minimum wage employees a more appropriate pay level to contend with cost-of-living increases and the supply side of the labor […]
• The effects of the introduction of the National Minimum Wage on employment This paper evaluates the theoretical assumptions regarding the effects of the introduction of the National Minimum Wage within the British home care sector.
• The Raising the Minimum Wage Article by Scott Raising the minimum wage: Good for workers, businesses, and the economy. The issue of the federal minimum wage has been long debated as it affects the economic status of the U.S.
• Effects of an Increasing Minimum Wage A minimum wage increase is beneficial to the company in the long term but expensive in the short term. The rising minimum wage would lead to reduced research and development in purchasing machinery and software, […]
• Definition of the Minimum Wage and Its Aspects An increase in minimum wages will lead to substitution in the market. An increase in wages will be directly proportional to the prices of commodities in the market.
• Researching of Minimum Wage and Living Wage Like any other commodity, labor is determined by supply and demand in the market, and any artificial intervention disrupts the market balance, leading to shortages and gray employment.
• Raising the Minimum Wage and Its Disadvantages The average leftists will try to achieve an increase in the level of salaries with the help of the minimum wage.
• Minimum Wage: Overview and Analysis The pandemic has led to a huge deterioration of the economy, and raising the minimum wage is not something that businesses can handle.
• Minimum Wage Legislation in Texas The key objectives for a lobbyist for the organization would be to emphasize the numerous benefits to the working class while presenting arguments that changes will not be disruptive to the economy or businesses.
• Increasing Minimum Wage in Los Angeles As already mentioned, it may be critical to evaluate the basic needs of the population precisely and provide sufficient minimum wage. Hence it may be needed to increase the minimum wage in the state of […]
• National Minimum Wage Analysis The minimum wage is the legally established wage for the rate fulfilled by the employee. The higher the minimum wage, the higher the taxes.
• Minimum Wage and Government Interventions Coming to the issue of minimum wage, it is the “floor price” of labor that is determined by the federal government to guarantee fair wages to the workers.
• Raising the Minimum Wage: Positive and Negative Aspects Increasing the minimum wage will increase the social efficiency of society, which is determined by the degree of satisfaction of its needs.
• Minimum Wage According to Marxism Analyzing the issue from the Marxist viewpoint, it can be concluded that increases in the minimum wage are beneficial to the working class but not to capitalists.
• Minneapolis Government Trends in Minimum Wage Increases According to the report of Associated Press, the City Council of Minneapolis has passed the ordinance to increase the minimum wages in the city to 15 dollars per hour.
• Addison Ventures Company’s Minimum Wage vs. Ethics The main problem at Addison Ventures arises from the fact that the company is finding t quite challenging to balance between the cost of labor in terms of the minimum wage for its employees and […]
• Minimum Wage Policy in Canada In response, according to Tipton et al, the minimum wage policy was put in place to counter the rising poverty level by ensuring that employees in Canada experienced the basic standards of compensation and employment […]
• Increasing Minimum Wage in the US Restaurant Industry With the growing economy and the overall rise in the cost of life, it becomes evident that the minimum wage is insufficient for people to satisfy their basic needs and ensure an appropriate standard of […]
• Minimum Wage in California and Other States This paper aims to explore the minimum wage in the state of California as well as the significance of independent minimum wages for separate states and the conditions of workers in outsourced companies.
• Should the US Raise the Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour? While increasing the minimum wage is costly for businesses, not increasing the minimum wage is costly for the United States government.
• The Minimum Wage in China: Lee Wang Case The point in this case is that the main purpose of labour inspection is to correct the violation of labour ethics by employers, such as a company underpaying its employees, and to defend the employees’ […]
• Social Policy: Living on a Minimum Wage One of the primary findings is that the minimum wage is not a living wage. Another matter of concern is the fact that minimum living affects children and their prospects in life.
