A review of conservative and liberal views on minimum wage laws such as an increase in unemployment. By selectively citing data it is very easy to convince someone that minimum wage increases could help or hurt the economy, depending on what you want that individual to believe. For example, 75 renowned economists signed a petition to President Obama to raise the minimum wage, arguing that their individual studies have shown that minimum wage increases do not increase unemployment. On the other hand, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour – what Obama had proposed – would have a two-thirds chance of causing a reduction in employment of up to a million workers . That said, an essay of this length could not sift through all the contradictory data available on the topic. Instead, it will focus on the two prevailing schools of thought on the minimum wage and the reasoning each of these groups uses to support its position on the minimum wage issue. The more liberal view is that the federal minimum wage should be increased, if only to reflect rising inflation. More conservative individuals who tend to believe that the minimum wage should be kept at $7.25 an hour, or even decreased, will constitute our second school of thought. For the sake of clarity, these groups of people will simply be referred to as liberals and conservatives, although it is obvious that not all individuals affiliated with these positions agree on minimum wage laws. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Let's start with an examination of the liberal position on the minimum wage. Perhaps the most obvious position held by supporters of a minimum wage increase is that it will eliminate poverty. In 2014, when President Obama signed an executive order calling for raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 an hour, he summed up this position quite succinctly: “In the richest nation on Earth, no one who full-time jobs would have to live in poverty.” A full-time minimum wage worker is expected to earn around $15,000 each year. For an individual, this may be enough, as the federal poverty line for a single person is estimated to be around $11,000 per year. However, at this level of pay, any unplanned incident can be disastrous for an individual's budget. Unexpected expenses such as car breakdowns or health problems can be very costly, and if an individual only has an annual safety net of around $4,000, they may feel that that extra money is not enough to cover the costs of such events. Also, consider a family of four; the poverty line is closer to $24,000 a year, which proves President Obama's statement. Certainly a single parent who has to support three children cannot lift her family out of poverty by working at minimum wage, even if she works full time. Liberals are very compassionate towards people who find themselves in such situations, and this sentiment leads them to support raising the minimum wage. Of course, that's not to say that sentiment is the only motivation liberals have for their position on the minimum wage. We often hear claims from conservatives that raising the minimum wagewill lead to job losses, but it should be noted that some "Democrats like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo are making a strong case for the opposite: Raising the minimum wage promotes job creation and is good economics. ,” because minimum wage increases can lead to more jobs and can help the economy by increasing the purchasing power of minimum wage workers we mentioned, not everyone in the same party agrees on all of them these issues. For example, Jerry Brown, the liberal Governor of California fought hard against raising the state minimum wage to $15 an hour out of fear that it would create job losses liberals do not value economic growth as much as egalitarianism and equality in our society, and this may explain why they are willing to implement policies that might hinder economic growth to achieve certain ends. Both liberals and conservatives generally agree that income inequality is a problem in our nation, although some people would disagree. In any case, the disagreement over income inequality in our country is largely not about whether the problem should be addressed, but rather how it should be addressed. Many economists agree that raising the minimum wage obviously wouldn't do much to make a dent in the difference between the top 1 percent and other upper-class workers, and perhaps not even between the upper class and the middle class, because these groups they are generally made up of individuals who earn more than the minimum wage. By raising the minimum wage, the gap between those at the bottom and the middle class would be most affected, but this change would also be negligible. Liberals might argue that some progress toward creating equality still constitutes progress, but they would also favor other policies that would address income inequality across the upper, middle, and lower classes. In addition to pursuing this goal of equality, liberals often advocate raising the minimum wage for reasons of consistency. The White House website explains that “today the real value of the minimum wage is about 20% less than when Reagan took office. Tipped workers have an even lower minimum wage: $2.13 an hour, unchanged for more than 25 years.” Liberals often argue that if we can't all agree on