Minimum Wage Rises

Time For A Raise? By Patricia Smith

The main idea of this article is that President Obama wants to raise Minimum Wage encome to $9 an hour to try and get the economy kicking once again. However despite the fact he's trying to help employees their employers have a problem with what Obama is doing, "The idea faces stiff opposition. Many companies that hire low-wage workers have opposed raising the minimum wage because it increases their cost of doing business and, they say, makes them less able to hire new workers or give current employees raises."- New York Times Minimum Wage article, Companies according to the quote are upset with Obama because this could mean a significant increase in expenses so they say.

Details or evidence I have from the article is how Patricia makes an interesting connection to Franklin D. Roosevelt as she describes how in 1938 Congress enacted the first federal minimum wage during the Great Depression. That Minimum Wage was 25 cents an hour. I found this interesting because it kinda relates to what's going on in 2013 75 years after that event, I guess time really does repeat itself. Another detail I have from the article is how Catrina Crable, a 10th grader from Martin County High School in Stuart, Florida is working hard as a hostess for 20 to 25 hours a week to pay for gas, car insurance, and her phone but she feel as though she isn't making enough money at $7.79 an hour and I actually agree with her because I did the calculations and if she worked 20 hours a week making $7.79 an hour her total would be $155.8 and if she worked for 25 hour instead of 20 hours and made the same amount an hour then the total would be $194.75 and she's talking about gas bills and car insurance I'm pretty sure those are more than a weeks worth of working.

In my opinion I can understand both sides of this article. One side feels as though they need more pay to help better maintain their lives, and the other side feels as though if they had to raise minimum pay to $9 an hour then they'd have to get rid of a lot of their minimum waged workers because the cost would be to much of a burden to worry about because then they'd have to raise the price of the other more experienced workers aswell and their cost is already higher. But I choose to argue Obama's side because i feel as though hard working people who can only find minimum wage jobs should definitely be paid more because they at least deserve that.

I don't know of any connections I can think of right now but I do know that I have a question. If you have someone working minimum wage, you watch them and see they're working hard, and you know they're good people but you pay them 6.50 an hour when you know they deserve more. Why?