Minimum Wage Research Paper

Submitted By Jake-Pettry
Words: 1396
Pages: 6
Open Document
Research Essay Minimum wage
Jacob R Pettry
Zane State College

Minimum Wage
As early as 6.00 am in a dark and cold morning of Midwest winter, a few people walking on an icy sidewalk. Under chilling wind, those people walk to a large, old building. Inside the building, the people work for repetitive, backbreaking low waged jobs. In the same day, late at night, you can see similar scene: some people walking out of the building under heavy snowstorm. Like all workers, they feel exhausted after finishing their job. Every day, they wait with impatience to hear the supervisor say “That is it, turn off the belt.” After putting off the safety gloves and sweeping off the seat, I can only think to return to my room and sleep. The Worker lost most of their time and energy just for a few dollars.

There are a lot of people that work harder and earn less than me. The poor, especially less-skilled workers, has access only to “bad jobs at bad wages” (Blank 64). Those workers always face bad situation. They are poor. They are struggling to sustain the life of their families.

On the contrary, the owners of the company where they work have a high standard of living. Bad wage is advantageous for the group of people known as traditional elites who own labor-intensive firms because it lowers production cost, thus increase the competitiveness of the product. For that reason, it is natural for the traditional elites to keep wage as low as possible. This action creates what Karl Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto as “naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation” (82).

The minimum wage seems to be an appealing solution against these abusive exploitations. Applying a minimum wage law, government can force a wealth distribution among the owners and their lowest level workers. On Saturday, June 25, 1938, The U.S. Congress first instituted a minimum wage with the Fair Labor Standard Act. The minimum wage was set at 25 cents per working hour (US Department of Labor). The federal minimum wage is increase overtime, adjusted for higher living cost due to accumulated inflation. The minimum wage level is currently set at $5.15 per working hour (2001).

An increase in minimum wage can help the poor by substantial amount. A 75-cent per hour increase in the minimum wage means an additional $1,500 for a minimum wage earner who works full-time, year round – “as much as the average family spends on groceries in 6 months” (Bureau of Labor Statistics). For a minimum wage worker, this fund injection is greatly helpful.

Minimum wage increase is undoubtedly favorable for low waged earners, even if their current wage is well above the minimum wage. A theory known as the “ripple effects” (Welch 26) said that an imposed minimum wage increase all wages, and lowest wages are affected most.

There is at least another advantage of imposing higher minimum wage. According to Gregory Mankiw, one of the “ten principles of microeconomics” is “people respond to incentives” (7). Higher wages give stronger incentive to the labors, and as a result, a stronger effort to work. In other words, higher wages can generate higher profit. This opinion sounds too good to be true, but when Henry Ford open his famous car factory, the theory is proofed. With a very generous wage in his time, Ford recorded one of the greatest successes in the history.

As popularly believed, minimum wage provides a win-win situation to deprive poverty. If it is so advantageous then we should raise the minimum wage with a substantial amount. The vast majority of Americans will agree to raise the minimum wage to $5 per hour or more. How many will agree to increase minimum wage to $100 per hour? I am sure that most well educated person will not agree to such an extreme increase.

According to the law of supply, a high price level will raise the quantity demanded. With a very few exception, this law prevail for all kinds of market, including the market of labor. Thus, an upsurge in the
Show More

Related Documents: Minimum Wage Research Paper

Research Essay

Research Essay Outline I. Introductory Paragraph Thesis statement: This paper attempts to discuss the differences of whether single-sex schooling is beneficial with regards to the students’ academic achievement, personal development and social interaction. In doing so, it will provide a critical and evaluative viewpoint on some of the important concerns relevant to the two scholastic settings. II. Body paragraphs 1) Academic performance/achievement a) Single-sex schools i) Teaching/learning perspective…

