Fast Food Wages

Fast Food Wages This article is mainly about how much people who work at fast food places get paid and how much they should get paid. While both Mr. Mark Weisbrot and Mr. James Sherk agree that people who work at fast food places don’t get paid a lot, Weisbrot argues that people who work at fast food places should be getting more money. He believes that they should be paid around $15 per hour and that minimum wage should at least be $17 per hour. For example, he writes “If the federal minimum wage had increased since 1968 the way it did in prior decades, it would be $17 per hour today. Not a meager $7.25.”(Page 3) This shows that he believes that the minimum wage shouldn’t be only $7.25. Mr. Sherk argues that fast food jobs are only a starting point and they shouldn’t get paid more. One of his points was that if you raise their salary, companies wouldn’t be able to afford that, causing them to either shut the company down, fire some people causing less available jobs, or have to raise their prices which will drive away their customers. For example, he said, “If Congress forced fast-food restaurants to pay $15 an hour, they would have to get a lot more productive to justify those higher costs. That would mean replacing current workers with machines and hiring fewer, more skilled workers to maintain them.”(Page 4) This show that he believes if we raise the minimum wage, there will be fewer jobs. In my opinion, I would have to side with Sherk. I believe that he is correct because I also think that fast food places are only a starting point to getting the career that you want. Since you aren’t that educated and don’t have a lot of experience, I don’t think you should be paid over $10 an hour. Not until you are well educated and have more experience are you ready to be paid more than the minimum wage.
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