What is the Minimum Wage in the United States
Minimum wage is a basic starting wage, I don’t believe is meant to be a lifetime wage. Perhaps if employees actually stayed with a employer for more than a few months, they would develop their skills, know the products, know the customers and become more valuable to the employer and be given raises based on their performance. Minimum wage is a perfect example of the kind of legislation that appears to be helping the poor when in reality it tends to have a neutral or even negative affect. When minimum wages rise the economy qickly adjusts to compensate for that rise via price increases.
Federal minimum wage is $5.85 per hour. The Division of Labor Standards will investigate complaints of non-compliance of the state minimum wage law. Federal or state legislators must act to increase it. In contrast, Social Security benefits are raised automatically each year to keep pace with the cost of living.
Raise the minimum wage and that will surely increase the wage demands of unions for their workers. As a consequence, however, low-wage workers who are not unionized lose their jobs. Raising the minimum wage is an economic imperative for the enduring strength of our workforce, businesses and communities. Raising the minimum wage is a moral imperative for the very soul of our nation. Raising the minimum wage to increase the income of low-wage workers is welfare–a government transfer of income. If the Congress wants to increase welfare payments to workers, it should do so directly, not by sneaking it through the back door in the form of either an Earned Income Credit expansion or a minimum wage hike.
Raising that floor will make more people hit that level. Thus, more people will be branded as "minimum-wage employees", and feel worse about themselves rather than better. Raises are especially hard to come by. You have to be promoted (such as into management) in order to obtain one. Raise the damn thing already-oh yes you cannot relate up there in the capital so, so far away from the real kansans! For petes sake people get real.
Raising the EITC enough to offset the loss in purchasing power of the minimum wage could prove costly. If wages were held constant at $5.15 an hour for a full-time worker,1 the maximum EITC would have to increase by about $5,000 for a one-earner household to achieve the same after-tax income as an increase in the minimum wage to $7.25; the EITC would have to increase about $6,500 for a twoearner household to achieve the same gains.
Union leaders who helped lead the victory said that number overstates their support. Once legislators realized that they were going to lose and look bad, many of them switched their votes to the winning side. Unions are not content with mere discussion and debate on such a topic, for they are well aware of the fact that all reason stands opposed to them. Their outright neglect of the law stems from the irrationality of their doctrine, and it is evident that the government's condonement of them stems from the irrationality of key government officials.
|