Friday, April 4, 2008

My Opinion of Minimum Wage: Is it Too Harsh?

About minimum wage. In my opinion paper, I basically bashed anyone who felt that minimum wage should always increase. I feel kind of weird about that now because I am not sure how I feel about the issue. In my paper, I pointed out that people pursued secondary education that they would be less likely to be stuck with a job paying minimum wage. I think that most job that pay minimum wage are for teenagers and people who are in school because it's minimal labor that employers need to have done. Also I feel like it is not very smart for people to suggest a higher minimum wage because a higher minimum wage means the living wage (cost of living) will also be raised. Even though some of my research says that the living wage will not be raised very much, more is more in my opinion. So in the end, raising minimum wage will not do much good. All in all, if you are not driven enough to pursue some form of secondary education such as college or trade school, then you are basically choosing to accept minimum wage, so why complain about it? After I gave my opinions some thought, I started to feel bad because of the people that I have heard talk about minimum wage. Some people have some of the saddest stories about how they are barely making it. If a person does not have any kind of disability, why can't they involve themselves in the necessary procedures to gain further knowledge of higher paying positions?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

A lot of people do not take into consideration that when the minimum wage rises, so does everything else basically. I mean, in California minimum wage is way higher than here but it is SO much more expensive to live there. The thing that solves this problem is..GO TO SCHOOL!

Daniel Hernandez said...

i agree with you that minimum wage doesn't need to raise all the time. because like you said when it goes up so does the coast of living. but on the opposite side of that when the cost of living goes up, then the minimum wage needs to go up. does that make sense.

Nancy said...

One other downfall of raising minimum wage is it is hard on small businesses. They just will not hire as many people. But I do have mixed feelings about it because some people cannot get any other kind of job except minimum wage. Their circumstances may not allow them to go to school. But never feel bad about having an opinion. And our opinions do sometimes change when we learn something new.