a substantial increase in the federal minimum wage, we should at least take inflation into account to maintain the actual value of the hourly minimum wage. For example, the federal minimum wage has been set at $7.25 an hour since 2009. In 2016, $8.07 is estimated to have the same value as $7.25 in 2016, resulting in a decrease of 82 cents of the minimum wage over the last seven years. . Liberals argue that if we cannot raise the minimum wage, we should at least implement policies to increase the dollar amount to maintain a fixed value, and thus ensure minimum wage workers have constant purchasing power. Of course, there are many other topics that need to be addressed. made in favor of those who would like to raise the minimum wage, but we have examined many of the most popular arguments and now we can examine the conservative point of view. Conservatives generally argue that the minimum wage should be kept at its current level or even reduced. We will now take a look at how this group justifies their attitude. We've seen that the Liberals want to raise the minimum wage so that no one who works full time has to live on itpoverty. While conservatives may be sympathetic to the plight of an individual who has had a difficult life, for the most part, they argue that if an adult earnestly searches for a good job and works hard at that job, it shouldn't take long . wanting that individual to get a raise or find a higher paying job. In May 2016, in fact, it was estimated that there were 5.8 million jobs available. With the average salary of a private fleet truck driver at $73,000, and with a national shortage of about 50,000 truck drivers, it makes sense that conservatives are skeptical about how hard single parents working minimum wage are working to find better jobs . Of course, being a truck driver isn't the most glamorous job and leads to long hours on the road and away from family. However, the only qualification for this job is that you have a business license and can pass a drug test. One would certainly think that a truly motivated individual would be willing to sacrifice some family time to lift their family out of poverty by working for a raise from $15,000 to $73,000, a salary at which they could certainly afford child care. childhood and still remain well above the poverty line. Of course, not everyone can become a truck driver, and a commercial license isn't that easy to obtain, but this profession simply serves as an example of the type of work available to motivated individuals: jobs that require no college degree and relatively little training. Again, some conservatives would be sympathetic to a single parent raising several children on minimum wage; they would once again recognize that this is an unfortunate circumstance, but the fact still remains that minimum wages are not intended to support entire families. Minimum wage jobs are intended as entry-level positions for unskilled workers and young people who are just entering the workforce, which explains why minimum wage increases result in increased unemployment among young people more than any other demographic group. Conservatives argue that young people who are entirely dependent on their parents need not earn more than $7.25. These people don't work to support a family, or even for themselves. A high school student may simply be hired for a menial job after school so they can earn some money to get out or start a college fund. In fact, only 1% of minimum wage earners are adult heads of households, so it's understandable that conservatives don't believe that raising the minimum wage across all workplaces would help everyone, especially when you consider how some businesses respond to increases of the minimum wage. Conservatives often turn to small business owners to explain why minimum wage increases have negative economic consequences. A small business owner may not be able to afford to pay employees more than $7.25 an hour. Additionally, a large company could afford to pay employees more than the current minimum wage, but an increase in the minimum wage could still result in job losses at large companies. There are a few reasons for this. Consider a menial job that is barely worth $7.25 an hour, as in, the work the job entails barely allows the company to make a substantial profit, but perhaps the company values job creation and he has a sense of duty towards the community and wants to employ some young people to give them work experience. A substantial increase in the minimum wage could cause employers to shed positions that aren't thereabsolutely necessary to sustain profits, or they could simply respond by automating certain positions with computers. A minimum wage increase could lead to the destruction of many jobs for unskilled workers, the very people a minimum wage increase aims to help. Therefore one possible outcome could be that it becomes even more difficult for an unskilled worker to find a decent job, because when an employer has to pay an individual $10 or $15 an hour, it becomes more likely that entrepreneurs will only want to hire more skilled or more educated individuals. Another reasonable response by entrepreneurs is to simply increase the prices of the goods and services they provide. Conservatives argue that it would be very naive to assume that employers would simply take the extra money out of their own pockets to