Minimum Wage In The US

Arguments On Minimum Wage

Minimum Wage in the US has been a debate for several years and many arguments on negatives and positives of raising pay. The Minimum wage in the US is 7.25/hr. People are fighting to reach a minimum wage of at least $15.00. Many workers went on strike and were able to raise it a little amount, but even that wasn't impactful. An argument made on this topic is that if pay is raised there will be less poverty. The majority of people working minimum wage have families they have to support and making $7.25/hr is not an amount that can create a sustainable. As great as it would sound that all these hard workers get paid $15/hr, people argue that if the price goes up, employment will decrease. Businesses will not be eager as much to hire the same amount of employees because that will cost them more money. These workers don't want to be unemployed so they would rather keep it a low price and make some money rather than none. If we didn't have a minimum wage people's lifestyle would not be living. Having a minimum wage is what protects people way of living.

Below are 2 Supply and Demand graphs I made comparing a Fast Food worker to a CEO of a business. A worker at a fast food place would want an increase in the minimum wage because he/she is working at a low price already, so the increase would affect him. With CEO's, if the minimum wage increased, you notice that it doesn't affect them at all, because it doesn't reach the lines which means that they are already making more than enough money

History on Minimum Wage

The first Minimum Wage law was first created 1938 for 25 cents. CNN Money compared the Minimum Wage in 1938 which was 25 cents and saw how much value it has today which equaled to $4.13. In 2007 minimum wage was raised from $5.15 to $7.25. Workers today have been struggling to try to raise the minimum wage in the US to $15.00. The highest minimum wage in the country is in Washington State at $9.19 an hour. An average minimum wage in the US is $7.57

Documentary on Minimum Wage

Below is a video I have created with a partner. We went out and spoke to people who work for Minimum Wage in Chicago. We went to several places where we got good information from economists and regular people who have opinions on raising the minimum wage.