Raising Minimum Wage Research Paper

The history of minimum wage in the United States has been a lopsided division of numbers over the past 89 years. It first started at twenty-five cents by a law that was enacted in 1938, which was when the great depression occurred. There isn’t very much you can do with twenty-five cents in today’s world. You’d have to work nearly an entire day just to buy a single tank of gas. Minimum wage is defined as, the lowest wage that employers may legally pay to workers (ucdavis.edu, 2017). This means that employers are required to pay their workers a set amount per hour that is forced upon them by the government. Over the years there have been many costs and benefits when the government has raised the minimum wage. It has increased the price of …show more content…
The biggest cost of raising it is inflation in that it would cause inflation of all goods and services. Middle class families would be negatively impacted because the raising of minimum wage wouldn’t increase their pay, but they would still suffer from having to pay more for every day goods and services. Business would be forced increase their prices to compensate for having to pay more to pay their employees’ wages. 97% of American workers make above minimum wage (economics21.org). This goes to show that raising to minimum wage would not have a significant effect on almost the entire United States population. It would affect a minimal three percent of American workers. There are fast food workers who are making $7.25 an hour and are trying to get the federal government to more than double this amount to $15 per hour. This would cause a huge inflation of prices of all the food and drinks that are on any fast food menu and not only that, but other goods and services provided. Another big cost that could happen from raising the minimum wage is that jobs and benefits could be cut entirely. This is what business owners will have to do to sustain their own wages because, for example, having to give out paid vacation and a pay raise puts employers in a difficult spot. Essentially employers are going to be looking to but costs anywhere possible in order to stay above ground and not go bankrupt. A third thing that could happen is that the desire for an employee to do better and get a promotion could be eliminated. If a person is satisfied and happy with what the rate at which they are getting paid per hour, then they will not have a desire to work harder to get a promotion. This further shows the result of raising minimum wage in the U.S. and how it would negatively affect the

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