Raising the Minimum Wage Will Not Reduce Poverty

A large part of labor is to prevent poverty. This is why our government has set up a minimum wage, to make sure all employees are getting paid at least a certain amount. People who get paid minimum wage are still below the poverty line though. This is why some people argue that the minimum wage needs to be raised. David Henderson does not believe that this is true though. He wrote an article on how raising minimum wage would not reduce poverty. In this article he talks about how increasing minimum wage would greatly increase the costs of major companies who have many minimum wage workers. The costs of the company may even increase enough to the point that employees would get fired. He does not believe that it is a fair trade to give some people more money at the expense of giving others none. He also argues that most people receiving minimum wage jobs are teenagers and young adults who have no overheads, so they do not need the extra money. I receive minimum wage for my job, and even though i would like more money for my job I will admit that it is not exactly necessary. Henderson's third main argument is that the cost to pay for the minimum wage increase would be taken out of employee benefits. The slightly higher pay would not be worth all of the benefits that workers would lose. Although I don't completely agree with his statement, his ideas do make sense, so raising minimum wage may not resolve all the poverty in the U.S.




Henderson, David R. "Raising the Minimum Wage Will Not Reduce Poverty." Opposing Viewpoints: Poverty. Ed. Viqi Wagner. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2007. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Deerfield High School. 10 Feb. 2010 http://find.galegroup.com/ovrc/infomark.do?&contentSet=GSRC&type=retrieve&tabID=T010&prodId=OVRC&docId=EJ3010159283&source=gale&srcprod=OVRC&userGroupName=deer63488&version=1.0.