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The impact of legal minimum wages on employment, income, and poverty incidence in the Philippines

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It is commonly believed that mandating higher legal minimum wages (LMWs) is needed to help the poor earn a level of income that would allow them healthy and dignified lives. It is also seen as a tool to protect the weak against exploitation. This popular belief motivates and justifies the recurrent demands for hefty increases in LMW. But what is the empirical evidence behind this? This article seeks to address this question. It finds that in the Philippines, higher LMWs: (i) are likely to reduce the work hours of average workers; (ii) can be disadvantageous against the very groups that LMWs are intended to protect; (iii) decrease the employment probability of the young, inexperienced, less educated, and women laborers; and (iv) tend to ironically reduce average income and raise household poverty rate. These results illustrate how rapid rises in LMWs can be counter-productive and can go against the spirit of equal protection principle of the Constitution. If the goal is to help the p...

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Argumentative Essay on Minimum Wages | Writing Guide

In socio-economic discourse, few topics evoke as much debate and contention as the issue of minimum wages. Advocates argue for its necessity in ensuring fair compensation and reducing poverty, while critics raise concerns about its potential impact on employment and business viability. Writing an argumentative essay on minimum wages requires a nuanced understanding of both sides of the debate and the ability to construct a compelling argument supported by evidence. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to effectively tackle this topic and craft a persuasive argumentative essay.

Argumentative Essay on Minimum Wages

Understanding the Topic

Before writing the essay, it’s crucial to familiarize yourself with the key concepts and arguments surrounding minimum wages. Minimum wage laws mandate the lowest hourly wage that employers can pay their employees, typically set by government legislation. Proponents of minimum wages argue that they serve as a crucial tool in reducing income inequality, lifting workers out of poverty, and stimulating economic growth by increasing consumer spending. On the other hand, critics contend that minimum wage hikes could lead to job losses, automation, and increased costs for businesses, potentially harming low-skilled workers and small enterprises.

Research for Argumentative Essay on Minimum Wages

To construct a compelling argumentative essay, thorough research is essential. Start by gathering evidence and data from reputable sources, including academic journals, government reports, and expert analyses. Look for empirical studies that examine the impact of minimum wage policies on employment, poverty rates, business profitability, and overall economic outcomes. Pay attention to both sides of the debate, considering the perspectives of economists, policymakers, business owners, and workers’ rights advocates. By grounding your arguments in empirical evidence, you’ll strengthen the credibility and persuasiveness of your essay.

Creating Your Argument for Argumentative Essay on Minimum Wages

Once you’ve conducted thorough research, it’s time to craft your argumentative thesis statement. This statement should succinctly summarize your stance on the issue of minimum wages and preview the main points you’ll be making in your essay. For example, your thesis could assert that while minimum wage increases can positively impact workers’ livelihoods and reduce income inequality, policymakers must carefully consider potential trade-offs and implement complementary policies to mitigate adverse effects on businesses and employment.

Structuring Your Essay

A well-structured argumentative essay follows a clear and logical format, guiding readers through your argument step by step. Consider the following structure:

  • Introduction: Start with a hook to grab the reader’s attention and provide context on the minimum wage debate. Introduce your thesis statement and outline the main points you’ll be addressing in the essay.
  • Background and Context: Provide background information on minimum wage laws, including their history, purpose, and current debates. Briefly summarize key arguments from both sides of the issue.
  • Supporting Arguments: Present your main arguments in support of your thesis statement. Each argument should be supported by evidence, statistics, and examples to bolster its credibility.
  • Counterarguments: Acknowledge and address counterarguments to your position. Anticipate potential objections and present reasoned responses to strengthen your argument.
  • Conclusion: Summarize your main points and restate your thesis in light of the evidence presented. Emphasize the importance of finding a balanced approach to minimum wage policies that considers both workers’ well-being and economic realities.

Writing an argumentative essay on minimum wages requires careful research, critical thinking, and persuasive writing skills. By understanding the complexities of the issue, gathering credible evidence, and structuring your essay effectively, you can construct a compelling argument that contributes to the ongoing discourse on labor policy and economic justice. Remember to approach the topic with an open mind, acknowledging differing perspectives while advocating for your own informed position.

Argumentative Essay on Minimum Wages Example

Introduction.

The debate over the minimum wage has become increasingly prominent, with advocates and critics fiercely arguing their positions. The concept of a minimum wage, which guarantees workers a baseline level of compensation for their labor, has been a contentious issue for decades. While some believe that setting a minimum wage is essential for ensuring workers are fairly compensated and able to meet their basic needs, others argue that it can have detrimental effects on businesses and employment rates. Despite the differing opinions, I firmly believe that establishing a correct minimum wage is crucial for fostering a more just and equitable society.

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Body Paragraph 1

One compelling reason to support a minimum wage is that it helps mitigate income inequality and poverty. In many economies, low-wage workers struggle to make ends meet, often living paycheck to paycheck and unable to afford basic necessities. By setting a minimum wage at a level that ensures a decent standard of living, governments can lift millions of people out of poverty and reduce the gap between the wealthy and the working class. Moreover, when workers are paid a fair wage, they are more likely to spend money in their communities, stimulating economic growth and benefiting businesses in the long run.

Body Paragraph 2

Additionally, a minimum wage serves as a crucial tool for safeguarding workers’ rights and dignity. Without a minimum wage, employers could exploit their workers by paying them unreasonably low wages, subjecting them to poor working conditions, and denying them basic benefits. This not only harms individual workers but also erodes the social fabric of society, leading to widespread discontent and unrest. By establishing a minimum wage, governments signal their commitment to upholding labor standards and ensuring that all workers are treated with respect and fairness.

Body Paragraph 3

Furthermore, proponents argue that a minimum wage can have positive effects on productivity and workforce stability. When workers are paid fairly for their labor, they are more motivated and engaged, leading to increased productivity and efficiency in the workplace. Additionally, a minimum wage can reduce employee turnover rates, as workers are less likely to leave their jobs in search of higher-paying opportunities. This benefits businesses by reducing hiring and training costs and fostering a more skilled and experienced workforce.

Body Paragraph 4: Counterargument and Refutation

Despite these compelling arguments, critics of the minimum wage often raise concerns about its potential negative impact on businesses and employment. They argue that mandating a minimum wage can lead to job losses, particularly among small businesses that may struggle to afford higher labor costs. However, research has shown that the actual impact of minimum wage increases on employment is minimal, with studies finding little to no evidence of widespread job losses. Additionally, businesses can adapt to higher labor costs by increasing prices, improving efficiency, or reallocating resources, mitigating the potential negative effects.

In conclusion, while the debate over the minimum wage will likely continue, it is clear that establishing a correct minimum wage is essential for promoting economic fairness, protecting workers’ rights, and fostering a more stable and productive workforce. By ensuring that all workers are paid a decent wage for their labor, we can create a more just and equitable society where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. As we move forward, it is imperative that policymakers carefully consider the evidence and strive to find a balance that benefits both workers and businesses alike.

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Minimum Wage - Free Essay Samples And Topic Ideas

The concept of a minimum wage, a lower earnings limit set by law or regulation, has been a subject of extensive debate and analysis. Essays could delve into the historical evolution of minimum wage policies, the economic theories surrounding it, and the impact of minimum wage increases on employment, poverty, and income inequality. They might also discuss the differing views on minimum wage adjustments, exploring arguments from both supporters and opponents. Discussions could extend to the real-world examples of minimum wage implementations, comparing the outcomes in different regions or countries, and analyzing the broader implications of minimum wage policies on economic welfare and social equity. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Minimum Wage you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Why Minimum Wage should Increase

Across America, the ranks of the working poor are growing. Since 1938, when the minimum wage was first introduced (at a rate of $0.25 an hour), the federal minimum wage has increased 22 times. Twenty-one states have minimum wages at or below the federal minimum and various other states have minimum wages that are above $7.25 an hour, but still inadequate. Even though some states have higher minimum wage than others it still doesn't help the workers rise higher than […]

Minimum Wage should not be Raised

The minimum wage is currently $7.25 that had started in the year of 2009. Yet, some people still do not think it is enough. The minimum wage had started off as 25 cents per hour in the year of 1938. Many would say that is crazy, because how did they survive with only being paid a quarter hourly. Many things was much cheaper back in the them times (not all things), although people fail to realize that raising the minimum […]

Why do Different Workers Receive Different Wages?

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Pros and Cons of Increasing the Minimum Wage

Introduction The minimum wage is the lowest reasonable price that an employer is legally obliged to compensate for work, not including collective agreements and custom employee contracts. The federal and state governments are responsible for setting their minimum wage policies, which may differ. The aspect of wages is a grave concern in the modern world due to the discussion among economic experts, whose opinions differ on whether it should increase or stay stagnant (Kops, 2017). The increase in the minimum […]

Should the Government Raise the Federal Minimum Wage?

The federal minimum wage was first introduced in 1938 during the Great Depression under President Franklin Roosevelt. Since its introduction, it has been changed several times by Congress. The minimum wage is the lowest wage employers can legally pay their employees. It was created to help Americans in poverty and consumer power purchasing. Lately, there has been a massive political debate on whether or not to raise the minimum wage. I believe that the minimum wage should be increased since […]

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How could Minimum Wage Increase Help the Poor

It has long been debated whether the minimum wage would be beneficial for the poor. The minimum wage should be increased to help people from working-class families. The cost of living is so high, especially in major cities such as New York, that it is nearly unbearable to raise a family on a minimum wage income. A single-family has to make ends meet to survive on a minimum wage job. Living expenses are just too outrageous to simply live on […]

The Negative Effects of Increasing Minimum Wage

There is a current issue that is become very popular at political debates around the US; to raise the minimum wage or to not? This question rose from the Fair Labor and Standard Act of 1938 which effectively set a livable rate at which employees could sell their work. The specific question that I will be addressing is: What are the negative externalities to raising the minimum wage? Many studies, including one from the United States Bureau of Labor stated […]

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Impacts of a Rise in Minimum Wages

Introduction The minimum wage has been, for a long time, a topic of discussion in almost all countries since it directly affects the lives of the citizens. There are arguments and counterarguments regarding the effects of the continuous rise of the minimum wages concerning the welfare of the people and the dynamics of the economy. In the U.S., low-income earners continue in the push for the rise of minimum wages. Throughout the years, due to the changes that have been […]

Minimum Wage and Prices

The price control set by the government which is related to wages for work is called minimum wage. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, but some states had passed laws that increased the amount. People should also be aware that minimum wage does not guarantee jobs. In fact, it only guarantees that the employees will earn at least the minimum amount. Raising the minimum wage can also lead to unemployment, higher prices, and disadvantages to people with […]

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California, the land that once embodied the pioneer spirit and the American dream, now embodies the American nightmare; the rich get richer while the hardworking sink deeper into the mud of fiscal disparity. Those who cannot afford life in large cities often paradoxically cannot afford a higher paying job. Celebrities and lawyers reside in hilltop mansions while the economically lower classes flounder to make a living and stay in their homes. College graduates continue to move back into their parents’, […]

Increasing Minimum Wage for the Economy

Increasing the minimum wage may seem like an obvious decision for some; why wouldn't we pay poverty-stricken entry level workers more livable wages? However, there can be grave consequences that result from such drastic economic changes that must be considered, especially when these consequences hurt the intended beneficiaries. The minimum wage should not be increased, as increasing it will have a variety of negative economic consequences for businesses and workers, and it will be a change that will cause more […]

Why Minimum Wage should be Increased?

