Minimum Wage Argumentative Essay

Words: 547
Pages: 3

Sarah A. Smith
ECN201
10/29/2014
Baker College

Reasoning for Federal Minimum Wage The reasoning for the United States having a Federal Minimum Wage Law is to protect the workers so that they earn enough to live on. “If a firm can’t pay its workers enough to live on, then it isn’t a viable business, because it is dependent on wage subsidies.” Coppola, F. (2014) Forbes. This sounds like a good reason for us to have minimum wage laws, but the real reason has little to do with workers being able to make a living. In the United States we have Welfare benefits, these benefits make sure that people are taken care of, not the minimum wage law. The Minimum Wage Law is in place to protect taxpayers from firms being able to get something for nothing. According to an
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• If there is no minimum wage the co-existence of unemployment with in-work benefits drives wages to below subsistence level.
Most of our government’s tax income comes from households, not firms, and while time goes by this becomes unsustainable; unskilled workers become employees of the state, and the higher skilled workers are forced to subsidies the wages of unskilled through raising taxes. This makes sense assuming that unemployment isn’t considered leisure.
Pros/Cons of Federal Minimum Wage Law It is debatable on what the pros and cons are of the Federal Minimum Wage; as federal minimum wage was supposed to be temporary for the teenage worker when actually 3.8 million American workers earned federal minimum wage in 2011, of where most of them were out of their teenage years. Federal Minimum Wage should be increased and there are many different Pros to raising the Federal Minimum Wage as well as cons and some examples are below.
Pros
• Less turnover/keeping training cost down
• Families gaining financial responsibility
• Lowering poverty