• The Concept of Minimum Wage Moreover, the rise of the minimum wage boosts the economy of the whole country and increases the quality of life. So, if the minimum wage is 10% higher, and that causes the reduction of poverty […]
• Minimum Acceptable Remuneration Regulation A comparison of the minimum wages in Australia and the US shows that adopting policies on minimum wages to reflect levels of training and incorporate economic indicators has positive effects on employment.
• Fixing an Initial Minimum Wage The paper will also determine the reasons why the minimum wage is important to a nation and the reasons why minimum wage rate should not be constituted in a country.
• Long Term Investment Decisions Another policy, which the government may have in the regulation of a market economy is the regulation of the amount of tax levied on products and services.
• Minimum Wage in Saudi Arabia and Other Countries In this respect, the fair wage expands the concepts of the living wage and minimum wage to include the conditions of work.
• Raising Minimum Wage in the US The current economic recession that continues to impact the U.S.economy The main problem with the proposal of President Obama lies in what the article states as the possibility of companies leaving the U.S.due to the […]
• Minimum Wages in Different American States These criticizers continue to epic that the minimum wage tends to reduce the demand expected of workers where they argue that this is greatly caused by the reduction in the number of the jobs and […]
• Minimum Wage Effectiveness However, the minimum wage can be a good stimulus for young people to continue their study instead of joining the “labor market”, and this is very good for the development of society since it leads […]
• Minimum Wage Issue: Political Regulation Governments usually impose minimum wage to reduce poverty; indeed, increase in the minimum wage is also said to increase motivation of the workers and hence lead to more productivity. Increase in the minimum wage does […]
• The Minimum Wage in the US: Situation Overview Other people argue that increasing the minimum wage would lead to increase in commodity prices by the employers to cover for the increased costs thereby beating the reason for the increase.
• Issues that affect low wage earners Low earner hardly afford good housing; they live in houses that do not meet the standards of an adequate housing systems, the reason why they opt for such houses is because they have limited funds […]
• The Pros of Raising the Canadian Minimum Wage In turn, the increase in the prices of goods and services will result to the decrease in the company’s profits. The rise in the minimum wage will cause the retrenched employees to join the ranks […]
• The Positive Effects of Minimum Wage on the Economy
• The Political Economy of the National Minimum Wage Institution
• Why the Minimum Wage Matters in the U.S. Industry Economy
• Why The Age Requirement Can Start Working For Minimum Wage Jobs
• When Is A Good Time To Raise The Minimum Wage
• Union Power, Minimum Wage Legislation, Endogenous Labor Supplies and Production
• Work-Related Training and the New National Minimum Wage in Britain
• Welfare Effects of Minimum Wage and Other Government Policies
• What Is Minimum Wage Is Not Ideal And Struggles
• Why the Minimum Wage Orthodoxy Reigns Supreme
• Wage Distribution And Earnings Inequality Impacts Of The Minimum Wage
• The Positive And Negative Effects Of Raising Minimum Wage
• The Social Issue of the Minimum Wage and the Need to Raise the Current Minimum Wage in America
• Using the EITC to Help Poor Families: New Evidence and a Comparison with the Minimum Wage
• United Kingdom: Developing a Progressive Minimum Wage in a Liberal Market Economy
• Unemployment Benefit, Minimum Wage And Average Salary Earnings In Romania
• Why The Minimum Wage Shouldn’t Be Raised
• The Short-Run Effects of the Minimum Wage on Employment and Labor Market Participation: Evidence from an Individual-Level Panel
• The National Minimum Wage and Hours of Work: Implications for Low Paid Women
• The Negative Impact of Raising the Minimum Wage
• The Positive Impacts of Raising the Minimum Wage on the Economy, the Health of the Citizens, and Their Quality of Life
• The Optimum Minimum Wage When Labor Services are Taxed
