MONEY: Republicans in Washington hesitate to aid the economy by raising the minimum wage.
by Chance Ornelas-Skarin, Staff Writer
President Obama emphasizes the need for a raise in the federal minimum wage, a proposal he initially voiced in his State of the Union address. The problem is that the proposed increase involves many factors that right and left-wing politicians frequently argue over. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that half a million jobs will be lost. This is a statistic that most Republicans use to support their argument against the minimum wage. The left was quick to respond to the CBO’s report by pointing out that raising the minimum wage will lift 900,000 million people from the poverty threshold. The minimum wage increase is well-worth the 500,000 jobs it will cost because it will create better-quality jobs.
The CBO claims that raising the minimum wage will destroy jobs. However, the jobs in question support a subsistent lifestyle. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 28 percent of those affected by the increase have children, and 88 percent are older than 20 years old. The minimum wage increase does not just impact teenagers who work for a minimum wage by choice. Raising the minimum wage should help the large number of people who live below the poverty level. The University of California Davis’s Center for Poverty Research showed that those currently working full time at minimum wage jobs hardly clear the poverty line, especially those supporting families.
As the unemployment rate slowly goes down, many people have to settle for minimum wage jobs in order to support their families. The child poverty rate stands at 22 percent (as stated on firstfocus.net), and when children have to depend on downtrodden parents, the children too are helpless as can only hope for better futures. The American Psychological Association lists a myriad of problems concerning childhood poverty that stem from both low-income jobs and joblessness, such as “substandard housing, homelessness, inadequate nutrition and food insecurity, inadequate child care, lack of access to health care, unsafe neighborhoods, and under[-]resourced schools which adversely impact our nation’s children.” The many side effects from childhood poverty should be seen as dangerous not only for the children but for the future of our country because, no matter how cliché it sounds, the children are the future.
But if unemployment and minimum wage employment create the same problems, then it does not matter if we lose jobs to a minimum wage increase. The jobs that benefit from the increase will provide the families with a wage they can actually live well on. An economy with fewer but more substantial jobs is far better off than one with an abundance of inadequate minimum wage jobs. The minimum wage should be increased for the creation of better jobs. We need jobs that do not keep middle-aged breadwinners, beaten down by an unfavorable economy, in a place where they have to settle for becoming wage slaves. The freedom of American individuals is threatened by the economic abyss the current minimum wage creates.