Minimum Wage Should Be Raised

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"No working American family should be forced to live in poverty" is the belief of a home health care worker and contributor for the Fight for $15 movement, Henrietta Ivey. The movement that strives to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour (Memoli and Tanfani 1). Many calls have been made to raise the federal minimum wage over the years. The minimum wage has been a controversial topic since it was first established during the Great Depression, striking debates over whether or not the minimum wage is really a living wage. In 1938, the President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the Fair Labor Standards Act that made employers pay their workers minimum wage and regulate child labor. The FSLA only covered agricultural and domestic workers. The initial minimum wage was 25 cents an hour. The FLSA was expanded in 1966 to incorporate more workers including public school workers. The federal minimum wage was raised to $1.60 an hour. From 1981 to 1990 the minimum wage remained at $3.35 an hour. Former President Bill …show more content…
Since employers can't pay their workers what they believe the labor is worth, businesses can't afford to hire as many people. It is especially hard for small businesses (1). Minimum wage is argued to be "unfair" to employers who can't afford to pay it and to workers who are okay with working for a lower wage. "Let's suppose there's a teenager whom you as an employer would be perfectly willing to hire for a dollar fifty an hour," Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman said in an interview in 1973, when the minimum wage was $1.60. "But the law says no, it's illegal for you to hire him at a dollar fifty an hour. You must hire him at a dollar sixty. Now, if you hire him at a dollar sixty, you're really engaging in an act of charity.… That's something few employers, quite naturally, are willing to do or can afford to do without being put out of business by less generous competitors”