Throughout time minimum wage has played a big role on the way Americans make money. It has helped many people provide for themselves and their family, but with the cost of living and the economy constantly increasing it is making it harder for those who depend on a minimum wage job to be able to take care of the responsibilities they have with the little of money they are making. With the economy and cost of living constantly increasing americans […]

The Effects of Minimum Wage

The federal minimum wage is seven twenty five an hour and is most certainly fair at that price. It is the basis and starting point for many Americans climbing the job ladder. Factual evidence and statistics can show raising it will hurt many more than it would help. A wage increase is well intended but is counterproductive because it hurts our unskilled and young workers, the low income areas some who are in poverty, and also encourages more high school […]

Effects of Minimum Wage Increase on Poverty Rates

To a certain extent, I agree that it is effective in reducing poverty because it will help some workers who really come from a poor background. But if only a small percentage of the poor will benefit from it and if it helps more people who are above the poverty line than those below it, then it is not a plausible approach. If the target is to reduce poverty, then there needs to be a better solution wherein most of […]

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Positive and Negative Effects of Minimum Wage on People

I. Introduction A. Attention Getter: Imagine this: You're a single parent working a full-time minimum wage job, or multiple minimum wage jobs, and still are living paycheck to paycheck if you make enough to even provide for your family. Would minimum wage rising make this better? Or would there be a domino effect of higher prices? B. Reason to Listen: Millions of people across the country are living paycheck to paycheck off of minimum wage. Everyone's first reaction to this […]

Main Causes why Minimum Wage should Increase

There are a lot of people around the world who struggle with money because of the minimum wage. Minimum wages have been one of the biggest topics around the United States. Minimum wage is the minimum hourly wage an employer pays an employee for work. Since 1938, when the minimum wage was first introduced at a rate of $0.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage has increased 22 times. In all 50 states of America, twenty-one states have minimum wages […]

Minimum Wage Increase and Employment and Job Opportunities

For many years now, people have been arguing over the minimum wage of $7.25. Some clam that it is too low and some even clam it is too high, but I have decided to do some research on the topic. In the book, Undocumented, Dan-el's mother was a college graduate from the Dominican Republic and was compensated as such. When she later traveled to the United States to give birth to her second son, she ended up staying in the […]

The History and Understanding of the Concept of a Minimum Wage

The concept of a minimum wage is self-explanatory: employees are guaranteed a pay rate that their employers cannot legally reduce. Today, minimum wage laws play a critical role in our economy; but this was not always the case. The first minimum wage laws were enacted in New Zealand in 1894 but did not come to the United States until 1938. The 1930s were defined by the Great Depression, an economic catastrophe that crippled the world, resulting in monumental levels of […]

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Unemployment and Minimum Wage in the US

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Minimum Wage and its Impact

Minimum Wage and Its Impact: An Argument for Increasing the Federal Minimum Wage Since the Industrial Era, workers in North Carolina and across the US have fought for better working conditions, less hours, no child labor, and most importantly a wage that could support life in the United States. Throughout the years, many of the state and federal governments have passed legislation to increase the minimum wage, decrease working hours, and to prevent child labor. While some states make advances […]

Minimum Wage in the United States

On July 24, 2009 the federal government set the minimum wage throughout the United States at $7.25. Millions of middle and lower class families struggle to make financial ends meet. Meaning the wage isn't even enough for a family of two or three children. While the wages are low, it is also a burden to find employment in an economy that is struggling to keep afloat. Minimum wage is a way companies save money and create more jobs while doing […]

About Negative Effects on Minimum Wage

The amount of money a person is paid should be based on their skills and knowledge, not on what the government decides is fair. Raising the minimum wage does not make that worker more valuable to an organization, it only makes him more expensive. Much of the workforce feel like they are being paid unfairly and want to see their wages increase dramatically. This would cause the opposite effect of what they think would happen and will be a lot […]

Is Minimum Wage an Issue in America?

Minimum wage and it's issue in America has sparked a profusion and has affected millions of individuals for years. The set minimum wage for those of whom are in the United States is $7.25 a hour for workers (Doyle, 2018). The problem with minimum wage in America is that it causes a lot of poverty, causes individuals to work more than just one job. Minimum Wage also affects our youth in society. Minimum wage has been a consistent problem since […]

The Minimum Wage Must be Raised

Ellie Barraclough Mrs. Miles ENGL 201 16 Nov 2018 The Minimum Wage Must Be Raised As of July 2009, the federal minimum wage has been $7.25, which is far too low to make a living. The minimum wage must be increased for the betterment of our country. In 2016, 701,000 workers above 16 were paid the minimum wage (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Raising the minimum wage will have an increase in employment, a decrease in poverty, allow people to afford […]

Increasing Federal Minimum Wage

The magnitude of the impacts of federal minimum payments has been a typical topic of discussion for years. Economic policymakers and academic researchers base minimum wage discussions in the context of poverty and increasing the wages. However, critics argue that there are many adverse effects on small businesses and the general economy of the country. A rise in the nation payments will have impacts on the economy of the American states in which the increase in minimum wage law is […]

The Minimum Wage and Professional Experience

I think if we were to raise the minimum wage in the United States it would end up hurting out economy as a whole. There are many facts that show an increase in the minimum wage would hurt our economy. For example the minimum wage in California has gradually been increasing since 2006. The minimum wage in California is projected to hit $15 in 2022 which is concerning to the people that live there. Since the increase in minimum wage, […]

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How To Write an Essay About Minimum Wage

Understanding the concept of minimum wage.

Before writing an essay about minimum wage, it's crucial to thoroughly understand what it entails. Minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their workers. It's a significant economic and political issue, with debates focusing on its impacts on poverty, employment, and economic growth. Begin your essay by defining minimum wage, including its history and the variations that exist in different countries or states. This foundation will set the stage for a more in-depth exploration of the topic in your essay.

Formulating a Thesis Statement

A strong essay on minimum wage requires a clear and focused thesis statement. Your thesis should present a specific viewpoint or argument about the minimum wage. For example, you might argue that raising the minimum wage is essential for reducing poverty, or conversely, that it could lead to higher unemployment rates. Your thesis will guide the direction of your essay, providing a clear path for your argument and ensuring that your essay remains focused and coherent.

Gathering and Analyzing Data

To support your thesis, gather relevant data and research from credible sources. This might include economic studies, government reports, and expert opinions. For instance, if you're arguing that increasing the minimum wage boosts the economy, you'll need to find economic data that supports this claim. Analyze this data critically, considering different perspectives and the quality of the evidence. Including a range of viewpoints will strengthen your argument and demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the topic.

Discussing the Impact of Minimum Wage

Dedicate a section of your essay to discussing the various impacts of the minimum wage. This could include its effect on poverty, employment, small businesses, and the overall economy. Discuss both the potential benefits and drawbacks, and relate these back to your thesis statement. For instance, explore how a higher minimum wage might lead to increased consumer spending but could also result in higher operating costs for small businesses.

Concluding Thoughts

Conclude your essay by summarizing the main points of your argument and restating your thesis in light of the evidence and discussion provided. Your conclusion should bring together your analysis and offer a final perspective on the topic. This is also an opportunity to highlight any areas where further research is needed or to suggest potential policy implications based on your findings.

Final Review and Editing

After completing your essay, it's essential to review and edit your work. Ensure that your arguments are clearly articulated and supported by evidence. Check for grammatical accuracy and ensure that your essay flows logically from one point to the next. Consider seeking feedback from peers or instructors to refine your essay further. A well-crafted essay will effectively convey your insights on the minimum wage and demonstrate your ability to engage with complex economic and social issues.

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Should minimum wages be increased?

The higher rates of inflation that have prevailed over the last two years have decreased the purchasing power of the ordinary workers.  It is only to be expected that there will be requests from the labor groups that the current minimum wages be increased. In fact, there are indeed proposals to have a P150 daily across-the-board increase in the salary rates of employees and workers in the private sector What are the pros and cons of increasing minimum wages at this time when unemployment and underemployment rates are still high?

The Secretary of Finance, Benjamin Diokno, has already cautioned against the increase of minimum wages, especially at this time when the economy is just recovering from the ravages wrought by the pandemic and the increase in commodities prices (especially food and oil) because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.  Citing data from the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), said that raising the minimum wage by P150 (as suggested by some Senators) would increase inflation by 1.4 percentage points.  If inflation is estimated at about 5.5 % for 2023, the proposed wage hike could drive it up to 6.9  %.  A related information comes from a 2019 study of PIDS that found that the 10% increase in minimum wage in 2018 led to a 1.5% increase in consumer prices in Metro Manila.  Thus, a P150 increase in minimum wage (i.e. 42.3% increase from the current level) could result in a 6.35 % increase in consumer prices.  The ones who would suffer most from such an acceleration in the inflation rate will be the very workers whom the increase in minimum wage was intended to benefit.  Even worse, an increase in minimum wages will discourage employers to hire more workers, harming the millions of workers who are either unemployed or underemployed.

There are ample evidences from previous studies of NEDA, the Central Bank, the World Bank and private think tanks that increased labor costs tend to have more negative impacts on the ordinary workers than benefits.  These have been summarized by a leading agribusiness enterprise in the middle a highly rural area in Palawan. I am referring to Lionheart Farms located in Rizal, Palawan that has recently caught much public attention (including that of President Marcos Jr.) for very innovative practices of employing small farmers, including indigenous natives, in more productive means of cultivating coconuts through the nucleus estate system popularized by the Malaysians in palm oil.  I am referring to Lionheart Farms that is employing more than 3,000 full time workers while at the same time paying rentals to  small farmers who lease their lands to the corporation.

This highly innovative  approach to improving the productivity of our more than 3 million hectares of coconut farms would be among those highly prejudiced by the proposed increase in minimum  wages. Instead of hiring workers from the small farming communities, these corporations would increasingly mechanize and especially robotize  their operations. This brings to my mind the largest vineyard in the world  located in Southern Spain owned by the Megaworld group operated only by seven people!

No wonder the management of Lionheart Farms were quick to send a position paper to Senator Miguel Zubiri and the Secretary of the Department of Labor and Employment outlining the negative impact of the proposed hike in minimum wages on its operations.  Let me quote the opening paragraph of the fact sheet presented by Lionheart Farms:  “As an agricultural company based on Palawan, we fervently seek your consideration to defer the imposition of the across-the-board wage increase in the Philippines for agricultural workers.  We believe that such a proposal is detrimental to the ongoing formalization of the majority of workers in the agricultural sector in the country, which already has a high incidence of informal employment.  With this initiative, poverty incidence might not necessarily be addressed, but rather bring the agricultural businesses that comply with legal minimum wages face highly challenging conditions, which negatively impact industry competitiveness and labor productivity.”

I know that there are serious plans to replicate the Lionheart Farms model in five other coconut regions in the country and upscale the operations from the 3,000 or so hectares of Lionheart Farms to as much as 20,000 hectares in each region.  It would be a pity if because of this proposed hike in minimum wages this very worthwhile plan to address mass poverty in the coconut areas will be nipped in the bud because the proposed agribusiness ventures would  be made highly unprofitable with such high minimum wages.  It would be enlightening to list here all the arguments used in the Fact Sheet of Lionheart Farms against the proposed wage hike.

Based on the available research, the following are the general negative effects of across-the-board hikes in  minimum wages in the Philippines:

-Disproportionate impact on small businesses.  Increasing the minimum wage can be particularly challenging for small businesses, which ordinarily do not have the financial capability to absorb higher labor costs.  This can lead to reduced competitiveness, lower profits, and even closure of some small businesses.

-Higher production costs.  Increasing the minimum wage may result in  higher production costs for businesses in general, but particularly for those that are in  labor-intensive industries.  This could lead to higher prices for consumers, especially among the lower-income households.

-Reduction in employment.  Several studies suggest that increasing the minimum wage can lead to a reduction in employment, particularly for low-skilled workers, as businesses may opt to reduce their workforce to manage their labor costs.

-Decline in investment. Higher labor costs resulting from minimum wages hikes can reduce investments in the affected industries, particularly in labor-intensive sectors like agribusiness.  This reduction in investment would obviously result in a decline in job opportunities and overall decline of productivity in the sector with the reduced capital.

-Decline in smallholder farmers.  Minimum wage increases can lead to a decline in the number of small holder farmers who may not have the resources to absorb the increased labor costs.  This would be unfortunate because there is an increasing trend for urban dwellers to go into small-scale farming of high-value crops such as vegetables, fruits and livestock.  High labor costs may discourage them to pursue such entrepreneurial endeavors.

-Higher government spending.  With higher unemployment that may result in increased minimum wages, the Government will be forced to spend more on social protection programs, such as conditional cash transfer.

-Informalization of work.  Several studies have already suggested that minimum wage increases can lead to the “informalization” of work, motivating employers to hire workers under informal arrangements to avoid the higher labor costs.

A study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) found that high inflation rates resulting from increases in  minimum wages have a negative impact on food consumption in the Philippines, particularly among low-income households.  This, in turn, would hurt farmers and rural communities because of the decline in the demand for their products, further reducing their already meager incomes from the sale of farm products.  According to the Philippine Statistical Authority (PSA), the food and non-alcoholic beverages category account for the largest share of the consumer price index in the Philippines, estimated at 39.7 % as of February 2021.  This means that any increase in the prices of  prices of farm products will have a significant impact on overall inflation rates and the purchasing power of consumers.  (To be continued.)

109 Minimum Wage Essay Titles & Examples

🤫 secrets of a powerful minimum wage essay & thesis, 🏆 best minimum wage essay topics & examples, 📌 most interesting minimum wage topics to write about, 👍 good minimum wage research topics, ❓ research questions about minimum wage.

