Pros And Cons Of Raising Minimum Wage

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Raising the Minimum Wage Despite Modern Misconceptions

The classic argument against raising minimum wage is a competitive economic model, the basic economic model that misconstrues the important and detrimental aspects of the modern economy and the greed that is employed by large corporations and their prime investors. The perversion of the model funnels many that are less informed on how economics and ethics work into holding on to the false belief that minimum wage is an elitist motive disguised as a liberal and humanitarian idea that actually destroys the opportunities of the less accredited, mostly citing detriments to the polar extremes of the labor market, the young and the elderly demographics, who
Paul Wolfson and Dale Belman conducted a meta-analysis (left) of publications from economists on the debate since 2000, rating different studies by their variations in rigorous methodologies, concluding that, "The largest in magnitude are... positive [and] statistically significant... Several are economically irrelevant though statistically significant and several others [are] slightly larger but...statistically insignificant" (10) in term of
Productivity and value of increased will to provide higher quality labor has the potential to rise dramatically when employees are offered a wage that they can support themselves on in a modern age. In a data brief in July 2012 by the National Employment Law Project, Big Business, Corporate Profit, and the Minimum Wage, the current wage of $7.25 “in terms of purchasing power,” has a value that is “30 percent lower today than it was in 1968” (1), while large corporations are reporting record profits in 2011 at a combined $1.97 trillion (Reilly). If the minimum wage were increased, big businesses like McDonalds could see employees’ efficacy rise to reorganize and restructure work environments to produce higher performance standards from the increased motivation from employees due to the want to keep their jobs or the reciprocity of the increased pay, and greater work intensity as well (Schmitt, 12). The competitive model also assumes that the workplace is operating at its greatest efficiency with perfection, having no room for improvement because it is too costly to implement new strategies and maintain practices that continually maximize efficiency (Kaufman 3). Another important factor in the increase of the minimum wage is that it gives more spending power to the low wage workers, increasing the economic stimuli and potentially offsetting the wage increase, though not