Should The Minimum Wage Be Raised? Essay

1559 Words Dec 22nd, 2015 7 Pages
Should the federal minimum wage be raised? I don’t believe that the minimum wage should be raised at all, because it should be for people who have little to no skillset; not for people with a family who are trying to live off of it. Right now the federal minimum wage stands at $7.25 an hour, but some states have raised it to be higher; take MIchigan for example. Michigan’s minimum wage is $8.15 (before taxes are deducted) an hour. Some states, depending on what it would be changed to, may not even see a difference. There are multiple reasons why the minimum wage shouldn’t increase from where it is at now. Firstly, raising the minimum wage won’t reduce the poverty level as so many people are mislead to believe. In the article “Raising the Minimum Wage Won’t Reduce Poverty” by David Henderson says, “the negative effects of raising the minimum wage: higher unemployment because employers forced to pay higher wages will discharge the least productive employees and be less likely to hire new workers, a higher high school dropout rate because teens will see higher wages as enticement to leave school, a raise in poverty because there will be fewer jobs, cuts in employee benefits, and a loss of competition in the marketplace.” From these calculations it shows several reasons on why the raising of the minimum wage won’t show many benefits; with teenagers being the future of America and them seeing the increase of the minimum wage as a reason to drop out, we’re saying it’s okay to…

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