Your argument is the most crucial aspect of your minimum wage essay, whether you are taking a stance for or against raising it. Thus, you will have to cover the unemployment and poverty causes and effects, which create the borderline for people’s bare existence.

However, explaining the mechanism behind the issue is only one of the facets. You will need to pay attention to creating a remarkable minimum wage thesis statement, outline, and more. Here are all the things you need for successful essay writing:

  • Structure. Ideally, you should write your outline before you begin writing instead of during the process. It should reflect your argument and allow for the creation of a smooth transition between subtopics. Being coherent and easy to read ensures your readers interest in any topics you may mention.
  • Ideas. These may come from your previous research, thoughts, or brainstorming. The more thought you put into your argument, the more minimum wage essay ideas you may gather and present to your readers. Doing so helps you create an excellent essay that is ready to counter-argue any problem.
  • Thesis statement. One concise and on-point sentence should embody your whole paper, giving your readers a glimpse of what to expect from your work and what conclusions you hope to draw. If you are not sure of the quality of your thesis statement, then you can read sample sentences online. Continuously ask yourself whether the examples that you have found help the essay writer condense their argument.
  • Title. Grabbing your readers’ attention is possible when you have understood how to create well-written minimum wage essay titles. Without them, your essay may be overlooked and forgotten, so do not be afraid to experiment with differently worded titles so you can judge, which may have the best effect on a potential audience.
  • Conclusion . Finalizing your work and drawing coherent resolutions from it is the goal of all minimum wage essay questions. Do not reference any of the research you called upon in this paragraph, but instead make obvious the links between your used sources and final verdict. Your conclusion should be most representative of your work and leave a good impression on your audience.

Apart from these structural elements, you should also pay attention to the research aspect of your paper, integrating different credible titles into your bibliography.

This action demonstrates a comprehensive knowledge of minimum wage essay topics, as well as highlights the congruency of your thoughts with the academic community.

You may use different sources, from books and journals, from contemporary poverty speech performances to deportation laws.

You should not confine yourself to your outlined timeline and can mention modern-day implication of minimum wage, especially if it adds to your argument and does not forget your central issue.

Sticking to your argument is an essential aspect of essay writing. Asses each sentence you write and remove it if it does not suit your thesis statement. Your readers will notice all loose-ended and pointless arguments, which are irrelevant to your central theme.

Removing them will only increase the quality of your essay, allowing you to get better marks by being both coherent and comprehensive.

If doing so has dropped your work below your aspired word count, then you should review your outline and look for ways to develop your argument differently.

Do you want to write an essay that is better than merely “excellent”? Check IvyPanda’s essay samples to find out how!

  • Effects of Minimum Wage Increase The proposed increase will indeed benefit workers by raising their overall living standards by granting minimum wage employees a more appropriate pay level to contend with cost-of-living increases and the supply side of the labor […]
  • Raising Minimum Wage in the US The current economic recession that continues to impact the U.S.economy The main problem with the proposal of President Obama lies in what the article states as the possibility of companies leaving the U.S.due to the […]
  • The effects of the introduction of the National Minimum Wage on employment This paper evaluates the theoretical assumptions regarding the effects of the introduction of the National Minimum Wage within the British home care sector.
  • The Raising the Minimum Wage Article by Scott Raising the minimum wage: Good for workers, businesses, and the economy. The issue of the federal minimum wage has been long debated as it affects the economic status of the U.S.
  • Effects of an Increasing Minimum Wage A minimum wage increase is beneficial to the company in the long term but expensive in the short term. The rising minimum wage would lead to reduced research and development in purchasing machinery and software, […]
  • Definition of the Minimum Wage and Its Aspects An increase in minimum wages will lead to substitution in the market. An increase in wages will be directly proportional to the prices of commodities in the market.
  • Researching of Minimum Wage and Living Wage Like any other commodity, labor is determined by supply and demand in the market, and any artificial intervention disrupts the market balance, leading to shortages and gray employment.
  • Raising the Minimum Wage and Its Disadvantages The average leftists will try to achieve an increase in the level of salaries with the help of the minimum wage.
  • Minimum Wage: Overview and Analysis The pandemic has led to a huge deterioration of the economy, and raising the minimum wage is not something that businesses can handle.
  • Minimum Wage Legislation in Texas The key objectives for a lobbyist for the organization would be to emphasize the numerous benefits to the working class while presenting arguments that changes will not be disruptive to the economy or businesses.
  • Increasing Minimum Wage in Los Angeles As already mentioned, it may be critical to evaluate the basic needs of the population precisely and provide sufficient minimum wage. Hence it may be needed to increase the minimum wage in the state of […]
  • National Minimum Wage Analysis The minimum wage is the legally established wage for the rate fulfilled by the employee. The higher the minimum wage, the higher the taxes.
  • Minimum Wage and Government Interventions Coming to the issue of minimum wage, it is the “floor price” of labor that is determined by the federal government to guarantee fair wages to the workers.
  • Raising the Minimum Wage: Positive and Negative Aspects Increasing the minimum wage will increase the social efficiency of society, which is determined by the degree of satisfaction of its needs.
  • Minimum Wage According to Marxism Analyzing the issue from the Marxist viewpoint, it can be concluded that increases in the minimum wage are beneficial to the working class but not to capitalists.
  • Minneapolis Government Trends in Minimum Wage Increases According to the report of Associated Press, the City Council of Minneapolis has passed the ordinance to increase the minimum wages in the city to 15 dollars per hour.
  • Addison Ventures Company’s Minimum Wage vs. Ethics The main problem at Addison Ventures arises from the fact that the company is finding t quite challenging to balance between the cost of labor in terms of the minimum wage for its employees and […]
  • Minimum Wage Policy in Canada In response, according to Tipton et al, the minimum wage policy was put in place to counter the rising poverty level by ensuring that employees in Canada experienced the basic standards of compensation and employment […]
  • Increasing Minimum Wage in the US Restaurant Industry With the growing economy and the overall rise in the cost of life, it becomes evident that the minimum wage is insufficient for people to satisfy their basic needs and ensure an appropriate standard of […]
  • Minimum Wage in California and Other States This paper aims to explore the minimum wage in the state of California as well as the significance of independent minimum wages for separate states and the conditions of workers in outsourced companies.
  • Should the US Raise the Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour? While increasing the minimum wage is costly for businesses, not increasing the minimum wage is costly for the United States government.
  • The Minimum Wage in China: Lee Wang Case The point in this case is that the main purpose of labour inspection is to correct the violation of labour ethics by employers, such as a company underpaying its employees, and to defend the employees’ […]
  • Social Policy: Living on a Minimum Wage One of the primary findings is that the minimum wage is not a living wage. Another matter of concern is the fact that minimum living affects children and their prospects in life.
  • The Concept of Minimum Wage Moreover, the rise of the minimum wage boosts the economy of the whole country and increases the quality of life. So, if the minimum wage is 10% higher, and that causes the reduction of poverty […]
  • Minimum Acceptable Remuneration Regulation A comparison of the minimum wages in Australia and the US shows that adopting policies on minimum wages to reflect levels of training and incorporate economic indicators has positive effects on employment.
  • Fixing an Initial Minimum Wage The paper will also determine the reasons why the minimum wage is important to a nation and the reasons why minimum wage rate should not be constituted in a country.
  • Long Term Investment Decisions Another policy, which the government may have in the regulation of a market economy is the regulation of the amount of tax levied on products and services.
  • Minimum Wage in Saudi Arabia and Other Countries In this respect, the fair wage expands the concepts of the living wage and minimum wage to include the conditions of work.
  • Minimum Wage: Pros and Cons, Effects of Increase Labor union laws and minimum wage laws have contributed a lot to the current trend of structural unemployment in the United States of America.
  • Minimum Wages in Different American States These criticizers continue to epic that the minimum wage tends to reduce the demand expected of workers where they argue that this is greatly caused by the reduction in the number of the jobs and […]
  • Minimum Wage Effectiveness However, the minimum wage can be a good stimulus for young people to continue their study instead of joining the “labor market”, and this is very good for the development of society since it leads […]
  • Minimum Wage Issue: Political Regulation Governments usually impose minimum wage to reduce poverty; indeed, increase in the minimum wage is also said to increase motivation of the workers and hence lead to more productivity. Increase in the minimum wage does […]
  • The Minimum Wage in the US: Situation Overview Other people argue that increasing the minimum wage would lead to increase in commodity prices by the employers to cover for the increased costs thereby beating the reason for the increase.
  • Issues that affect low wage earners Low earner hardly afford good housing; they live in houses that do not meet the standards of an adequate housing systems, the reason why they opt for such houses is because they have limited funds […]
  • The Pros of Raising the Canadian Minimum Wage In turn, the increase in the prices of goods and services will result to the decrease in the company’s profits. The rise in the minimum wage will cause the retrenched employees to join the ranks […]
  • The Positive Effects of Minimum Wage on the Economy
  • The Political Economy of the National Minimum Wage Institution
  • Why the Minimum Wage Matters in the U.S. Industry Economy
  • Why The Age Requirement Can Start Working For Minimum Wage Jobs
  • When Is A Good Time To Raise The Minimum Wage
  • Union Power, Minimum Wage Legislation, Endogenous Labor Supplies and Production
  • Work-Related Training and the New National Minimum Wage in Britain
  • Welfare Effects of Minimum Wage and Other Government Policies
  • What Is Minimum Wage Is Not Ideal And Struggles
  • Why the Minimum Wage Orthodoxy Reigns Supreme
  • Wage Distribution And Earnings Inequality Impacts Of The Minimum Wage
  • The Positive And Negative Effects Of Raising Minimum Wage
  • The Social Issue of the Minimum Wage and the Need to Raise the Current Minimum Wage in America
  • Using the EITC to Help Poor Families: New Evidence and a Comparison with the Minimum Wage
  • United Kingdom: Developing a Progressive Minimum Wage in a Liberal Market Economy
  • Unemployment Benefit, Minimum Wage And Average Salary Earnings In Romania
  • Why The Minimum Wage Shouldn’t Be Raised
  • The Short-Run Effects of the Minimum Wage on Employment and Labor Market Participation: Evidence from an Individual-Level Panel
  • The National Minimum Wage and Hours of Work: Implications for Low Paid Women
  • The Negative Impact of Raising the Minimum Wage
  • The Positive Impacts of Raising the Minimum Wage on the Economy, the Health of the Citizens, and Their Quality of Life
  • The Optimum Minimum Wage When Labor Services are Taxed
  • Wage Inequality And Raise The Minimum Wage
  • Thinking about Minimum Wage Increases in Alberta: Theoretically, Empirically, and Regionally
  • Welfare Benefits, Minimum Wage Rate and the Duration of Welfare Spells: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Canada
  • The Productivity‐Enhancing Impacts of the Minimum Wage: Lessons from Denmark and New Zealand
  • Why Has the British National Minimum Wage Had Little or No Impact on Employment
  • Why Minimum Wage Jobs Pay Their Employees Unfairly
  • Wage Rigidity, Collective Bargaining and the Minimum Wage: Evidence from French Agreement Data
  • The Rate Of Substitution Between Low Pay Workers and The National Minimum Wage
  • The Pros and Cons of Raising the Minimum Wage of Workers
  • The Struggle to Fight the Minimum Wage in America in Nickel and Dimed, a Book by Barbara Ehrenreich
  • Wage Dispersion and the Minimum Wage Spike in a Search Economy With Wage-Posting
  • The Role of Risk Preference in Immigration and Minimum Wage Policies
  • Which Age Should Be The Minimum Wage For Drinking
  • The Truth Behind the Minimum Wage in America in Nickel and Dimed, a Novel by Barbara Ehrenreich
  • Using Local Labor Market Data to Re-Examine the Employment Effects of the Minimum Wage
  • The Wage and Employment Dynamics of Minimum Wage Workers
  • What Should Be Done About The Minimum Wage
  • Understanding Wage Theft: Evasion and Avoidance Responses to Minimum Wage Increases
  • The Negative Effects of Raising the Minimum Wage
  • The Potential Impact of the Minimum Wage in Rural Areas
  • Working Conditions At Minimum Wage Jobs
  • The Unexpected Long-Run Impact of the Minimum Wage: An Educational Cascade
  • Did the German Minimum Wage Reform Influence Employment Growth in 2015?
  • Are Wage and Employment Effects Robust to Alternative Minimum Wage Variables?
  • Does the Minimum Wage Bite Into Fast-Food Prices?
  • Does the Minimum Wage Cause Inefficient Rationing?
  • Are There Long-Run Effects of the Minimum Wage?
  • Does Raising the Minimum Wage Help the Poor?
  • How Much Would Increasing the Minimum Wage Affect Food Prices?
  • Does the German Minimum Wage Help Low Income Households?
  • How Raising Minimum Wage Will Hurt the Economy?
  • What Are Three Effects of Raising the Federal Minimum Wage?
  • Did the National Minimum Wage Affect UK Prices?
  • Why Does the Minimum Wage Exist?
  • Does the Minimum Wage Affect Employment?
  • Should the Minimum Wage Be Abolished?
  • How Does the Minimum Wage Affect Employment via On-The-Job Search Intensity?
  • Does Increasing Minimum Wage Decrease Poverty?
  • How Has Minimum Wage Influenced the United States?
  • Can the Minimum Wage Force the Hand of Small Businesses?
  • How Does the Minimum Wage Affect Firm Investments in Fixed and Human Capital?
  • Can the Minimum Wage Reduce Poverty?
  • Does Minimum Wage Affect Workplace Safety?
  • Has the National Minimum Wage Reduced UK Wage Inequality?
  • Did the Minimum Wage Affect the Incidence of Second Job Holding in Britain?
  • Did Minimum Wage Increases Reduce Employment?
  • How Is the Minimum Wage Debate Viewed Through a Marxist?
  • How Does the Minimum Wage Affect the Employment Statuses of Youths?
  • Does the Minimum Wage Affect Welfare Caseloads?
  • Should Raising Minimum Wage Have Stronger Job Growth?
  • How Many Americans Are Working for Minimum Wage and Living in Poverty?
  • Does Increasing the Minimum Wage Reduce Poverty in Developing Countries?
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This policy note presents the results of a study that explores the effects of labor policies on the industry. In particular, it examines the minimum wage policy by disentangling and controlling various factors that may confound the effects of minimum wages on employment. Using various econometric methods, the study finds that the minimum wage policy reduces employment in small firms. It causes small firms to reduce their production workers. The negative impact of minimum wages emanates from scale effects. Because of greater marginal costs, it is difficult for small firms to mature into larger-scale firms. In the process, the production and the demand for production workers decline. With the decline of small-scale firms, larger firms are able to acquire more production workers, presumably at starting wages lower than what experienced workers would have received in smaller firms. These firms are not able to rehire all the laid-off workers, and the poorer workers who may need cash in the short term may find these arrangements inferior to their previous jobs. Furthermore, because of the minimum wages, firms are reluctant to hire younger, less educated, and female production workers. To minimize costs, increasing training for these younger and less educated production workers may no longer be an option as minimum wages rise. These findings may have serious consequences in the way the Labor Code affects production efficiency, as well as social protection. There is thus a need to coordinate these policy areas in a way that reinforces one another.