give many of their employees a raise. That said, an increase in the minimum wage could increase the purchasing power of minimum wage workers, but this change could be negated by the unintended consequence of an overall increase in the prices of goods and services. This sums up the standard conservative claim that minimum wage increases hurt the very people they are supposed to help. The final element of conservative attitudes toward minimum wage laws that we will examine includes the ideas of freedom of contract and right to work. This is based on the idea that if an individual, let's call him Robert, is willing to work for $5 an hour, the government shouldn't tell him he's not allowed to do so. Whatever his reasons, if Robert wants to work for $5 an hour and an employer agrees to pay him that amount, there is no reason why these two consenting parties should be forced to create a mutually beneficial contract. By preventing Robert from doing so, the government may be interfering with Robert's right to work. Let's consider a more concrete example of this concept; I will illustrate this idea with a personal example. Last summer I worked full time at a Christian summer camp. Work began every Monday morning at 9am and continued until 5pm on Saturday. I was living at the camp that summer, and while there were obviously times when I had breaks, all of the employees, mostly college students, mostly worked whenever we weren't sleeping or eating. That said, we all worked approximately 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, for a total of 72 hours a week. Our compensation for our work was $270 every two weeks. That makes our pay $1.88 an hour before taxes and no, we didn't get tips. Some may read this and think that our employers were selfish, that we were not compensated fairly at all, but that was not how we as employees felt. In fact, most employees enjoy the experience so much that they return to work there the following summer. We didn't resent the camp for paying us so little; we were grateful. We were grateful to do the mission-based work of the camp; we were grateful for the opportunity to learn how to work hard; we were grateful for the opportunity to learn to serve others; we were grateful for the friendships we were able to make with our employers and colleagues. A common argument among liberals is that it may be fine for two individuals to agree on pay as low as $5 an hour, but often the disadvantaged people don't have better options. They may choose a $5 an hour job as a last resort, because they must take that job or starve. This is a legitimate concern, but it doesn't take away from the fact that I know dozens of people personally.

Topic > A review of conservative and liberal views on minimum wage laws such as an increase in unemployment. By selectively citing data it is very easy to convince someone that minimum wage increases could help or hurt the economy, depending on what you want that individual to believe. For example, 75 renowned economists signed a petition to President Obama to raise the minimum wage, arguing that their individual studies have shown that minimum wage increases do not increase unemployment. On the other hand, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour – what Obama had proposed – would have a two-thirds chance of causing a reduction in employment of up to a million workers . That said, an essay of this length could not sift through all the contradictory data available on the topic. Instead, it will focus on the two prevailing schools of thought on the minimum wage and the reasoning each of these groups uses to support its position on the minimum wage issue. The more liberal view is that the federal minimum wage should be increased, if only to reflect rising inflation. More conservative individuals who tend to believe that the minimum wage should be kept at $7.25 an hour, or even decreased, will constitute our second school of thought. For the sake of clarity, these groups of people will simply be referred to as liberals and conservatives, although it is obvious that not all individuals affiliated with these positions agree on minimum wage laws. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Let's start with an examination of the liberal position on the minimum wage. Perhaps the most obvious position held by supporters of a minimum wage increase is that it will eliminate poverty. In 2014, when President Obama signed an executive order calling for raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 an hour, he summed up this position quite succinctly: “In the richest nation on Earth, no one who full-time jobs would have to live in poverty.” A full-time minimum wage worker is expected to earn around $15,000 each year. For an individual, this may be enough, as the federal poverty line for a single person is estimated to be around $11,000 per year. However, at this level of pay, any unplanned incident can be disastrous for an individual's budget. Unexpected expenses such as car breakdowns or health problems can be very costly, and if an individual only has an annual safety net of around $4,000, they may feel that that extra money is not enough to cover the costs of such events. Also, consider a family of four; the poverty line is closer to $24,000 a year, which proves President Obama's statement. Certainly a single parent who has to support three