Should the U.S Raise the Minimum Wage Rate?
Owen Bailey
11/26/13
The current federal minimum wage rate for non- tipped workers is $7.25 a hour. For tipped workers that number goes down to $2.13 a hour but the hourly earnings, with tips must be at least $7.25. So the question is, should the United Sates raise that rate? Currently, only twenty- three states use the federal minimum, nineteen go over, four states are lower, and the remaining five states do not have any laws. Nineteen states is a lot to not agree with the federals rate, shouldn`t the government take into consideration that almost half of the people do not agree with them? But, what would happen if they raised it?
If the Government raised the current Federal Mininmum Wage rate would not other campanies have to raise their CEO, presidents, vice presidents, even technitions? They would have to since someone flipping burgers would be making over $7.25 a hour when someone fixing computers would only be making a couple of cents more.
If the Federal Mininmum Wage is $7.25 why do five states have lower wages, some even as low as $5.15? "The minimum wage law (the FLSA) applies to employees of enterprises that have annual gross volume of sales or business done of at least $500,000"(U.S Department of Labor). That is the first law but there is more. Any employee that uses the phone or mails regularly must, by U.S law, recieve at least $7.25 a hour. Also "It also applies to employees of federal, state or local government agencies, hospitals and schools, and it generally applies to domestic workers" (U.S Department of Labor). So to answer the question, th minimum wage for those four states are for jobs that do not meet up to those laws.
Why do those nineteen states have higher wages? One of the most common issue is that the expence of living is higher. Also, " There are 10 states (AZ, CO, FL, MO, MT, NV, OH, OR, VT, and WA) that have minimum wages that are linked to a consumer price index. As a result of this linkage, the minimum wages in these states are normally increased each year, generally around January 1st. The exception is Nevada which adjusts in the month of July each year"(U.S Department of Labor).
In conclusion, the United States Government can change the FLSA if they want but it wouldn`t be a good idea since it could lead to many companies out of business. That would happen because the business would have to pay their employees more while the customers would pay the same. That could lead to increase in prices since the company would have to pay the employees more they would also have to charge more, right? But then, if everyone got payed more then the higher prices would not matter. This could lead to an economical breakdown since there would not be enough money for everyone to be payed. At the end you can draw your own conclusions, though.