• Wage Inequality And Raise The Minimum Wage
• Thinking about Minimum Wage Increases in Alberta: Theoretically, Empirically, and Regionally
• Welfare Benefits, Minimum Wage Rate and the Duration of Welfare Spells: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Canada
• The Productivity‐Enhancing Impacts of the Minimum Wage: Lessons from Denmark and New Zealand
• Why Has the British National Minimum Wage Had Little or No Impact on Employment
• Why Minimum Wage Jobs Pay Their Employees Unfairly
• Wage Rigidity, Collective Bargaining and the Minimum Wage: Evidence from French Agreement Data
• The Rate Of Substitution Between Low Pay Workers and The National Minimum Wage
• The Pros and Cons of Raising the Minimum Wage of Workers
• The Struggle to Fight the Minimum Wage in America in Nickel and Dimed, a Book by Barbara Ehrenreich
• Wage Dispersion and the Minimum Wage Spike in a Search Economy With Wage-Posting
• The Role of Risk Preference in Immigration and Minimum Wage Policies
• Which Age Should Be The Minimum Wage For Drinking
• The Truth Behind the Minimum Wage in America in Nickel and Dimed, a Novel by Barbara Ehrenreich
• Using Local Labor Market Data to Re-Examine the Employment Effects of the Minimum Wage
• The Wage and Employment Dynamics of Minimum Wage Workers
• What Should Be Done About The Minimum Wage
• Understanding Wage Theft: Evasion and Avoidance Responses to Minimum Wage Increases
• The Negative Effects of Raising the Minimum Wage
• The Potential Impact of the Minimum Wage in Rural Areas
• Working Conditions At Minimum Wage Jobs
• The Unexpected Long-Run Impact of the Minimum Wage: An Educational Cascade
• Did the German Minimum Wage Reform Influence Employment Growth in 2015?
• Are Wage and Employment Effects Robust to Alternative Minimum Wage Variables?
• Does the Minimum Wage Bite Into Fast-Food Prices?
• Does the Minimum Wage Cause Inefficient Rationing?
• Are There Long-Run Effects of the Minimum Wage?
• Does Raising the Minimum Wage Help the Poor?
• How Much Would Increasing the Minimum Wage Affect Food Prices?
• Does the German Minimum Wage Help Low Income Households?
• How Raising Minimum Wage Will Hurt the Economy?
• What Are Three Effects of Raising the Federal Minimum Wage?
• Did the National Minimum Wage Affect UK Prices?
• Why Does the Minimum Wage Exist?
• Does the Minimum Wage Affect Employment?
• Should the Minimum Wage Be Abolished?
• How Does the Minimum Wage Affect Employment via On-The-Job Search Intensity?
• Does Increasing Minimum Wage Decrease Poverty?
• How Has Minimum Wage Influenced the United States?
• Can the Minimum Wage Force the Hand of Small Businesses?
• How Does the Minimum Wage Affect Firm Investments in Fixed and Human Capital?
• Can the Minimum Wage Reduce Poverty?
• Does Minimum Wage Affect Workplace Safety?
• Has the National Minimum Wage Reduced UK Wage Inequality?
• Did the Minimum Wage Affect the Incidence of Second Job Holding in Britain?
• Did Minimum Wage Increases Reduce Employment?
• How Is the Minimum Wage Debate Viewed Through a Marxist?
• How Does the Minimum Wage Affect the Employment Statuses of Youths?
• Does the Minimum Wage Affect Welfare Caseloads?
• Should Raising Minimum Wage Have Stronger Job Growth?
• How Many Americans Are Working for Minimum Wage and Living in Poverty?
• Does Increasing the Minimum Wage Reduce Poverty in Developing Countries?
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IvyPanda. (2023, September 26). 109 Minimum Wage Essay Titles & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/minimum-wage-essay-examples/

"109 Minimum Wage Essay Titles & Examples." IvyPanda , 26 Sept. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/minimum-wage-essay-examples/.

IvyPanda . (2023) '109 Minimum Wage Essay Titles & Examples'. 26 September.

IvyPanda . 2023. "109 Minimum Wage Essay Titles & Examples." September 26, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/minimum-wage-essay-examples/.

1. IvyPanda . "109 Minimum Wage Essay Titles & Examples." September 26, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/minimum-wage-essay-examples/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "109 Minimum Wage Essay Titles & Examples." September 26, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/minimum-wage-essay-examples/.