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Home — Essay Samples — Economics — Minimum Wage — Impact of Minimum Wage Policies

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Impact of Minimum Wage Policies

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Published: Jan 30, 2024

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Economic growth, employment rates, income inequality.

  • Economic Policy Institute. (2019). Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2024 would life pay for nearly 40 million workers. Economic Policy Institute. https://www.epi.org/publication/ib447-raising-federal-minimum-wage-to-15/
  • Congressional Budget Office. (2019). The effects on employment and family income of increasing the federal minimum wage. Congressional Budget Office. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55410
  • National Employment Law Project. (2019). $15 by 2024 will lift wages for 41 million workers. National Employment Law Project. https://www.nelp.org/publication/15-by-2024-will-lift-wages-for-41-million/

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To Fight Poverty, Raise the Minimum Wage? Or Abolish It?

The minimum wage has stagnated at $7.25 an hour for more than a decade. is increasing it to $15 the best way to fight poverty.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today on The Argument, what’s the downside to paying people more? [MUSIC PLAYING] Among the most popular and blunt tools to fight poverty is a minimum wage, but it doesn’t actually do that. Because if you have a full-time job that pays the federal minimum wage of $7.25, you’re only making about $15,000 a year, not enough to rent a one-bedroom apartment in 95% of counties in the United States. Raising the federal minimum to $15 an hour is something progressives have been fighting for for years. They came close this month, but an amendment to raise the minimum wage was ultimately removed from Biden’s COVID relief bill. Is raising the minimum wage or having one at all the right way to battle poverty? I’m Jane Coaston, and I think it’s past time to raise the minimum wage. It’s not a way station for 16-year-olds. For millions of Americans, including parents with small children, it’s how they make ends meet. More people across the political spectrum are beginning to support a higher minimum wage, but it does have opposition. So I’ve invited two guests who are on different sides of the debate. Saru Jayaraman is the president of One Fair Wage and director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California Berkeley. Jeff Miron is the head of undergraduate and graduate economic studies at Harvard and head of economics at the Cato Institute. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Hi, Saru. Thanks so much for joining.

Thank you so much for having me.

And hey, Jeff, thanks so much for being here.

My pleasure. Thank you.

Here’s what I want to get out of this conversation. I want to have this conversation in two pieces. First, I want to talk specifically about the $15 minimum wage, hear both of your positions, and then get into what the arguments for and against a wage hike are. And then I want to zoom out and talk about raising the minimum wage as part of an overall suite of policies aimed at lifting people out of poverty. We’re going to go over some other options and talk about what’s actually being considered and what’s actually possible. So Saru, what’s your position on the $15 minimum wage?

So I think it’s important to understand the full scope of what’s being proposed. The Raise the Wage Act not only would raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour over several years, but it would also eliminate the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers, which is literally a legacy of slavery, the sub-minimum wage for workers with disabilities, which is a direct reflection of the valuation of people with disabilities, and youth. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 for all workers and $2.13 an hour for tipped workers, and it is cents — literally less than $1 — for workers with disabilities. Our position is, of course, that that is not just low, it actually creates severe poverty, economic instability. It has created just horrific suffering during the pandemic. With — in the case of the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers, it’s also been a source of horrific sexual harassment because you have a largely female workforce living off of tips as a portion of their base wage, and that $15 is actually the minimum that’s necessary to live, particularly given that this workforce of minimum wage workers are adults. Median age is in the 30s. They have children, and they are struggling to survive, often working multiple jobs on these poverty wages. So we strongly support phasing in the raise of the minimum wage over time.

Jeff, where do you stand on this issue?

So I’m opposed to raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. I’m, in fact, opposed to government mandating any minimum wage at all.

You wrote in 2014 that the right minimum wage is not $10.10 or $7.25. It’s zero. Why?

For a bunch of reasons. First of all, the minimum wage is trying, mainly, to tackle an issue of people having low income. But it does not address, the people with the lowest income, namely, people who don’t have jobs in the first place. It’s raising the wage of people who are already employed who may have low or very low income, but they’re not the poorest members of society. In my view, government anti-poverty efforts should be focused exactly on the people who are the worst off. Minimum wage is very poorly targeted for doing that because it starts off by only affecting people who are employed who have jobs. Secondly, it’s going to, in some instances, have a very perverse effect if you’re trying to raise the wages, even if we accept that it’s focused on a group of people that have jobs. It’s going to cause employers to lay off some people or hire fewer people or work more unpleasant hours or cut other benefits or do various things that are going to make those jobs bad for some of the people that you’re trying to help, OK? In the case where it causes employers to hire fewer people, some people go from having a low wage to having a zero wage. That seems a very crude way of trying to alleviate poverty, even if the minimum wage has only a modest effect in reducing employment. There’s a huge, long controversy in economics about that. The bulk of the evidence does suggest there is a negative effect on employment, especially if you were to double the minimum wage, as is being proposed currently. But it may have other negative effects, such as raising the prices of the goods and services that these employers provide. That also is a regressive step, not a progressive step.

I’m just going to cut you off there because I really want to put this to Saru. Last month, the Congressional Budget Office put out a report on the impact of a $15 minimum wage, and it showed that a gradual increase to a $15 minimum wage could add $54 billion to the deficit, if you’re worried about that kind of thing. I know deficit spending — we don’t talk about that anymore. It’s not a thing. I don’t even know who she is. But it could also eliminate 1.4 million jobs because, as Jeff said, that could be added prices for food. That could be added prices in a lot of spaces that low-income people and all-income people might need. What’s your response to that?

You know, the press reported on that Congressional Budget Office report in a way that, I think, caused most people not to actually read the report. The actual CBO report, what it said is that we don’t know what the impact on jobs could be. The impact on jobs could actually be anywhere from 0 to close to 3 million jobs. We have no idea. And that 1.4 million number was an intermediate between zero and close to three. In fact, we looked at the seven states that require what we call one fair wage, a full minimum wage with tips on top, including California, which has passed a $15 minimum wage and full elimination of the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. Those seven states — and by the way, they’re not all blue states. If you look at those states that have raised the minimum wage, those seven states, in particular for the restaurant industry — we looked at from 2011 to 2016 — we saw that those states actually had higher job growth rates in the restaurant industry. They all actually have the same or higher growth rates in the restaurant industry, in terms of jobs, as the rest of the country. And so it just hasn’t borne out in the seven states that got rid of the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. It just hasn’t borne out in the evidence. In fact, the states with the highest wages have had the highest job growth rates in the restaurant industry. So what do they do when they get a minimum wage increase? They spend it, the economy is boosted, and more jobs are created. I also want to speak to the menu price issue because we’ve also studied this a lot. Actually, we’ve compared restaurants — the same restaurants, chains — in California compared to all other states, and the menu prices are exactly the same. These are publicly-traded companies. They wouldn’t undercut themselves. They wouldn’t grow in a state like California if they weren’t profitable.

Jeff, what do you think? Because I think that issue of, if you pay people more money, they have more money, they spend more money, that makes sense to me.

My best answer is that money came from some place. But let me also take a step further back, which is if you tell employers they have to pay a higher wage for some of their employees, what are the things that could happen? They could say, OK, that’s fine. I’ll just make less profits, OK? Or they could say, I’m going to reduce that kind of employment and substitute with higher-skilled people. I could substitute machinery for some of the less-skilled labor that I was paying this lower minimum wage at. They could raise their prices. It’s unlikely that they’re just going to do nothing and absorb that profit loss. They’re going to respond in some way, shape, or form, and all of those things make those markets less efficient, OK? It means that you’re distorting the decisions about whether to use, in producing a particular good or service, low-skilled labor or to substitute with a machine. Somebody is paying for it. It’s either reduced profits — OK, but then the business owners are going to respond in ways which try to recoup that, many of which are going to make those workers worse off, or at least undo some of the benefit they got from the higher wages, such as by adjusting their hours in ways that workers don’t like, cutting benefits, and all those sorts of things. So we can’t just give people more money without saying where we’re taking it from and then what the cost of that is and what the effects of that are going to be.

I’m thinking about not necessarily minimum wage jobs, but we’ve all heard of or even had jobs where in exchange for getting paid more, there is an expectation that, like, yes, you make more money, but you’re supposed to work far more hours. The expectations change. If that’s true for jobs I’ve had, this sounds like it would also be true for minimum wage positions. Wouldn’t, as Jeff said, companies just find another way to exploit workers? If they’re paying them more, they could hire fewer people or force them to do different and worse labor.

Now, I would totally agree with Jeff that, yes, this does come from somewhere. This is why I fundamentally cannot agree with the idea that there can’t be a minimum wage. Because employers, corporations, businesses need to pay their fair share of the cost and the value of the labor that they’re profiting from. That is a concept that we, as a country, decided on when we ended slavery in the United States of America. We decided, as a country, morally, that we believe employers should pay for the value of the labor that they are profiting from. Now, in the restaurant industry in particular, at emancipation, the restaurant lobby did not want to pay for the value of their labor, and so they mutated tipping from being an extra or bonus on top of the wage to becoming a replacement for wages, which by the way, before emancipation, waiters were paid a full wage. So the whole idea of employers paying for their labor is something that we, as a nation, have accepted. Now, what happens when the minimum wage goes up in the restaurant industry in California or in the states that have raised wages? They don’t necessarily just reduce jobs. That hasn’t been borne out in the data. They do actually figure out, to your point, Jeff, greater efficiencies. They figure out that when you pay people more, actually, they don’t leave you. They stay. We did a study with Cornell where we interviewed 1,100 restaurant managers, and they told us that when you raise wages, you cut the cost of employee turnover because, guess what? When you pay people more, they don’t have to keep moving and looking for different jobs. They stay with you. That’s less turnover, which costs in terms of the cost of recruitment and hiring and morale and training new people. So it actually pays off to pay people well, and that is part of the overall cost of doing business.

