By Aimee Cash
Edited by Wahida Ifat
“It’s time to give America a raise,” said
President Barack Obama. That got me thinking- just how
exactly would that work? Raising minimum wage has been
tossed around lately, as protestors have called for raising
the federal minimum wage. They always seem to say that they
can’t support a family on minimum wage, which is true-
you can’t. Not very well, anyway. That is not the
purpose of jobs that pay minimum wage, however. Entry level
jobs are not designed to be full-time, feed a family jobs.
They are the jobs that highschool students get to earn some
spending money, or to pay for gas in that car they got for
their birthday.
Still, that was beside the point.
Raising the minimum wage is a rough step, and I wondered
about the repercussions that would fall back on the workers
who currently are making minimum wage. If companies are
forced to raise wages, who is to say that they will not cut
hours? Or cut back on staffing? Speaking at a Costco,
President Obama proposed a federal minimum wage of $10.10 an
hour.
I know that my job currently pays below the suggested $10.10
minimum, so will a raise mean a cut in my hours? It is hard
to say for sure, but one thing is certain, President Obama
sounds as though he will not take ‘no’ for an
answer on this one. Now it is up to Congress to decide if he
continues forward with this course of action.
What happens after that, only time will tell.
($10.10 number pulled from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/obama-minimum-wage_n_4687859.html )
I thought the same thing. I don’t think anyone should try and provide for a family off minimum wage and we should all work harder to live better. My mom is a teacher and we actually talked about this. Raising minimum wage to $10.10 would only be a few dollars short of what a degree-holding teacher would make. That’s crazy! It doesn’t seem like anyone is planning on raising anyone else’s wages simultaneously.