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Gianna romanelli PHI 274 Essay #2 Raising the Minimum wage One of the hot-button discussions of the United States this year, especially with the upcoming election, is the minimum wage. Federal legislatures are considering whether or not to raise the current minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour nationwide. With America's poverty rate increasing, money is a matter of life for many working Americans. Wage is a heated discussion in many low wage full time jobs especially in the fast food industry. Specific dollar amounts of minimum wage currently vary from state to state. No one employer is legally allowed to pay an employee less than the state-mandated minimum. If a state, city, or employer were to pay less than this amount they could face serious consequences. However, it is completely legal to go above this limit. Some states, like California, have already made the jump to fifteen dollars an hour. On the other hand, not all states have been so quick to make the change. For instance, the Massachusetts minimum wage is nine dollars an hour, but in Maine the minimum wage is only eight dollars. The federal minimum was $7.25 an hour five years ago but has since bumped up to $8.25 an hour. Even with this slight increase, the wage would give full-time employees a grand total of just above twelve-thousand dollars annually. According to the economics, an individual working full time on minimum wage does not make enough to sustain themselves. However not all workers live alone. Many of them are trying to sustain a family. In this situation, these families are going hungry, and just barely reaching over the line of poverty. Workers in low-income jobs are often migrants, low skilled, and probably did not grow up in the best economic situation. Because of the societal influence, citizens in these situations are left off working the worst jobs. To raise the minimum wage would give those who are in need of assistance the money to provide for themselves and their families. By performing some simple math, we can determine just how little the minimum wage covers. For example, let's imagine a mother who works at wendy’s forty hours a week at the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. She makes only $290 dollars a week, and that's $1,160 a month, and thusly $13,920 per year. The American poverty level is $12,000 a year. A single woman who works in retail, full time, for nine dollars an hour makes $17,280 a year. Considering that the bare minimum wage in some states is between $7.25 and $8 an hour, the monetary amount is barely getting its employees above the poverty line. $13,920 a year is barely enough to sustain one person, image that money trying to pay for the cost of a family. The topic is a split issue between the economic pros and cons that come with having a federal minimum wage. In a letter to president Obama in 2013, six-hundred economists agreed that a raise would be beneficial to the American nation as a whole (Economists Statements on the Minimum Wage). The raise from $7.25 to nine or ten dollars would give families slightly more financial literacy. They would be able to afford food, clothes, shelter, and other basic needs. Plus having the money would allow them to purchase based on their preferences. With an increased wage would come increase spending, thus putting more money flow into the economy. Thus, the money would circulate into the government and increase the economies GDP. Restaurants will find that their sales will increase with the minimum wage. The highest sales increase is speculated at being almost five-percent in Nevada and Utah (Restaurants.org). Small business would benefit from their employees getting a raise in the minimum wage. The only argued disadvantages to the raise would be the result of having no benefits at all. Some experts argue that if the minimum wage were to be increased it would not change the lives of anyone or improve our GDP (Washington Post). For some politicians, there is an assumption if that teens work these types of Summer jobs they would reap the rewards instead of the struggling adult employee (US Department of Labor). Additionally a raise would force small businesses to pay more and thus have to cut employees in order to meet that requirement. Some politicians find it easier to leave minimum wages in the hands of the capitalists rather than the government. However, it could possibly create a repeat disaster of the industrial revolution, where one man sought to change the way the system functioned for the working class. When discussing the workforce only one philosopher comes to mind, and that is Karl Marx. He is the author of the Communist Manifesto, and founder of the Communists party. According to Marx, capitalists want the minimum wage to be the same, or not exist at all simply to reduce the labor cost of a factory. When capitalists have to pay for labor it is indeed costing them money they could be putting towards making more money. Therefor, capitalists will exploit workers by forcing them work lower wages in order to get a job at all. The least well off, present day fast-food employees, are constantly being exploited even before their wage is lowered. Once they get their paycheck they must pay rent, or try and get food to feed their family. Thus their money goes to some other higher CEO in a grocery store, and a person who owns private property. The worker is left with nothing. The minimum wage was established for this very reason. By setting a bare payment, lowwage workers will be able to accrue money so they can survive from day to day without the fear of death. But it seems that can be a problem too, for the low-wage worker cannot afford the cost of insurance. They can get sick, or injured, as people do, they will not have the insurance to cover medical costs. They will still be hungry, cold, possibly homeless, and still have the potential to die. A raise in minimum wage seems like the overall humanistic thing to do. However Marx finds that capitalists frankly don't care, so an elimination of this class divide is called for right away. A violent class revolution, as history seems to call for, is what Marx would suggest to solve all these issues. The proletariat needs a higher minimum wage because that will force larger companies to pay their employees more. The minimum wage is geared at one of the largest industries that the world has ever seen. Fast food chains like McDonalds, Burger king, Taco Bell, are against raising the minimum wage for their employees because they will not make the billions of dollars as they are now. A sample survey shows that at least fifty-seven percent of American small business owners would be in favor of a wage raise for their employees (Small Business Majority). Small business owners are not making as much capital as many larger companies would. The raise would be giving more to the workers, or the proletariat, thus boosting morale. Capitalists may be against raising the wage because it could mean a shift in power. Paying more money for those who work in unions of other organization could pose a threat to larger companies. CEO’s may be afraid of losing their capitalist grasp over the government. This is not the violent revolution that Marx would want, but it's a revolution none-the-less. Proletariat fast-food unions are banding together in order to protest. They are feared by their superior because when protest occur, employees don't go to work. Marx fights for the immediate need of workings, in this case, a federal minimum wage increase would not be a topic open for debate. The workers are vulnerable to these increase or decrease in wage. Marx would likely not care for the vagueness of the economic factors when it comes to the minimum wage. Some may theorize that an increase in wage will decrease employment. But according to Marx as long as there is the bourgeoisie, there will be workers, and as long as there are workers there will be jobs, and there will be communists. Our concept of freedom is based on the idea the we are able to consume. If we can buy things we want, then we are free. It is the external economies that create our societal values when it comes to working. The capitalist grasp thus forces us into work so we can consume and give more money to capitalists fueling the system in a never ending spiral. All our efforts will always go into the capitalist class, and if we refuse to pay we are likely to suffer. In the Marxist view, capitalists are aware of the threat that working middle-class has. When they stand up, the oppressors will ship the out to countries where they cannot have influence. It's an issue. Capitalisms one downfall seems to be easily avoided by, just making them go away. Marxism calls for a violent revolution, and since capitalists cannot just keep shipping workers away, violence may become a scary, but realistic, way of destroying leveling the playing feild.