Brandon Krampert
\nIn Motion Staff Writer<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, President Obama fulfilled his promise from his State of the Union address in late January by requiring all federal contractors to pay their workers of a hourly wage of $10.10 by executive order. Obama visited a Connecticut college in early March along with four governors in the area and called on congress to do the same with the federal minimum wage.<\/p>\n
Some have called for a lesser raise while others like the Service Employees International Union has advocated for a minimum wage of $15 who has made some headway of increasing union membership within the service sector that is generally subject to low wages.<\/p>\n
There have been arguments between the right and the left for and against raising the minimum wage. The general consensus on the right is that it will cause even more rampant unemployment and poverty while the left is in agreement that it will create more jobs.<\/p>\n
The New York Times had a piece in February that revealed industry ties with different think tanks that produces academic studies and analysis on the subject.<\/p>\n
The Employment Policies Institute for instance is an organization that warns the harmful aspects of raising it while it\u2019s actually run by a public relations firm that represents the restaurant industry.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also another organizations that publishes reports on how raising it would create jobs like the Center for American Progress who receives donations from a number of labor unions.<\/p>\n
If and when it is raised, some employers of smaller businesses notably will choose not to hire and some people will even lose their jobs. There\u2019s also other companies that make exponential amounts of money in profits where they won\u2019t mind the change in wages. But take Obama\u2019s proposal of raising it to $10.10 an hour, all workers that make between $7.25 and $10 currently will have their wages increased meaning that more working people will have more money to spend, which would create more demand for goods and services in the economy and would create more jobs.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s so unpredictable how a minimum wage hike would affect the economy or how employers will react unless viewed in retrospect. No one really knows how it will affect employers across the board so the prospects of how it will effect the employer isn\u2019t an accurate basis of arguing for or against a change in wages.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s more of a question of empathy for working people on the bottom of the economic ladder.<\/p>\n
A single-income earner receiving $7.25 an hour and for 40 hours a week earns about $15,080 before taxes, that\u2019s $3,400 below the federal poverty line.<\/p>\n
Some would argue that those kinds of jobs are preordained for young people merely for entry-level jobs but that\u2019s not necessarily true.<\/p>\n
Last October, there was a dual study conducted by UC Berkley and the National Employment Project on the fast food industry that generally pays low wages to its workers. It found that the median age of fast food workers is 29 years old and 30 percent of workers in that industry are supporting children.<\/p>\n
It also found that more than half of the workers in the industry rely on some form of public assistance.<\/p>\n
The minimum wage at its height was in 1968. If you adjust the wage then to what it could buy in terms of goods and services, it would be about 11 dollars an hour meaning that workers wages at the bottom suffered a decline in the past four decades.<\/p>\n
The U.S. economy arguably had its biggest economic boom in post World War II. Spanning from that era up until the late 60\u2019s, average wages kept up pace with worker productivity but ceased in the late 60\u2019s. If wages went up with productivity still, it would be about $17 an hour.<\/p>\n
From looking at the numbers, Obama\u2019s proposal seems a bit unambitious but whatever reforms are taken, it needs to be urgent or people at the bottom will continue to be effected by inflation and their labor will be further exploited by employers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brandon Krampert In Motion Staff Writer Earlier this year, President Obama fulfilled his promise from his State of the Union address in late January by requiring all federal contractors to pay their workers of a hourly wage of $10.10 by executive order. Obama visited a Connecticut college in early March Continue reading The argument for raising the poverty wage<\/span>