OK, I have to object really strongly to the notion that imposing this minimum wage is going to make businesses more efficient by reducing turnover or encouraging them to substitute capital in an efficient way. If those things were efficient, if they were profitable, the employers would have done them already. If you can reduce turnover by paying a little bit higher wage, then of course, employers will do that. And many employers do do that, precisely for the reasons you explained, but not when they’re forced to do it by the higher minimum wage. Take the example of substituting machinery for a lower-skilled employee. There’s a cost to the machinery. There’s a cost of the employees, of the wages. You make the calculation of which one is more profitable, and you do the one that makes sense. If it made sense to substitute capital, you would have done it already. OK, so I don’t think that argument is the least bit convincing, and it just doesn’t make logical sense that there’s all this profit opportunity that these big public corporations, whose sole objective in life is basically to make profits, that they’re leaving all this money on the table by not paying a wage which would get them to a more profitable outcome.

But isn’t there an argument that part of making more money is the public appearance of being a good corporate citizen? We’ve had a lot of conversations recently about big corporations attempting to position themselves on specific political issues. I’m thinking of Apple getting involved with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act about five or six years ago. Isn’t an element where, yes, there is kind of the brute capitalism, we need to make as much money as possible, but also, it can be a good business maneuver to advertise yourself as having a good corporate culture by having higher wages?

But then again, you don’t need the government to make businesses do it. If it’s good for business to do something which looks socially responsible, whether it has to do with global warming or the wages you pay or the benefits you pay, then businesses will do it on their own because the way you describe it, it’s in the interests of the business. The net effect on profits after taking account of the somewhat higher costs for wages, but having better PR, having more people like your company, et cetera, they’ll take that into account, and they’ll do it on their own.

But I do want to put that question to Saru because I live in DC, where we have a $15 minimum wage. Florida, as you mentioned, has passed one that will go into effect by 2026. New York and Seattle both have a $15 minimum wage. So if you have private businesses that are saying, it’s a good idea for us to look good on this particular front by having a higher minimum wage, if you have cities and states that are making these decisions, why do we need the federal government to set a higher minimum wage for all?

So the truth is that we’re talking about giving people a very basic floor that would allow them to survive, allow them to get off of public assistance, allow them to feed their families when they work full time or more than full time. Look, here’s the problem with the argument Jeff is making of let’s just leave it entirely to the market, let’s have no minimum wage at all. If it were, efficient companies would do it. Well, guess what? There are lots of things companies do that are inefficient, that are based on their biases, their desires, their opinions. Racism and racial discrimination is not actually market efficient. So it is not entirely always efficiency that drives employer choices. And to the point of publicly-traded companies and if it were so great to pay people more, why wouldn’t they do it? I’ll tell you why. It’s because publicly-traded companies look at quarterly returns. And so there are a ton of efficiencies that arise from paying the minimum wage. The problem is that the publicly-traded corporations aren’t able to see it because they are so focused on short-term gains. So the problem with not having a federal minimum wage is that you leave the states with the highest populations of people of color at the lowest wages, and that exacerbates racial inequity in our country.

I want to focus on one thing that Saru said, which is that I’m arguing for leaving everything to the market. I haven’t said this yet, but I want to make clear that the argument against the minimum wage is not an argument against the social safety net. It’s an argument that the minimum wage is a terrible way of trying to have a social safety net. The libertarian view, my view, is that if you want to make poor people less poor, you should give them money via mechanisms like food stamps, housing assistance, universal basic income because those provide people with income without distorting private markets and without having the ancillary negative consequences that the minimum wage has. So they’re separate questions. One question is whether to help people who are not in a good financial position. The other question is how. My position is that the minimum wage is a terrible way in which to do it because it has all these ancillary side effects and because it doesn’t very successfully target the poorest people, whereas a universal basic income does explicitly target the very poorest people.

I do just have to address what Jeff said about leaving it to the market. You’re not saying leave it entirely to the market, but you are saying leave wages to the market, which means —

Yes, I am saying that.

— an employer could pay — meaning an employer could pay zero if they want to.

No, because people wouldn’t work for zero.

Well, people are working for zero right now, Jeff —

If employers have all this power, why don’t they set a zero wage?

Can I finish my point, please?

I apologize.

So actually, there are restaurant owners right now requiring workers to live off of tips. It’s illegal. Workers often don’t complain because they are scared to. They face retaliation. They are very vulnerable. They are women. They are people of color. And during the pandemic, these workers who receive zero dollars an hour could not get a dime of unemployment insurance because they were forced to live off of tips. And here’s the basic problem with having it rely entirely on government programs, social safety nets — some really big problems with that. One, workers want to be able to work and feed their families with their earnings. These workers, as well, want the dignity of being able to work in their profession — and these are professions — and not have to rely on government assistance, which is heavily stigmatized, difficult to access. And they want that dignity of being able to be paid. So you, Jeff, are asking taxpayers to cover these people’s livelihoods. But what I’m saying is that employers have to pay their fair share. They have to cover the value of their labor, of the people who are doing the work that brings them profit. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Hi, Jane. This is Reggie from Brooklyn. And the thing I’ve been arguing about with my friends and employer is whether we should use nuclear power to reach our climate goals. I think nuclear energy is the cleanest, most reliable way to bridge the gap between where we are now and our hopefully zero-carbon future in the time we have left.

What are you arguing about with your family, your friends, your frenemies? Tell me about the big debate you’re having in a voicemail by calling 347-915-4324, and we might play an excerpt of it on a future episode. So Jeff, you’ve said something that really interested me earlier, as a libertarian, is that you talked about the social safety net and the idea that we don’t need to raise the minimum wage. What we do need are better ways to support the poor that aren’t that, so talking about improving welfare programs. But you’ve mentioned two ideas in other work that you’ve done, the negative income tax and expansion of the earned-income tax credit. Now, I think for many people, they may have heard of the earned-income tax credit, but can you explain what the negative income tax would look like?

So a negative income tax, which is, in all important ways, the same as a universal basic income, says that everybody is guaranteed a certain amount of income per quarter or per year, some basis like that. And then they face some tax rate on all income earned. The simplest way to describe it, which doesn’t feel right to many people, is to say we send a check for $5,000 to every single person, including Bill Gates and, you know, Warren Buffett, but we then impose taxes. So if you have no income of your own, you receive that $5,000 per year, and that’s your total net income. If you earn $10,000 and there’s a 30% tax rate, you would get the $5,000 directly from the government plus the $10,000 you’ve earned, minus the $3,000 you would owe in taxes. You never owe any taxes on the universal basic income, on the negative income tax. So the idea is we put a floor on the amount of income that every single person has. And it gradually, as you earn income that didn’t come from the government, you pay taxes on that. But nobody will ever have any income below that floor that the government creates.

So what you’re saying here is that employers who make big profits, whether that’s a Walmart or McDonald’s or even a, like, company that’s doing really well in Washington DC, like a brewery, like the one that is being loud near my apartment, they do not have the responsibility to redistribute money. But the government — the federal government — through this program could redistribute money. They could send out checks for $5,000 to every American. Why do employers not have that responsibility but the government does? That seems — I’m confused.

It’s basically a practical answer that if the government does it in roughly the way I described, it’s consistent. It applies to everyone. It happens sort of year after year after year because it’s a government policy that’s in place and it continues, unless Congress changes its mind. But trying to get private employers to do it ends up mainly enriching private employers or some sectors relative to others. The housing industry gets richer than it would otherwise be because the government is subsidizing the building of housing projects. Certain farmers get richer than they would otherwise be because the government subsidizes food stamps. The transferring income to people approach doesn’t create any special favors for this industry versus that. It doesn’t allow you to go to Washington and lobby them to produce the — more of the goods and services that your industry produces because that’s allegedly helping poor people. It avoids all the inefficiencies created by having a centrally planned — central planner dictate what’s produced and how firms behave. If I could go back to one thing that Saru said, she said several times, we agreed, when we ended slavery, that we owe everyone a fair wage.

I don’t remember — or something like that.

We agreed that employers need to pay for the value of their labor, that they don’t get to —

When did we agree that?

That’s not in the Constitution. That’s not in a federal law.

Because we said —

Who agreed to that?

Because we said that employers should not be able to use free labor. That is what slavery was.

No, they should not be able to coerce free labor.

We agreed, as a country —

Outlawing slavery is not saying that someone can’t offer you a teeny wage and you agree to accept it. It’s saying that you can’t, using physical force, make people work for you for nothing.

And I would argue that because of the forced options that most people in this country on the minimum wage have, they are forced into very low-wage jobs, that their life situations have forced them into low-wage jobs that don’t give them the opportunities. When you’re working two and three jobs, you don’t actually have the time to go to college and get a degree and move up the ladder. So let me just say, one thing you said, Jeffrey, is just plain wrong. The idea that food stamps have not actually created inefficiencies and have not bred an industry or a sector that has profited off of food stamps is just plain wrong. The data shows that, actually, Walmart has profited quite a bit from food stamps. They —

That’s exactly my point.

OK, yeah, so —

I completely agree. That’s what I was saying. I totally agree with it.

Yeah, so Saru, like, the idea would be that you would have something that look kind of like Alaska’s Permanent Fund, which sends everyone in Alaska a check, or a dividend of some sort, which is that if you sent everyone in America a $5,000 check — everyone, every single person — and had that instead of food stamps, which as Jeff said, he argues have massive inefficiencies, you could wipe — use that instead of those programs. I’m interested to see your thoughts on that.

Yeah, my point is that we know, from situations like that, inefficiencies still will occur, even when people are given those checks. Because again, people at the lower end of the income spectrum have to spend those checks to survive on things like rent, which goes to developers, and food, which goes to grocery stores. There still will be inefficiencies. But here’s the bottom line. Employers — by doing that, by just providing everybody with $5,000, you completely remove any responsibility from employers to actually pay for, again, the people that are allowing them to create profit. The people who work for them generate the actual profit. And so employers should have the responsibility, rather than just taxpayers —

So I am saying that the employer should not bear this responsibility. I think it ends up being an incredibly inefficient way to try to accomplish the goal. I completely accept that some people have been forced by the conditions of the market and their luck and misfortunes of whatever their circumstances are to have very few opportunities, and I accept that there are people who have terrible circumstances. But I think the best way to do it is not by trying to make the employers responsible for it but letting their employers be responsible for maximizing efficiency and producing the most. First, that gives you the biggest economic pie available to redistribute to the people who deserve it, and they are not completely absolved because they pay taxes.

Not anymore.

No matter what the structure of the business taxes, they are ultimately paid by people, and the people are paying taxes that supports the transfers to those people who are deemed deserving by society’s judgments.

Saru, I noticed that you laughed a little bit when he talked about big corporations paying taxes. But I want to get at something. We appear to agree that there are, in our current system, a lot of inefficiencies that are bad. And we’re in a situation, and it is a situation, Jeff, as a libertarian, in which you are often in, which is that no one agrees with us and no one listens to us. No Republicans support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, so what are some other alternatives that could get us closer to poverty mitigation that could work with what we currently have in Congress, where we’re dealing with Democrats who are saying, we are supportive of raising the minimum wage, but the Republicans who are in Congress are not the people who are interested in thinking about poverty mitigation the same way we’re — you know, they’re not talking about a UBI. They are talking about tax cuts. When you’re thinking about either making the case for raising the minimum wage to Republicans or thinking about other ideas for poverty mitigation, where do you go?

So one thing that, actually, we have been able to agree with on — with some libertarians and Republicans is that we do need to reduce people’s dependence on public assistance, actually. And it is shown that raising the minimum wage reduces people’s dependence on food stamps, on other forms of public assistance. So raising the minimum wage reduces the burden on the taxpayer, on the government by allowing employers to pay their fair share and then reducing people’s dependence on public assistance. That is one area that we have in common with some Republicans.

Let me say a few things. First, I don’t want to leave the impression that libertarians advocate adding a universal basic income on top of the current social safety net. Libertarians think that if we could replace the existing social safety net with the universal income, that is plausibly an improvement. But many libertarians would still have severe qualms about the existing generosity of the current social safety net. They would say there might be — maybe there’s a role for some. It probably shouldn’t be federal. It should be left to states. It should probably be less generous — just so I don’t mislead. But on your question of what other things can be done to help people who are poor, libertarians have a few things that they emphasize quite a bit, which is repeal of regressive regulation. Lots of regulations are especially bad for poor people. This includes land-use regulation, which makes it hard for people to afford housing because you restrict the density of buildings, the heights of buildings, building more in inner cities. That forces people with lower incomes to live farther away, to have longer commutes, to have less access to jobs, to stores, and so on. Similar issues with occupational licensing, has effects of two kinds. One, it keeps relatively poor people from entering certain professions because they have to spend money or spend time getting degrees in order to practice those occupations. At the same time, those licensing restrictions raise the cost of the goods in those occupations of the — being produced by those occupations. And that, of course, has a bigger negative effect on people who are poor. And there are lots of other examples. Childcare regulation is another good one. There’s tons of regulation of childcare. Whom does that harm especially? Poor mothers, OK, who can’t easily afford daycare and be able to hold jobs because of the regulation, which raises costs so much.