children cannot lift her family out of poverty by working at minimum wage, even if she works full time. Liberals are very compassionate towards people who find themselves in such situations, and this sentiment leads them to support raising the minimum wage. Of course, that's not to say that sentiment is the only motivation liberals have for their position on the minimum wage. We often hear claims from conservatives that raising the minimum wagewill lead to job losses, but it should be noted that some "Democrats like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo are making a strong case for the opposite: Raising the minimum wage promotes job creation and is good economics. ,” because minimum wage increases can lead to more jobs and can help the economy by increasing the purchasing power of minimum wage workers we mentioned, not everyone in the same party agrees on all of them these issues. For example, Jerry Brown, the liberal Governor of California fought hard against raising the state minimum wage to $15 an hour out of fear that it would create job losses liberals do not value economic growth as much as egalitarianism and equality in our society, and this may explain why they are willing to implement policies that might hinder economic growth to achieve certain ends. Both liberals and conservatives generally agree that income inequality is a problem in our nation, although some people would disagree. In any case, the disagreement over income inequality in our country is largely not about whether the problem should be addressed, but rather how it should be addressed. Many economists agree that raising the minimum wage obviously wouldn't do much to make a dent in the difference between the top 1 percent and other upper-class workers, and perhaps not even between the upper class and the middle class, because these groups they are generally made up of individuals who earn more than the minimum wage. By raising the minimum wage, the gap between those at the bottom and the middle class would be most affected, but this change would also be negligible. Liberals might argue that some progress toward creating equality still constitutes progress, but they would also favor other policies that would address income inequality across the upper, middle, and lower classes. In addition to pursuing this goal of equality, liberals often advocate raising the minimum wage for reasons of consistency. The White House website explains that “today the real value of the minimum wage is about 20% less than when Reagan took office. Tipped workers have an even lower minimum wage: $2.13 an hour, unchanged for more than 25 years.” Liberals often argue that if we can't all agree on a substantial increase in the federal minimum wage, we should at least take inflation into account to maintain the actual value of the hourly minimum wage. For example, the federal minimum wage has been set at $7.25 an hour since 2009. In 2016, $8.07 is estimated to have the same value as $7.25 in 2016, resulting in a decrease of 82 cents of the minimum wage over the last seven years. . Liberals argue that if we cannot raise the minimum wage, we should at least implement policies to increase the dollar amount to maintain a fixed value, and thus ensure minimum wage workers have constant purchasing power. Of course, there are many other topics that need to be addressed. made in favor of those who would like to raise the minimum wage, but we have examined many of the most popular arguments and now we can examine the conservative point of view. Conservatives generally argue that the minimum wage should be kept at its current level or even reduced. We will now take a look at how this group justifies their attitude. We've seen that the Liberals want to raise the minimum wage so that no one who works full time has to live on itpoverty. While conservatives may be sympathetic to the plight of an individual who has had a difficult life, for the most part, they argue that if an adult earnestly searches for a good job and works hard at that job, it shouldn't take long . wanting that individual to get a raise or find a higher paying job. In May 2016, in fact, it was estimated that there were 5.8 million jobs available. With the average salary of a private fleet truck driver at $73,000, and with a national shortage of about 50,000 truck drivers, it makes sense that conservatives are skeptical about how hard single parents working minimum wage are working to find better jobs . Of course, being a truck driver isn't the most glamorous job and leads to long hours on the road and away from family. However, the only qualification for this job is that you have a business license and can pass a drug test. One would certainly think that a truly motivated individual would be willing to sacrifice some family time to lift their family out of poverty by working for a raise from $15,000 to $73,000, a salary at which they could certainly afford child care. childhood and still remain well above the poverty line. Of course, not everyone can become a truck driver, and a commercial license isn't that easy to obtain, but this profession simply serves as an example of the type of work available to motivated individuals: jobs that require no college degree and relatively little training. Again, some conservatives would be sympathetic to a single parent raising several children on minimum