Words 2209 - Pages 9

Research: Scientific Method and Research Essay

Education, Health and Community Centre for Tourism, Events and Food Studies RESEARCH METHODS 6001TEFSUM TITLE: ESSAY OF QUALITATIVE METHODS, QUANTITATIVE METHODS and SECONDARAY DATA ANALYSIS METHODS. Summer Semester 2014 Module Leader: Dr. Martin Selby Student Name: Tham Yee Wen Student Number: 695121 Introduction According to Bob, R., Robert W. and Michael, T. (2002), research is a process of intellectual to discovery which has the potential to transform our…

Words 4505 - Pages 19

Research essay

method of preventing patients who are in infancy from infectious disease, such as MMR. This essay will discuss the advantages and disadvantages brought about by routine childhood immunisation. It will discuss that routine childhood immunisation is able to decrease the occurrence of vaccine-preventable diseases among children and will bring a variety of benefits to the public. However, on the other hand, this essay will also discuss the potential risks of daily childhood vaccination. Initially, the…

Words 2470 - Pages 10

Research Essay

Charles Kalmar charles.kalmar@ tulsacc.edu ENGL 1213, 290 22 April 2013 Research Essay John’s Relentless Pursuit In the movie John Q, written by James Kearns and directed byy Nick Cassavetes, many forces are at play and propel the main character John to act irrationally and go beyond society’s acceptable threshold of direct action to save his beloved son. The film is made during a time of national health care crisis in the United States. The story reflects the experience of Nick Cassavetes real…

Words 1917 - Pages 8

Research Argument Essay

Elizabeth Jeziorny Prof. Donohue WR122 14 June, 2012 Final/Revised Researched Argument Essay (thesis) The media is a culture force that can not be avoided and gives us information on a vast variety of topics. It influences what we think, the way we act and helps us choose our purchases. The media not only provides us with the information, but it decides which information is important. What we see on television and the internet or what we hear on the radio is all chosen by the media. Media…

Words 3597 - Pages 15

Sources Research Essay

My essay will be based on public transport. For my research essay I will try to balance my research so there can be two different points of view. My first source is an online newspaper title taken from manchesterevening.co.uk and it was written by Deanna Delamotta. Title of the source is ‘Time to shout out how bad our public transport is’. I think this source is a good source because it contains negative views about public transport and why do people dislike using public transport. In this source…

Words 830 - Pages 4

Research: Historiography and Research Essay

Research Task 1: How Research is conducted by using primary sources (first hand) and secondary sources (second hand) to learn new things about a specific topic or to answer a question. People conduct research in many different ways. One of the ways people can conduct research is by reading books. Books are very valuable sources of information. Although books are considered “old fashion” they can provide better quality information then what can be found on the internet. Books are secondary source…

Words 576 - Pages 3

Essay on Research: Research and Participants

Please click the link below to visit the seminar. www.proofessor.co.uk/research-proposal Name of researcher: Your name Email address: Title of research: Have a specific title. Preferable one sentence. If it is too long and includes too many things you will fail. My title was: The effect of musical preference on running performance. Supervisor: Briefly describe the rationale for your research with reference to the research literature (approx. 250 words). Please Note: Although your dissertation…

Words 2806 - Pages 12

THE RESEARCH PROCESS RESEARCH Essay

THE RESEARCH PROCESS 1. I chose to use google.com. I chose Google because it's all I use online to search and I've learned to navigate it very well. I first searched "planning a career change". To see if my results would vary, I changed my keywords to "change + career". Upon looking through my search results, I came across a valuable site named careercast.com. 2. I investigated four different websites to determine which one I would use for my evaluation. The first website I looked at was Career-Change-Confidence…

Words 492 - Pages 2

Wikipedia and Research Essay

especially when the paper requires research. Several college students are not aware of how proper research is done. Students struggle and cringe on the sound of “research paper”. The nature of research has dramatically changed too. Not only our student unaware of how proper research is done, but throughout years the notion of accurate research has been evolving. Before students were to find the nearest library, look for books based on their topic of research. If they were able to check out the book…

Words 1327 - Pages 6