The minimum wage should be raised to $15 per hour to help people get out of poverty, improve the economy, and lower the wage gap between the poor and middle income.
A job should lift workers out of poverty, not keep them in it.”~ Sen. Bernie Sanders. Congress has raised the minimum wage 22 times to the current federal rate of $7.25 since 2009. There has also been a federal sub-minimum wage for tipped workers set at $2.13 during 1991. While these are the federal rates most Americans are covered by higher minimum wage set by state and local law.
The minimum wage has been considered as the least amount of money a person would need to make to live his or her life. While the cost of living differs state by state it has been agreed on upon researchers that living with the minimum wage of $7.25 is not enough to pay the basic necessities of life. Through active groups fighting throughout states to achieve this higher minimum wage that will allow workers to be able to see their families, come out of poverty and be able to live the same as the average middle-income worker.
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Raising the federal minimum wage would reverse decades of growing pay inequality. This would affect the pay grade between the least paid workers and the middle class. This would help people such as Rosa Rivera, 54 and mother of 5, who earned $5.15 an hour and relied on government assistance just to pay rent. She is a hard worker and very vocal woman that has fought for the $15 minimum wage. A wage like this would provide her enough money to pay for rent and support her grandchildren without federal benefits. Migrants like Rosa would greatly benefit from this wage as she cannot get a highly skilled job since she cannot pay for it. 67% of the working poor would receive a pay increase making affected workers earn an extra $3,000 per year.
Enough to change the life of teachers working in Elementary or preschool, fast food workers, and people who struggle to make it through with around $20,000 a year. This would also lead to over $120 billion in higher wages and would lead to more tax revenue and a more productive economy.
We might not even have a choice but to have a $15 minimum wage, by 2024, 5 years from now an American adult will need the salary of a $15 minimum wage just to live. Even more, depending on where they live. Living in New York City would cost $28.52 to live modestly and adequately. This shows the obvious need for a $15 minimum wage that would still need to be increased to live in different areas of the United States of America. Minimum wage should not create poverty but abolish it.
Studies by Ellora Derencourt and Clair Montialaux has proven the rise of the minimum wage to help close the racial earning gap while not affecting the employment opportunities of the low-wage earners. While productivity has doubled over the past half-century the minimum wage has not. We are now earning less than what our counterparts did fifty years ago. If the minimum wage had scaled as productivity growth we would have a $20 minimum wage. Just raising the minimum wage contributes and helps to society’s social and political issues with an overall beneficial impact on the city’s the government and the economy, lifting millions out of poverty and helping close gaps.
A minimum wage should not hold people back but should at least allow them the liberties to live freely and afford the basic expenses of human life. Raising this figure to $15 will save the economy billions in tax revenue while letting the government collect higher taxes and increase the productivity of our economy with higher incentives to work. It will also help lower pay the pay gap between the poor and the middle class.