wage; they would once again recognize that this is an unfortunate circumstance, but the fact still remains that minimum wages are not intended to support entire families. Minimum wage jobs are intended as entry-level positions for unskilled workers and young people who are just entering the workforce, which explains why minimum wage increases result in increased unemployment among young people more than any other demographic group. Conservatives argue that young people who are entirely dependent on their parents need not earn more than $7.25. These people don't work to support a family, or even for themselves. A high school student may simply be hired for a menial job after school so they can earn some money to get out or start a college fund. In fact, only 1% of minimum wage earners are adult heads of households, so it's understandable that conservatives don't believe that raising the minimum wage across all workplaces would help everyone, especially when you consider how some businesses respond to increases of the minimum wage. Conservatives often turn to small business owners to explain why minimum wage increases have negative economic consequences. A small business owner may not be able to afford to pay employees more than $7.25 an hour. Additionally, a large company could afford to pay employees more than the current minimum wage, but an increase in the minimum wage could still result in job losses at large companies. There are a few reasons for this. Consider a menial job that is barely worth $7.25 an hour, as in, the work the job entails barely allows the company to make a substantial profit, but perhaps the company values job creation and he has a sense of duty towards the community and wants to employ some young people to give them work experience. A substantial increase in the minimum wage could cause employers to shed positions that aren't thereabsolutely necessary to sustain profits, or they could simply respond by automating certain positions with computers. A minimum wage increase could lead to the destruction of many jobs for unskilled workers, the very people a minimum wage increase aims to help. Therefore one possible outcome could be that it becomes even more difficult for an unskilled worker to find a decent job, because when an employer has to pay an individual $10 or $15 an hour, it becomes more likely that entrepreneurs will only want to hire more skilled or more educated individuals. Another reasonable response by entrepreneurs is to simply increase the prices of the goods and services they provide. Conservatives argue that it would be very naive to assume that employers would simply take the extra money out of their own pockets to give many of their employees a raise. That said, an increase in the minimum wage could increase the purchasing power of minimum wage workers, but this change could be negated by the unintended consequence of an overall increase in the prices of goods and services. This sums up the standard conservative claim that minimum wage increases hurt the very people they are supposed to help. The final element of conservative attitudes toward minimum wage laws that we will examine includes the ideas of freedom of contract and right to work. This is based on the idea that if an individual, let's call him Robert, is willing to work for $5 an hour, the government shouldn't tell him he's not allowed to do so. Whatever his reasons, if Robert wants to work for $5 an hour and an employer agrees to pay him that amount, there is no reason why these two consenting parties should be forced to create a mutually beneficial contract. By preventing Robert from doing so, the government may be interfering with Robert's right to work. Let's consider a more concrete example of this concept; I will illustrate this idea with a personal example. Last summer I worked full time at a Christian summer camp. Work began every Monday morning at 9am and continued until 5pm on Saturday. I was living at the camp that summer, and while there were obviously times when I had breaks, all of the employees, mostly college students, mostly worked whenever we weren't sleeping or eating. That said, we all worked approximately 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, for a total of 72 hours a week. Our compensation for our work was $270 every two weeks. That makes our pay $1.88 an hour before taxes and no, we didn't get tips. Some may read this and think that our employers were selfish, that we were not compensated fairly at all, but that was not how we as employees felt. In fact, most employees enjoy the experience so much that they return to work there the following summer. We didn't resent the camp for paying us so little; we were grateful. We were grateful to do the mission-based work of the camp; we were grateful for the opportunity to learn how to work hard; we were grateful for the opportunity to learn to serve others; we were grateful for the friendships we were able to make with our employers and colleagues. A common argument among liberals is that it may be fine for two individuals to agree on pay as low as $5 an hour, but often the disadvantaged people don't have better options. They may choose a $5 an hour job as a last resort, because they must take that job or starve. This is a legitimate concern, but it doesn't take away from the fact that I know dozens of people personally.