Saru, I’m going to guess that you probably don’t think that these ideas should replace the fight for the $15 minimum wage and my efforts to join us all on one side of the argument. Eh, a little quixotic. But what’s your what’s your last point on this particular issue? Because I think that I agree with Jeff, the occupational licensing issue is particularly interesting because of how, in my own personal experience, it hinders African-American business owners. For instance, you can get into a very weird place with the licenses you need to do African hair braiding. But what is it about the $15 minimum wage that makes it your central issue and the central issue for this conversation?

The current debate is how much should the minimum wage be and should it apply equally to everybody in this country. And so therefore, 32 million Americans would get a raise from a $15 minimum wage. And by eliminating sub-minimum wages, we reduce racial inequity, legacies of slavery, and severe gender discrimination and harassment.

I just want to thank both of you so much for joining me. Saru Jayaraman is the president of One Fair Wage, a group that advocates for raising wages and working conditions for restaurant service workers. She’s also director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California Berkeley. Thank you so much for joining me.

Jeff Miron is a senior lecturer at Harvard and director of economic studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington DC. Thank you for joining me, Jeff.

My pleasure. Thank you for having me. [MUSIC PLAYING]

If you want to learn more about the minimum wage, I recommend reading the full report from the Congressional Budget Office published in February about what Biden’s bill to raise the minimum wage $15 an hour would actually mean for jobs and the economy. And for the policy wonks — I know who you are — I also recommend the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ February report on the characteristics of minimum wage workers. You can find links to both of these reports in our episode notes. Finally, some of you called in with your own stories about student loan debt after last week’s episode.

Hi, my name is Kendra. I’m an African-American woman who graduated from George Washington University in 1997. My experience has been chronic oppression due to student loan debt accompanied by low to no income over several years. There should be complete forgiveness for those who have suffered such a burden. I’m Janelle from Vermont, and I have over $50,000 of student loans. There’s nothing I can do but continue to pay and hope that when I die, the remaining debt doesn’t carry on to my children.

The Argument is a production of New York Times Opinion. It’s produced by Phoebe Lett, Elisa Guttierez, and Vishakha Darbha, edited by Alison Bruzek and Paula Szuchman with original music and sound design by Isaac Jones and fact-checking by Michele Harris. [MUSIC PLAYING]

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The federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour hasn’t changed since 2009. Workers in 21 states make the federal floor, which can be even lower for people who make tips. And at $7.25 an hour, a person working full time with a dependent is making below the federal poverty line.

[You can listen to this episode of “The Argument” on Apple , Spotify , Google or wherever you get your podcasts .]

States such as California, Florida, Illinois and Massachusetts have approved gradual minimum wage increases to reach $15 an hour — so is it time to do it at the federal level?

On Wednesday 20 senators from both parties are set to meet to discuss whether to use their influence on minimum wage legislation.

Economists have argued for years about the consequences of the hike, saying employers who bear the costs would be forced to lay off some of the very employees the minimum wage was intended to support. A report by the Congressional Budget Office on a proposal to see $15 by 2025 estimates the increase would move 900,000 people out of poverty — and at the same time cut 1.4 million jobs.

[ Instagram Live : Watch host Jane Coaston and Kara Swisher discuss whether we need to raise the minimum wage .]

On today’s episode, we debate the fight for $15 with two people who see things very differently. Saru Jayaraman is the president of One Fair Wage and the director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Jeffrey Miron is a senior lecturer in the department of economics at Harvard University and the director of economic studies at the Cato Institute.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Congressional Budget Office’s February 2021 report on the budgetary effects of the Raise the Wage Act of 2021.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ April 2020 report “Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers.”

(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)

argumentative essay about raising the minimum wage in the philippines

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The quest for a just wage

After the Senate approved on second reading last week a bill seeking to raise the daily minimum wage of private sector workers by P100, employers immediately warned of a “catastrophe,” claiming this will cause prices of goods to spiral higher, force small firms struggling to pay higher salaries to lay off workers, and impact the majority of the workforce. This is expected as the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (Ecop) rarely supports any proposal that will raise wages that, in turn, increase their costs and eventually affect their profitability.

Even the House of Representatives, which needs to pass a counterpart bill for the proposal to prosper and eventually become law, is lukewarm to the move to legislate a wage increase. Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin said in reaction to the Senate decision that while the lower chamber had a number of pending bills on wage hikes, they still needed to deliberate on how to balance the needs of workers with the realities of businesses. “If we raise wages, it should be at a rate that our business people could shoulder,” she noted.

Highest family living wage

There is, however, broad agreement on the fact that current minimum wages are not enough to meet an ordinary household’s needs. As of January, per Ibon Foundation, a family of five in Metro Manila needs P1,193 a day or P25,946 a month to live decently. It lists the highest family living wage in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, at P2,026 a day, as against the actual daily minimum there of P306 to P341. The Senate likewise pointed out that Metro Manila’s present minimum wage of P610 a day is also being eroded by inflation, putting the real value of the minimum wage at P514.50 in July 2023, and P504 in October that year due to rising consumer prices. Garin also admitted that a P100 wage hike was still “insufficient given the rising cost of living.”

“This yawning average minimum wage-family living wage gap … starkly represents the vast sea of unfulfilled basic necessities of ordinary Filipino families, which the national government should urgently address through substantial wage increases amid historic inflationary surges,” House Assistant Minority Leader and Gabriela party list Rep. Arlene Brosas said when she and Makabayan bloc lawmakers filed House Bill No. 7568 in March last year seeking a nationwide daily wage increase of P750 for all private sector workers.

Good incentive

Contrast these wage figures with data cited in HB 7568 showing that the total gross revenue of the top 1,000 companies in the country surged by 17.5 percent in 2021 to P13.44 trillion from P11.44 trillion during the height of the pandemic in 2020. It was, according to the bill, the fastest gross revenue growth since the 24.4-percent expansion recorded in 2001.

After Zubiri announced the Senate’s approval of the P100 wage hike bill on second reading, he challenged the House to likewise act on a counterpart bill to get the measure moving in Congress. All eyes will now be on Speaker Martin Romualdez, who in the past had successfully shepherded lawmakers in the House to quickly pass bills. This was the case in the approval of the bill creating the Maharlika Investment Fund, the country’s first sovereign wealth fund, which breezed through the House in record time.

The upcoming midterm elections in 2025 may also be a good incentive for lawmakers. Legislating a wage increase will generate praise from millions of wage earners who will remember them for such a good deed on election day. From all indications, it seems the debate may boil down to the amount of increase that, as Garin said, is a middle ground for both workers and capitalists.

‘Form of relief’

For labor groups, there is little they can do to sway legislators into approving a bigger increase than the P100 a day approved by the Senate. Nagkaisa labor coalition chair Sonny Matula and spokesperson Rene Magtubo said they would still welcome the proposal as a “form of relief,” noting this remains “a far cry from what was needed to save minimum wage earners from the poverty wages imposed [by the] regional wage boards.” Ecop’s claim that it will only benefit workers in the big and profitable companies may only be partly true. Not all the money-making businesses are confined to these corporate giants, which had reportedly told Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, chair of the Senate labor panel, that they are supportive of the proposed P100 increase. A lot of small and medium companies have been profitable and even expanding, and must now also think of the greater good. Knowing that higher mandated wages will fuel inflation by making their goods more expensive, why can’t they just absorb as much of the increase in cost as their revenues can take?

In all the coming discussions on the propriety or impropriety of a P100 increase in the minimum wage, lawmakers, employers—big and small—and the Marcos administration’s economic managers must all be reminded that denying workers their fair wages is simply unjust. This is an injustice long suffered by Filipino workers.

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Economics Help

Pros and cons of raising the minimum wage

In both the UK and US, politicians are proposing significant, above-inflation increases in the minimum wage. The US is proposing an increase from $7.50 to $15 by 2024. The arguments for raising the minimum wages include – reduced in-work poverty, a reduction in inequality, an incentive to increase labour productivity and higher wages leading to increased economic growth. On the negative side, increasing minimum wages too fast could cause a rise in business costs, a rise in unemployment, and higher prices for consumers – problems exacerbated in depressed, low wage sectors and regions.

argumentative essay about raising the minimum wage in the philippines

Pros of raising the minimum wage

Employment effects negligible . Free market economists, like M.Friednam feared the introduction of a minimum wage would cause unemployment because in competitive labour markets higher wages lead to less demand. However, there is significant evidence to dispute this. Since 2010, the UK minimum wage has increased far above the inflation rate – from £5.93 to £8.21 (27% increase).

UK Minimum wage

argumentative essay about raising the minimum wage in the philippines

UK employment rate %

argumentative essay about raising the minimum wage in the philippines

In the period (2010-2019), employment has increased sharply – despite significant increases in the minimum wage. A study by the Low Pay Commission into 20 years of the UK minimum wage found no strong evidence of falling employment due to minimum wage.

“Since 2000, we have commissioned over 30 research projects… overall none of the research that we have commissioned has shown strong evidence that minimum wages have led to falling employment.” Low Pay Commission on history of minimum wage and its effects, 2019

It is not just the UK, but a comprehensive US study into the effect of raising minimum wages found a similar negligible effect on employment.

“Overall, these findings suggest that the level of minimum wages that we study—which range between 37% and 59% of the median wage—have yet to reach a point where the job losses become sizable.” ( NBER Working Paper No. 25434, Effect of minimum wages on low wage jobs , Jan 2019)

Counterbalance to monopsony. In the real world, labour markets are not perfectly competitive. Employers have a significant degree of monopsony power. This means they are able to pay wages below the equilibrium and take a higher share of profit. This is why increasing the minimum wage is compatible with the empirical evidence of no or little fall in employment.

monopsony

Productivity increases. A rise in the minimum wage creates an incentive for firms to invest in automation and increased labour productivity. (For example, a switch to self-service tills, increased self-service at restaurants.) This investment will help increase overall productivity in the economy and enable firms to be able to afford the wage increases. It shifts the economy to be less labour-intensive. There is some empirical evidence that an increase in the minimum wage leads to fewer hours worked as firms seek to get a greater return from labour. Productivity growth is a key factor in determining the long-run rate of economic growth.

Reduces labour market turnover . A higher minimum wage reduces labour market turnover. Workers have a greater incentive to stay in a job where they get better paid. Similarly, firms have more incentive to train higher-paid workers. Lower labour market turnover helps to reduce the costs of firms.

Reducing in-work poverty . In recent decades, we have seen low wage growth, yet living costs, especially rent has been rising above inflation. This has led to a squeeze on living standards for those on the lower-income spectrum. Many western economies have also seen a growth in inequality with the gap between high-income earners and low-income earners growing. One study in California found that:

“Our estimates suggest a 10% increase in the minimum wage would reduce household poverty rates by 0.7 to 0.9 percentage points in the highest impact areas,” Anna Godøy and Michael Reich. (2019). “Minimum Wage Effects in Low-Wage Areas”. IRLE Working Paper 106-19r

Low-paid need the protection of the minimum wage. In recent decades, we have seen labour markets change and become more flexible – with a growth in part-time, temporary work and weak trade unions – therefore low-paid workers find it difficult to use collective bargaining to gain wage increases, and it is easy for firms to ignore wage demands. Therefore a minimum wage is playing an increasingly important role in protecting the living standards of the low-paid and minimising the gap between rich and poor. This has additional benefits for maintaining a more cohesive society and a sense of fairness.

Spill-over benefits . Most of the benefits of the minimum wage occur to the lowest-paid, but there can also be benefits to those who earn just above the minimum wage.

“For a wide range of lower-skilled workers, including those who make up to $5 an hour more than the new minimum” The Effect of Minimum Wages on Low-Wage Jobs: Doruk Cengiz, Arindrajit Dube, Attila Lindner, Ben Zipperer (Jan 2019) NBER

Cons of raising the minimum wage

Negative employment effects . Previous increases in the minimum wage have been mostly absorbed by the economy without significant negative impacts on employment. However, there is a tipping point at which increases in the minimum wage will have a negative effect on employment. In particular, if minimum wages are increased over 60% of median wages, there is a concern that at this level, firms will not be able to absorb all wage increases through price increases and productivity gains, and therefore employment will fall.

n-minimum-wage

The problem is that previous success in raising the minimum wage is encouraging a rapid increase in minimum wage above a sustainable rate of increase.

