Student’s First Name, Middle Initial(s), Last Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course Number and Name
Instructor’s Name and Title
Assignment Due Date
MINIMUM WAGE 2
Should the Minimum Wage be increased from the current $7.25 An Hour?
The minimum wage should increase to reduce the poverty level and meet the rising cost
of living. The timeline and the scope behind the current minimum wage of $7.25 are outdated.
Bradley (2017) notes an increase in employment inequalities related to the present minimum
wage. According to Reich (2019), increasing the minimum wage improves employment status
and inspires the working populations to work harder to improve their living conditions.
However, opponents maintain that raising the minimum wage can cause loss of employment
opportunities for the minimum wage workers and increase the prices of products in the market.
Given that the advantages of increasing the minimum wage outweigh the disadvantages, I argue
that the minimum wage should be rise from the current $7.25 an hour.
Increasing the minimum wage from $7.25 to the proposed $15 an hour will reduce
poverty by improving the net sum of low-income employees. If the increase in minimum wage
does not result in loss of jobs or working hours, it can reduce the difference between incomes
and the poverty line. For instance, a parent with more than two children working full time
throughout the year earns 22 percent below the poverty line (Romich & Hill, 2018). These
families later sign for public assistance like food stamps and Medicaid, funded by the taxpayers'
money. Increasing their minimum wage an hour to $15 will increase their income to 30 percent
above the poverty line (Doyle, 2017). The significant increase in earnings of the low-income
workers will subsequently decrease government expenditure on public assistance programs.
Households will have more money to spend, pay more taxes and stimulate the economy.
Increasing the minimum wage could also reduce inequality in earnings by putting a
higher mark on the lower limit of the pay scale. The current minimum wage has caused disparity
MINIMUM WAGE 3
in wages and the disappearance of the middle-class. The minimum wage was last increased in
2009 to the present $7.25 an hour; and cannot sustain the inflation that has occurred over the
years (Bram, Karahan, & Moore, 2019). The minimum wage is not sufficient anymore to protect
workers from poverty presumed before. Doyle (2017) noted that someone working for the
minimum wage earns about $12,000 annually. If the person is the breadwinner for a family of
three, their income is $7000 less than the current poverty line. According to Bram, Karahan, &
Moore (2019), an increase in the minimum wage limit might compel individual business owners
to compress salary scales. The increase in the lower wage limit is compensated for by reducing
higher salaries. Consequently, it reduces the spread between high and low pays. Action by
individual companies across America will cause a cumulative reduction of the inequality
between high and low earners.
A higher wage limit is likely to encourage employees to maintain their jobs longer than
before. According to Romich & Hill (2018), the presently experienced high employee turnover is
directly a result of the low minimum wage limit. Workers continue to seek better-paying jobs to
meet their monetary needs and improve their standards of living. Similarly, Bram, Karahan, &
Moore (2019) found employment to increase with the minimum wage. For instance, the 1997
rise in minimum wages caused increased remunerations in the subsequent year by a 1.9million.
Bradley (2017) also observes that out of the 17 times that the minimum wages increased,
fourteen of them caused a subsequent increase in employment in the following year. The
evidence nullifies the objection that an increase in the minimum wage limit makes employers
reduce their intakes.
According to Jacobs, Perry, & MacGillvary (2021), an economics professor Batra Ravi
proves that an increase in minimum wage does not significantly affect small enterprises when the
MINIMUM WAGE 4
minimum wage increases at a slower rate than the price. Such an increase mitigates the chance
that the rise in minimum wage will negatively implicate profits and prizes. Moreover, profits
made by business enterprises are a function of their revenue minus their costs, including their
staffing costs. Increasing minimum wage increases people's purchasing power; consequently,
increasing