English: Minimum Wage Essay

Submitted By Arkansas88
Words: 639
Pages: 3
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English
Robert B. Reich
11/27/11

Reich uses the metaphor of boats rising and falling with the tide to explain the differences between the rich and the poor. Reich established some history of the economics in America by talking about how originally everyone basically received the same wages. He said, "All Americans used to be in roughly the same economic boat" (422). He also described large company's habits of moving overseas to lower production costs to increase their profit margin. With modern economic circumstances in America, the uneducated people will suffer most in modern day America, while the educated will prosper.
Reich analyzed reasons for the economies of the past and their influence on the present. Reich started off saying, "Routine producers in the United States, then, are in direct competition with millions of routine producers in other nations" (423). Routine work acts as the dominant means of production, as he described. Large companies hire workers overseas because they accept lower wages and thus a business can profit more. These routine jobs, provided in developing countries, assist their economy and its people because they can make some money. When routine companies give away routine jobs in foreign lands, Americans lose their jobs. He then spoke of the increased jobs in the U.S. and the fall of unions - agreements between coworkers (a club). As production became more efficient and profit driven, machines have taken over people's jobs. However, only skilled operators can make a good wage for maintaining those machines. Only the educated people know how to work the machines.

The educated people will have a better chance to prosper because they can fill more sophisticated jobs. Uneducated people, including high school dropouts, will have a harder time getting great jobs due to their lack of skills and lack of knowledge. Educated people have a better chance at getting a good wage job because they have more knowledge, and their knowledge serves as power. Only the knowledgeable people know how to work sophisticated machinery and such. Reich said, "The productivity and resulting wages of American workers who run such robotic machinery may be relatively high, but there may not be many such jobs to go around" (427). Not only in working machinery can educated people get good paying jobs, but also in science and electronic fields. Uneducated people may or may not even know how to read, which will
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