Higher prices . An effect of higher minimum wages is that firms respond to an increase in costs by passing some of the costs onto consumers. Restaurant prices in California have increased as a result of the rise in the minimum wage. A study looked at the effects of a 25% minimum wage increase in 2013 in the area of San Jose, California.

“Their findings suggest that nearly all of the cost increase was passed through to consumers, as prices rose 1.45% on average.” SYLVIA ALLEGRETTO AND MICHAEL REICH, ILR Review, 71(1) , January 2018, pp. 35–63

Many labour-intensive industries, such as hairdressers, cleaners and health care workers will invariably see a rise in wage costs and prices for consumers.

  • In evaluation, whilst business may experience higher prices, if all restaurants increase price together, demand may prove inelastic.
  • Secondly, although costs may rise, the minimum wage does increase disposable income of poorest workers. These workers have a higher marginal propensity to consume and so may increase spending in precisely these service sector businesses.

Biggest costs in poor areas A nationwide minimum wage will have a greater impact on poor areas – regions of high unemployment and low wages. The problem is that a national minimum wage suitable for London may be unsuitable for a more impoverished area in the north. The effect on unemployment can be greater in the poorest areas.

Lack of flexibility . In a recession, demand for labour falls and there is downward pressure on wages. It is in these moments when the negative effects of a minimum wage on employment are greatest and the costs of a minimum wage highest.

Is automation always desirable? One effect of a minimum wage is to drive society towards greater automation. This can have benefits, such as greater efficiency, but if we had a society dominated by robots, this would have negative social and emotional effects. A minimum wage could (in theory!) lead to restaurants employing robots to take out food, but then we miss out on the personal interaction with humans.

What determines the success/failure of raising a minimum wage?

  • How much is the increase? When wages are low, an increase in the minimum wage may have little effect on employment. But, that doesn’t mean, there isn’t a limit where increases in the minimum wage will cause unemployment. The trick is finding the optimal level (some suggest a rough rule of thumb 60% of median wages – but more research is needed)
  • How rapid is the increase? There is evidence that when annual increases in the minimum wage are planned, firms have time to plan – increases in automation, increases in prices and therefore it is easier to absorb the increase. The biggest costs come from unexpected one-off rises.
  • Do firms have monopsony power? If firms have monopsony power and are profitable, then they can afford to pay increases. If labour and product markets are more competitive, the pressure to cut jobs may be greater.
  • Effect of minimum wages on unemployment, growth and inflation

8 thoughts on “Pros and cons of raising the minimum wage”

You totally ignore the economic impact on those earning just above the increased amount. Employers don’t across the board increase the percentage of the lowest paid employees new found increase in their wage. So a massive portion of the work force actually receives a pay Decrease because their pay is significantly lower in respect to the cost of living increases resulting from the minimum wage increase.

The real problem is the yearly bonuses paid to CEO’s, upper level executives, middle management and store managers, supervisors etc.

The solution is to tax those bonuses with a ninety percent tax rate. To cover the welfare costs incurred to aid low wage employees who have families.

As well as redistributed to low wage workers through the Federal Income Tax Credit.

When CEO’s and their cronies in management cry foul force them to agree to peg the minimum wage to productivity, inflation and their yearly bonuses in order to get relief.

In reality those bonuses are stolen wages that were diverted from those who earned it to those sitting in the middle and at the top of the Ponzi scheme of our modern day economy.

And those people will either get better paying jobs or argue to have their wage increased. Thr companies will either pay them more or lose employees to other companies that will. The point is to raise the floor above poverty because anyone who is working should not be in poverty.

The bigger question is why is someone stuck working a min wage job? There’s so maby options our there. I do believe a increase in min wage is coming but to more than double it will cost issues for the American workforce. Right now businesses are closing due to Covid and now they have to pay more than twice for the same work force.

The number one economic goal of our elected leadership should be to get every worker out of ” a working in poverty” situation. We also need to create a wage structure that incentivizes people to get off the government dole and get a job. Lower wage earners are not only getting clipped in the pocketbook they receive less medical, sick leave, retirement benefits, etc. than all other wage earners. You can not tell me that with all the corporate executive firepower that exits in this country that a planned faze-in raise of the minimum wage could not be digested successfully in the greatest economy in the world.

You claim evidence shows no drop in employment then say “Productivity increases. A rise in the minimum wage creates an incentive for firms to invest in automation and increased labour productivity. (For example, a switch to self-service tills, increased self-service at restaurants.)” You do realize that those automated systems replace humans, thus creating more without jobs.

There is more to this than what companies has to dish out. Raising the min wage to more than twice is level will throw a lot of people of aid, unless there is new proverty level. $15 a hour is pretty good money in a lot of states and cities, Not counting states like NY and CA. You will see a lot of families SNAP be reduce and no longer able to afford insurance since they will probably be kick off Medicaid along with other programs. $15 is where your able to live but can’t afford good insurance unless the job provides it. Working a min to wage job use to provide the motivation to go to school and find a better job. Raising the wage to $15 a hour will not help someone to say there. Growth and opportunity does.

The issue with raising minimum wage is the spiral it creates in the business chain. The reality isn’t as encouraging as the fantasy. We are far too obsessed with trickle down economics. Every major company is in some capacity working with many smaller ones who deal with things like supplies or advertising. These smaller companies have even smaller ones working for them like transport and market research companies. This continues until you find a company that can’t meet the new wage requirement. So to keep making a profit they must now ask $50 more for their product or service. That causes the one buying to lose $50 anticipated profit and $50 in physical literal currency. Can Imagine who Our only hope is to implement a 1-rear price cap on base good like the ingredients to make cookies.

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May 18, 2024

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argumentative essay about raising the minimum wage in the philippines

No More Lies: The Truth About Raising the Minimum Wage

“I budget and budget, and I still can’t really buy no food,” explained Carolyn Allen, a 58-year-old minimum wage worker at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. She dreams of paying her medical bill and still being able to afford Pine-Sol or bleach to clean her house. Other minimum wage workers, like Laugudria Screven Jr. , resort to earning income other ways — in Screven’s case, by selling his blood plasma twice a week. The strategy leaves him feeling drowsy and weak, but allows him to afford rent and approximately one meal a day.  

The United States has a long, contentious history surrounding the minimum wage. Opponents of raising the minimum wage argue that most minimum wage workers are teens working their first jobs, that raising the minimum wage will kill businesses or jobs or that raising the minimum wage will have no effect at all on purchasing power because of the resulting increase in inflation. However, the arguments against raising the minimum wage range from disingenuous to objectively false. It’s time to raise the minimum wage.  

The “Minimum Wage” is More Minimal Today than Ever

The United States minimum wage originated with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), which also set overtime pay and child labor restrictions. The contemporary opposition to the FLSA foreshadowed the current arguments against raising the minimum wage. The FLSA’s opponents claimed that the president was creating a “tyrannical industrial dictatorship” and that businesses would not be able to provide any jobs if they had to cope with “everlastingly multiplying governmental mandates” and “multiplying and hampering Federal bureaucracy.” 

These doomsday predictions proved untrue: the minimum wage did indeed impact the nature and distribution of employment, but industries did not buckle. At the time, two of the most low-paying industries in the South were the textile industry and the lumber industry. Southern textile mills did see a slight decrease in employment, but northern textile mills — which had paid slightly more than the southern textile mills prior to the institution of the FLSA — saw an employment increase of approximately equal magnitude . The lumber industry in the South and throughout the U.S. saw an increase in employment after the passage of the FLSA. Notably, other independent variables shifted in both industries: the textile industry had been trending to more automation prior to the bill, while the lumber industry was trending to a more labor-heavy resource base. Overall, the minimum wage leveled no industries and granted many workers a higher wage. 

Over time, the minimum wage has slowly crept higher with increased inflation and productivity.  However, this growth has not kept pace with other market factors, eroding the real value of the minimum wage.  

Today, the real value of the minimum wage is 31 percent   less than the real (adjusted for inflation) minimum wage in 1968, and 17 percent less than the real minimum wage in 2009. If minimum wage growth had tracked the growth in workers’ productivity since 1968, the minimum wage would be $18.42 , more than double the federally mandated minimum wage. For comparison, productivity since 1973 has increased 74.4 percent , while average hourly compensation has increased just 9.2 percent . As of 2020, the federally mandated minimum wage of $7.25 for non-exempt workers is not enough to lift a family of two above the poverty line.  

The slow growth of wages in comparison to productivity is not universal: the top 1% of workers saw their wages grow 138% since 1979, while the bottom 90% saw their wages grow 15% in the same time period. In 1965, the typical CEO earned 20 times what the typical worker did, while in 2013, the typical CEO earned 296 times the typical worker’s salary.  

Increasing the Minimum Wage Would Promote Health and Well-Being

Raising the minimum wage pays social dividends that stretch beyond any debate about the discrepancies between workers’ wages and CEO’s wages.  

First, workers who are affected by a minimum wage increase see immediate and significant health benefits for themselves and for society. A study conducted in 2011 found that blue-collar workers in states with higher minimum wage rates are much less likely to have untreated medical needs, as they are better able to afford care. Particularly in a country prone to global pandemics, an individual’s health can quickly become a community’s health: workers who leave illnesses untreated put everyone around them at risk. Additionally, an increased minimum wage corresponds to a lower smoking rate . Low-income workers currently make up 75 percent of smokers, but reducing the stress of poverty allows them to quit. Other studies have found that a higher minimum wage correlates with fewer teen pregnancies and less teenage alcohol consumption .  

Second, children disproportionately benefit from increasing the minimum wage. Across the United States, 28.2% of children have a parent affected by increasing the federal minimum wage to $9.80, and even more have a parent who would be affected by a higher minimum wage hike. In 2017, a study conducted by the School of Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology found that a minimum wage increase of just $1 would reduce reports of child neglect by 9.6%. “Money matters,” said Lindsey Rose Bullinger , co-author of the study, “when caregivers have a more disposable income, they’re better able to provide a child’s basic needs such as clothing, food, medical care, and a safe home. Policies that increase the income of the working poor can improve children’s welfare, especially younger children, quite substantially.” Bullinger’s study did not have enough data to determine if an even higher minimum wage would result in even fewer cases of child neglect, but Bullinger noted , “our findings point in that direction.” Infants also benefit from increasing the minimum wage: the American Journal of Public Health  estimated that between 2,800 and 5,500 premature deaths in New York City alone could have been prevented if the minimum wage was $15 an hour rather than $7 an hour. That figure constitutes approximately 8.33% of all of the premature deaths in New York City.  

Opponents of raising the minimum wage frequently argue that minimum wage jobs are intended for teenagers working entry-level jobs, and that a minimum wage raise would needlessly benefit teens living at home and working for pocket money. However, this argument defies reality.  

In California, 96 percent of workers who would benefit from the proposed minimum wage increase to $15 are over the age of 20, and 58 percent are over the age of 30. These numbers hold nationwide: the average age of an impacted worker would be 35 , and 51 percent of those affected would be 30 years of age or older. Only 13 percent of those impacted would be 20 or younger. On average, these affected workers earn half of their family’s income, and the majority of them work full time .  

Historically marginalized communities are the most likely to benefit from a minimum wage hike: in California, workers earning less than $15 per hour are 55 percent Latino or Latina , while the general population of workers is only 38 percent Latino or Latina . Nationally, about 40 percent of all black workers’ wages would increase, and more than half of workers who would be affected by a minimum wage increase are women. While 19 percent of families nationwide have incomes that are less than twice the national poverty line, 50 percent of workers who would benefit from a minimum wage increase come from these families. 

Increasing the Minimum Wage Won’t Decrease Employment

Carry on a conversation about minimum wage for more than twenty minutes, and inevitably, an opponent of raising the minimum wage will inform you, often with a condescending tone, that any Econ 101 student knows that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs. Many introductory economics courses do, in fact, teach a simple theory that raising the minimum wage will reduce employment. According to this theory, as the minimum wage rises, employers will be willing to employ fewer workers, since their salaries will be more expensive.  

The argument is far too simplistic to drive real-world policy for the world’s largest economy.  The argument incorrectly assumes a fantasy textbook-“perfect” market.  A “perfect” market has many buyers and sellers, no market power, no differences between the goods sold by each firm, and perfectly even information for buyers and sellers. (In a labor market, the “buyers” are employers, and the “sellers” are employees who are selling their time and effort.) Unsurprisingly, the US labor market is not a “perfect” market, so the opponents of increasing the minimum wage unwittingly make two huge, unjustified assumptions: first, that the demand for labor is not fixed, and second, that the wage employers pay without government intervention is the equilibrium wage.  

