Issue #2 Boosting Minimum Wage

The issue and arguments over minimum wage have persisted for years. The reason being that we have people who work for minimum wage and are still living below the poverty line. Minimum wage was created because that would be the lowest amount someone could make and live above that poverty line. It took over ten years for Congress to finally pass a bill to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to what it is now $7.25 and these workers would also get the help of food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). But even with all of that it still isn't enough for those who work for minimum wage to live above the poverty line. Thus the debate and fighting continues. Those who feel that this is just an outrage that people can work for minimum wage and be below the poverty line completely support the idea of raising the minimum. The reasoning for supporting this idea is that if you raise the minimum more people will have more money to spend in our market-based economy. This basically means that raising the minimum will boost our economy which will also cause many different tax cuts and boost the economy even more. On the other side of the spectrum, there are many people who believe that raising the minimum is a bad idea for many reasons. The first being that those who work for minimum wage are a very small portion of our nation's workforce. If the minimum is raised it will increase the cost of doing any type of business. This will cause higher prices and then cause job cuts which will hurt the low income workers even more than before. Those who oppose raising the minimum believe that the best option is to expand the EITC which will help workers out without effecting the market.

I think that in our current situation raising the minimum wage would be more beneficial for our future. Having people who have more money each month will allow more people to buy more products to stimulate the economy. Democrat Linda McMahon agrees with the fact that raising the minimum will help out our economy. Raising the minimum will allow people to buy more things from our market which will increase revenue which will then allow businesses to expand creating more jobs and allowing even more people to buy more things from our market. If we increase the minimum it will allow this cycle to continue and bring our economy back and allow it to grow even more than it ever has been. Raising the minimum has the potential to bring our economy to new heights and who knows it just might help us get out of the trillions of dollars of debt we have.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/04/gop-walking-into-the-snak_n_749352.html

All Things Being Unequal:
http://katieb123456.blogspot.com/2011/05/all-things-being-unequal.html

Putting Welfare to Work:
http://leah-bloggityblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/putting-welfare-to-work.html