Mar
17
Blog Post #7 – Jia Jun (Jay) Wu
March 17, 2015 | Leave a Comment
Minimum wage is an abysmal number when compared to living wage. If a living wage covers “the cost of local childcare, medical insurance, and other essentials,” what does minimum wage cover? Just food and shelter? That is no way to truly live. And it is especially not fair when this problem will have lasting effects for the next generation. So it continues to baffle me when people are against raising the minimum wage.
The articles from The Huffington Post and The Washington Post are all for raising the minimum wage. And I completely agree with that idea. After seeing the graphs, it’s instantly clear that adults with children will be severely burdened by making just the minimum wage. In fact, most would be making under poverty wage and will get nowhere near living wage. De Blasio’s plan reduces this gap. Though this only affects 18,000 people, as the article states, it will be tremendous for those families. I believe it’s a situation that really needs to be improved, and every small step will encourage the next.
However, the articles may have downplayed the negative effects of raising the minimum wage. They say that it would not have large effects on overall employment numbers or the inflation of prices of commodities. But the effects of Seattle’s $15 minimum wage plan are already brewing up some controversy. Currently at $9.32 and steadily increasing to $15 in 2021, the new minimum wage may have factored into some Seattle eateries’ decisions to close up. Whatever the circumstance, the profit margins will definitely be eaten into in.
I like the different approach that the New York Times article brought up. One thing I didn’t think of is how the higher wage could attract “more efficient workers” and replace poorer workers. This could really harm those who are foreigners. Immigrants, who are perhaps stuck with laborer jobs, may be displaced. This only highlights the proposed solution to that problem. The tax system, which subsidizes work via an earned-income tax credit and specifically targets the poor, seems like a great initiative. Not only does it encourage workers to be more productive, it also cuts costs for the businesses. I would definitely like to learn more about this system and look into the real effects it has had.
The Heritage Foundation article also brings up a very interesting point. Often, people’s perspective of the scope of the problem is muddled. Likewise, I was unaware that minimum wage impacts only 3.7 million people who earned $7.25 or less. It was also certainly surprising to learn that of those 3.7 million, most of them are young adults. So this wage is just supplemental to an otherwise moderately comfortable income. Still, one flaw of this study is its limit to just minimum wage. $8 or $9 an hour is still not meeting the living wage of certain places. So the wage problem could actually be larger than the article describes.