The first assumption — that demand for labor is not fixed — describes a phenomenon known as elasticity. When a demand curve is very elastic, the buyers respond to a slight increase in the price of the good —in this case, the wage —by dramatically reducing how much of the good they consume. However, if a demand curve is very inelastic , the buyers will buy the same amount of the good with little regard to how much it costs. The demand for labor in the United States tends to be elastic if and only if: (1) the product being produced has a high price elasticity of demand, meaning that people will buy a lot less of it if it costs slightly more; (2) other factors of production can replace the labor; (3) the supply of other factors of production can be purchased or used at higher levels without their prices rising; (4) if the labor costs are a large percentage of the costs of production. While some industries fall under these categories, many do not and would therefore not be likely to see a large shift in the amount of labor demanded. 

The second assumption — that wage employers pay the equilibrium wage — ignores the existence of “labor monopsonies.” A “monopsony” is a market with only one buyer — in terms of employers, it is a market with only one (or very few) employers. In the United States, economics experts have become increasingly worried that the US market has become filled with monopsonies . Rural U.S. localities in particular often have only one or two main, large employers. These employers are free to create a “race to the bottom” on wages — since there are far more workers than jobs, the dominant employer can start a reverse bidding war among job seekers, where desperate people compete with each other for work, and accept lower and lower wages. To keep wages low and desperation for employment high, these companies can limit the number of jobs to perpetuate the competition, ensuring high profit margins for themselves. However, a fixed reasonable minimum wage prevents companies from creating this desperate downward spiral and encourages them to employ a greater number of employees. In other words, monopsonies tend to employ fewer workers and pay them less when left to their own devices than they would if they were required to pay a minimum wage. In monopsony labor markets, a minimum wage would increase employment.

Of course, our Nation is made up of diverse regions, with widely varying local economies.  Viewing the U.S. as a whole, would a minimum wage increase result in less employment, more employment or the same amount of employment? Setting aside politically-motivated soundbites and editorials, the economic consensus suggests that a modest increase in the minimum wage likely won’t reduce employment and may even increase it. Some estimates found that increased economic activity from a minimum wage increase to $9.80 hourly would generate 100,000 new jobs . Other economists found no reduction in employment. In 2010, Dube, Lester, and Reich studied the time period between 1990 and 2006 and found no evidence of any job losses due to minimum wage increases in industries identified as “high impact” (predominantly restaurants and retail jobs). In 2013, the same economists conducted a similar study focused on teens, and found no impact on their employment, either. A 2014 study by Hoffman agreed that teen employment was also not impacted . In 2014, Dube and Zipperer conducted a study using a newly created control group approach, and came to the same conclusion . In 2009, Addison, Blackburn, and Cotti conducted yet another study and concluded that if they accounted for general trends, they did not find any evidence of job loss due to the minimum wage in retail or restaurant sectors. Of course, some survey methods have found more significant job losses, so it’s worth looking at what has actually occurred in jurisdictions that did raise their minimum wage. A study conducted by professors at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Center of Wage and Employment Dynamics found that the minimum wage hikes in Chicago, Washington, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle, had not caused “ significant employment losses ” but had caused “ positive and statistically significant earnings effects. ” 

Increasing the Minimum Wage Will Benefit Small Businesses

Opponents to raising the minimum wage frequently invoke small businesses, arguing that raising the minimum wage will kill the local businesses and tip the market in favor of mega-corporations. However, if that’s true, someone forgot to tell the owners of small businesses — a study conducted by the American Sustainable Business Council found that 61 percent of small business owners across the US support raising the minimum wage. In some parts of the country, the number is even higher — it reaches 67 percent in the Northeast — and the lowest support, in the South, still reaches 58 percent .  Republican pollster Frank Lutz found that 80 percent of business executives in companies of varying sizes support a minimum wage increase to some degree.  

So, why do so many businesses support increasing the minimum wage?

They know that raising the minimum wage offers business a number of benefits. First, employees who are paid a higher wage tend to be more productive due to morale improvements, better health, less absenteeism and reduced “decision fatigue.” The Center for American Progress also found that raising the minimum wage causes reduced employee turnover . Employee turnover is expensive: replacing low-wage workers costs about 16% of the employee’s annual salary.  

Second, the worker-productivity benefits center mostly around a given business and the wages it pays its customers. However, business owners also have reason to advocate for a minimum wage increase across the entire market. Consumers who suddenly earn more also spend more, driving up proceeds for businesses. This assertion makes logical sense: people living below or close to the poverty line frequently forgo products they wish they could afford, but with more income, they will likely purchase those products. In practice, past minimum wage increases have indeed resulted in a boost in consumer spending. A minimum wage increase to $5.85 per hour in 2007 generated an additional 1.7 billion dollars in consumer spending and a minimum wage increase in 2008 to $6.55 per hour generated an additional 3.1 billion dollars in consumer spending.  

Gina Schaefer, owner of a collection of small hardware stores, notes , “When the minimum wage rises, it puts money in the pockets of those who most need to spend it, from paying the rent to buying more groceries to picking up lightbulbs, tools, and paint from the local hardware store. A higher minimum wage means more money circulating in the economy. It’s a virtuous cycle: our employees shop at other businesses and their employees shop at ours.”  

Why then don’t small businesses simply increase wages on their own, without waiting for the Federal Government to intervene?  Many do, and they benefit from it. But if a Federally-mandated increase is absent, others fear they will be undercut by competition.

Minimum Wage Does Not Mean Minimum Prices

Finally, opponents of increasing the minimum wage point to their own wallets: I don’t want to pay more for goods and services, so please don’t pay employees more .

But while economists concur that raising the minimum wage will likely cause prices of some goods and services to rise —so long as the raise is moderate, it will impact prices only slightly. And certainly raising the minimum wage will not cause prices to rise so much that the minimum wage hike was “useless,” as some detractors contend.   

For example, studies conducted by economists at California State University, San Bernardino, found that prices of impacted goods and services increase only 0.36 percent for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage. Therefore, raising the minimum wage does indeed allow low-income workers to afford a wider range of purchases, even if the prices have increased very slightly. For example, if a worker for $7.25 an hour receives a 10% pay raise to $7.98 an hour, they can expect a good that cost $7.30 before the minimum wage increase to cost just $7.32 after the minimum wage hike. Even with that slight price increase, the worker is vastly better off.  

The United States has a long history of treating the free market as holy and rebelling against any form of government intervention. However, when big businesses and their pocket politicians advocate for keeping the minimum wage below a living wage, they aren’t just swindling their workers and damaging the economy: they’re swindling you, even if you aren’t working for minimum wage. They’re creating a less healthy, less productive, less solvent population and they’re relying on social welfare programs to pay their workers for them. Small businesses don’t benefit; workers don’t benefit. It’s time to stop pretending they do, and time to get serious about raising the federal minimum wage.  

Featured Image source: WorkingNation

Published in Opinion

  • economic inequality
  • economic reform
  • minimum wage

Charlynn Teter

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Argumentative Essay On Support Raising The Minimum Wage

Type of paper: Argumentative Essay

Topic: Social Issues , Workplace , Marketing , Salary , Market , Taxes , Welfare , Poverty

Published: 03/31/2020

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Statement of the problem

The minimum wage is a controversy subject when it comes in receiving wages, as most workers will come to an agreement that, one can never be paid enough. Nevertheless, employers may cause problems with that declaration, believing that they pay greater than the amount entitled to the employees, hence creating a conflict between minimum wages.Arguments supporting raising the minimum wage In my opinion, I consider that it would be a good impression to increase the minimum wage. The motives behind this is because the cost of living has gone up to the level where individuals are not making adequate money to pay for their requirements anymore, hence causing ones nation's debt to remain at growing edge. The other reason why it is beneficial to raise the minimum wage is that, it would assist ones economy in the long-run by increasing consumer expenditure. As the minimum wage was to be increased, and then individuals would receive more money to the point where they are capable to meet for their necessities and have money to spare. This would cause to an upsurge in consumer expenditure, and would not just be helpful to businesses, but, to the economic growth in national and local economies. Increased minimum wage, addresses poverty and ways to fight it (Dube, Arindrajit, William and Michael 949). This propose that a rise in the minimum wage would help people considered as a part of the "near poor" category to move out of poverty completely and keep it very enduringly. I agree with this argument, and I believe that it would help individuals who are in poverty, and would not just be helpful to us as a person, but also to the state ''as well.'' Source-side politicians argue that, a minimum wage is bad for the economy because, it affectedly raises income levels and that ''in time,'' it is not good for business and will result to inflation and ineffective capital markets. Raising the minimum wage, would contribute in welfare form, and decrease the number of individuals on welfare (Osterman127). This is achieved by making wages high sufficient to inspire individuals to go to work, instead of staying on welfare. In addition, with more money to spend and more individuals in the job market, this would upsurge both gross national product sales, and a rise in taxes resulting from sales taxes. Though the anti-minimum wage clique argues that increasing the minimum wage would put more individuals out of work, a study conducted by interviewing restaurant owners about the effects of increasing minimum wages, clearly showed that no employments were lost. The research was conducted in New Jersey, where the government had increased minimum wage to the upper most level in the United States (Addison, McKinley and Chad 401). The research shows that what occurs is that individuals do not go out and start-firing workers subsequently due to minimum wages increase but they just adjust on how to deal with the issue. A negative in change sometime arises by decreasing the number of overall hours worked and motivating the employees to increase the extent of work output in the work performance. In general, the study showed that low minimum wages encourages more mothers on welfare to remain on welfare. The study also shows that, where minimum wages were lower, there were highest rates in individuals on welfare. In additional, argument for increasing minimum wages comes from the understanding that higher wages raises purchasing power (Shulman 150). Low wages lead to the failure of the nations to engross exports, resulting to the sale of good sat lesser prices in their market. Wage increase in developing nations is important for their welfare because of the current tendency in free trade. If wages are not elevated to escalate purchasing power, the issue of the inability to engross exports can worsen. This will cause the global competitive environment on low wages to act as a lasting brake on income growth in developing countries. This will then repudiate some exporter's consumer markets and development of income (Oysterman 135). The law of supply also indicates that a high price level will increase the quantity demanded. With a very little exclusion, this law prevails for all categories of the market, as well as the labor market. Therefore, increases in the minimum wage will enhance the number of individuals interested to join the labor force.Conclusion An upsurge in minimum wages should be encouraged internationally, since if workers in other nations are poor to purchase their products, then their employers will have no option but to export in expensively priced products to the advanced world. Increasing the minimum wage will help these employees to structure for lost ground due to inflation and will help to make work pay. As Ouster man indicated, most economists agree that increasing the minimum wage raises the incomes of low wage workers; hence, individuals are able to meet their required necessities. Therefore, minimum wage increase should be supported across the globe as it is of more benefits towards the employees and the economy of the nation at large.

Addison, John T., McKinley L. Blackburn, and Chad D. Cotti. "Do minimum wages raise employment? Evidence from the US retail-trade sector."Labor Economics 16.4 (2009): 397-408. Dube, Arindrajit, T. William Lester, and Michael Reich. "Minimum wage effects across state borders: Estimates using contiguous counties." The review of economics and statistics 92.4 (2010): 945-964. Oysterman, Paul. "Improving the quality of low-wage work: The current American experience." International Labor Review 147.2‐3 (2008): 115-134. Shulman, Beth. The betrayal of work: How low-wage jobs fail 30 million Americans and their families. The New Press, 2013.

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  1. Argumentative Essay on Minimum Wage

    The current federal minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 per hour, a rate that has not been raised since 2009. Many argue that this rate is not enough to provide a decent standard of living, especially in cities with high costs of living. On the other hand, opponents of raising the minimum wage argue that it could lead to job losses ...

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    In particular, a 10% increase in the minimum wage increased employment by around 3.5 percent (Card, 1992), 7.3 percent (Card & Krueger, 1994) and even up to 17 to 26.5 percent (Katz and Krueger, 1992). Brown (1999: 2154), in his review of minimum wage literature in the United States concluded that the minimum wage effect was modest.

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    A related information comes from a 2019 study of PIDS that found that the 10% increase in minimum wage in 2018 led to a 1.5% increase in consumer prices in Metro Manila. Thus, a P150 increase in minimum wage (i.e. 42.3% increase from the current level) could result in a 6.35 % increase in consumer prices.

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