Is the Minimum Enough?

Background: Minimum wage is currently $7.25 which has recently been raised, but some people still believe this is not enough to keep full time workers on this wage above the poverty line. The United States Market-Based Economy relies on people to make money and then spend there money to keep the economy strong. It really takes down the morale of these workers when they cannot make enough money to buy the things they need like food, shelter, and clothing. With the help of tax cuts and the rise of minimum wage, millions of workers on this pay will be a able to increase the poverty line and live a happy life. Increasing the minimum wage will increase the paycheck size of these workers will in turn boost the economy because these workers will have more money to spend on consumer goods. Along with the help of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), people on minimum wage will be the best help to get our economy back on its feet and strong again. Increasing the minimum wage can also be a bad thing because it can lead to inflation of the dollar. If we let the law of supply and demand determine minimum wage then the poverty line wouldn't be so low and that wouldn't increase inflation. The increase of inflation would only hurt people in poverty because it would raise the price of a lot of other products.



Current Issues: I think that we should not increase the minimum wage because that would only increase the rate of inflation. Therefore, we should just expand EITC to more of the poor people and that would help out the poverty without interfering with the economy. If more of the poverty class would receive benefits from EITC, they would get more money because inflation would not increase. If we increase minimum wage, the dollar would decrease in value which would really put the poverty line lower. There is only a small percentage of workforce that is on minimum wage anyways, most minimum wage workers are teenagers. So increasing the minimum wage would not help out the poverty in an effective way. Recently Republicans blocked a minimum wage bill in the senate saying there is no need to raise minimum wage. Mitch McConnell the party majority leader said the GOP was opposing the motion to begin debate because the it believed the Democrats' plan did not do enough to ensure that the government would not again foot the bill for bailing out institutions deemed "too big to fail."

Issue #1- All things being unequal

Issue #3- Putting welfare to work