Minimum Wage Should be Increased (Democrat’s Perspective) Mr Kay’s 2nd Hour American Government Class Tony Zheng, Alex Pelak, Kaitie Morrell, Alan Oja

What is Minimum Wage? Minimum wage is defined as the lowest wage permitted by law or by a special agreement. It was last raised in 2009.

What We are Planning to do We currently want to increase minimum wage to $10.10 per hour from $7.25 per hour. We feel that if the minimum wage was expanded, poverty would be reduced and in return would help the government, America’s GDP and economy would be expanded, jobs would increase, and it would benefit hard working individuals in general.

Increasing Minimum Wage Would Alleviate Poverty and Help the Gov’t In 2014, roughly 45 million individuals in the U.S. are in poverty. (This is about 14.5% of the population). Most of these individuals work 40 to 50 hours a week and can barely make a decent living. We propose that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would reduce the poverty rate because it would give individuals more cash in their pocket. Since the people would have more spending cash, they would be able to buy food without the government’s aid, they could take care of their children and keep them in a healthy condition, and they wouldn’t have to fear getting evicted because they would finally be able to pay their bills.

Increasing Minimum Wage Would Alleviate Poverty and Help the Gov’t (Cont’d) In return, this would help the government. Since the poverty rate would be reduced by approximately 4.6 million, the government wouldn’t have to tax as much and spend a single additional dollar on governmental aid programs, such as food stamps, bridge cards, etc. One may argue that a Republican can solve America’s poverty problem in a much better way; however, this is not true. Republican’s support tax-cutting policies and feel that this is a better alternative than increasing minimum wage. Tax-cutting doesn’t help our government, it actually destroys it because the government could become in debt and it wouldn’t have enough money to control particular programs and laws. As a result, we could not afford to have such a large portion of individuals in poverty. The following political cartoon shows that the people who are in poverty want a raise in minimum wage. Increasing the minimum wage is the only way to stimulate job gowth according to the image.

Increasing Minimum Wage Would Expand America’s GDP and Economy Increasing the minimum wage would improve the state’s economy and expand GDP, or Gross Domestic Product. The GDP would increase by almost $33 billion and would generate 140,000 new jobs over three years. This is very significant because if jobs and the GDP are increased, the United States’ economy will be much more efficient and will be ranked higher in terms of economic performance. This means if the GDP of the U.S. is compared to the GDP of other countries, individuals would notice that the U.S. has a much superior and well-working economy. Raising minimum wage can raise wages for workers up to $4,000.00 per year. This means that workers would have increased buying power, or consumer spending.Consequently, more money would be circulated in the economy and would result in the production of more products. 73% of Americans support our opinion on increasing minimum wage.

Increasing Minimum Wage Would Cause Jobs to Increase Approximately 70% of our economy is based on consumer spending. Since consumer spending would increase if the the minimum wage increased, more people, or employees, would be needed to make more products. This means that the employment rate would go up. Most importantly, smaller businesses would be in depserate need for employees in order to feed the consumers the products that they want.

An Increase in Minimum Wage Would Benefit Hard Working Individuals in General In a sour economy, the working poor need the money for extra support. For example, they may need extra support for raising their children, buying food for the house, gas money, and paying bills. If minimum wage was increased, the working poor would be able to send their children to school and aid their family. It is not fair that people who work 40 to 50 hours a week get paid less than someone who works only 20 hours a week.

What Can/Can’t You do at Only $7.25 an Hour? You cannot take a vacation making $7.25 an hour. You cannot send your son or daughter to college at this minimum wage. It’s difficult to support yourself and your family. You can still make a living, but it’s extremely difficult. You can barely pay your monthly bills. You can barely provide food for the house.

Extra Information The federal minimum wage has not been raised for about 5 years. Knowing that women generally obtain less of a wage/hr than men, increasing the minimum wage will benefit 15 million women and their families. The inflation rate is currently 1.7%. We feel that this would not increase because the increase in consumer spending would make an increase in prices useless. In our proposed law, we will make sure that jobs that are currently paying greater than or equal to $10.10 will also have a slight increase in wage.