Minimum Wage

             There are many opinions today on Minimum wage. Some think it should be raised, others think it should stay the same or be lowered? Whose right? The majority of minimum wage workers are teenagers, for their purposes the rate of compensation is appropriate. However, the main concern is when a person has to work a minimum wage job with a family, they may have to do this for a myriad of reasons: lack of education, little job skills, felony record, drug addiction or any other besetting predicament. The fact that minimum wage is too little to live on is not the problem; the problem is that the cost of living is too high. Personally I would much rather have a lower rent and heating bill every month than an hourly boost in my paycheck. Yet there is a double edged sword to the simply solution to raising the minimum wage.

             A minimum wage increase raises inflation and forces employers to lower the number of hours that can be worked or at worst fire employees. This would remove a family’s only resource albeit a poor one. The fact that families have to pay so much for health care, child care, transportation, and housing is creating a stranglehold on today’s families in America.

            Exploring possible solutions for lowering cost of living I believe is the only solution. This can be done by funding and popularizing public transit. Creating more bus stations with convenient routes coupled with a campaign highlighting “the new and improved” transit system more people would use it. I would also lower the monthly rent for those leasing apartments. These ideas and other innovations of lowering the cost of living will relieve the pressure upon our state’s minimum wage workers.