A recent topic in discussion among society is raising the minimum wage.
This stems from the fact that it is expensive to function/live in today's society. With this cost of living comes the cost of furthering education as well or even the cost of maintaining/finishing secondary education. All of this combined has led people to feel the struggle of the lack of money with minimum wage paying jobs.
Before I discuss why I believe that raising the minimum wage is NOT the answer, I would like to note that I fully understand the concept behind the thought. As I mentioned before, it is very difficult to function in today's society with a low amount of money. The poverty rates are high and 1% owns half of the world's wealth.
Unfortunately, I do not believe that it will be helpful.
It decreases the value to furthering your education.
One of the motivating factors for furthering your education is the chance to earn more money. If we raise minimum wage to what it is projected to be (around $15 an hour), this is the average hourly wage for someone who has just received their bachelor's degree.
Speaking from experience, I have recently accepted a position as a Behavior Therapist and I am making $15 an hour. Essentially, that pay is for the experience and the education that I have received and the skills I have learned because of it. If the minimum wage is increased to this type of wage, we are taking away a major motivator to furthering education. If you can make the same amount of money with a bachelor's that you can with a high school diploma, why go to college?
I understand that college is not for everyone. School is hard. But because of the hard work you go through, the ending salary is a reward for that hard work. Raising the minimum wage takes away from that reward, leaving no reinforcer for the difficult times that come about in this level of education.
Everything will get more expensive.
Here is a scenario for you:
You go to the grocery store to get your food for the week or the month. You notice that the prices of your usual grocery haul are much higher. When you go to check out, you also notice that there are only two or three lanes open, all entirely full. You are still confused as to why this is.
The reason is that minimum wage is now $15 an hour and it is too expensive to hire that many workers to do something that the self-scanners can do for cheaper (which we are already running into where we are now). also, the price of the goods has gone up because the price to produce the goods is now much higher due to the workers who were only making $8-$9 an hour are now making upwards of $15 an hour.
If we raise minimum wages in the manner we are discussing, the cost of living will continue to go up. This is going to include rent. If property owners know that people are making more who are working minimum wage jobs, they are going to start charging more for rent, thinking the people can afford it.
When in all reality, they are at the same place they were when making $8-$9 an hour. It is unrealistic to expect that raising the basic wage of workers will not affect the cost of everything else that we do. Whether you are making $8-$9 an hour or $15, the minimum wage is still the minimum and everything around you will continue to get higher and higher. Essentially, you will still struggle.
Jobs will be harder to find and keep.
Raising minimum wage will make it so that employers are hiring fewer people at entry level positions and having fewer people working in the positions that they already have. If the minimum wage is raised, businesses could even shut down due to the fact that they can't afford to pay their entry-level people $15 an hour.
Imagine if your favorite, hole in the wall coffee shop closed because they could no longer afford to pay the people to work and to keep the shop running. I don't know about you, but that would probably ruin my day entirely.
Along with this, people would not be able to move up in companies as easily. There would not be a desire for someone to reward hard workers because at a basic level of logical thinking, $15 an hour is enough of an award. As mentioned earlier, you will see less cashiers in grocery stores because of something like this. There will be less full-time minimum wage positions because they won't be able to afford benefits on top of the new $15 an hour wage that they have to provide.
Minimum wage is meant to be a stepping stone piece of a career or to fill in some income while gaining an education or in between jobs. It is not meant to be a complete income. I understand that for some people it is and that it just how it has to be. But, raising the minimum wage is not going to be as helpful as it sounds.
The idea is 100% a double-edged sword.
You have people making more money but the money is going to spent in the same amount because things now cost more.
As frustrating as it is, our society is built around furthering education or learning a skill to make decent money. College is not for everyone, I know. If you are one of the people that it isn't the right fit for, go learn a skill. Volunteer with programs like AmeriCorps or the PeaceCorps, where you learn skills and gain experiences in places you might not get without it. Find something you like to do and stick with it. If you are stuck at a minimum wage job, speak with your managers on how to gain chances for advancement. Keep working hard and things will pay off.
But raising the minimum wage is not the pay off we are looking for. It will hurt everyone in the long run and people will still be poor and the rich will still be rich.
Hopefully this has stirred up some type of deeper thought within you. Voting season is right around the corner and I think it is important that we continue to think about these things deeper than what looks good on the outside.
man running in forestPhoto by 
