Across the world, endless hours of work and customer service for little pay affects the lives of everyday people. Citizens of The United Kingdom, South Korea, China, Brazil, and many other countries, have implemented extensive effort for a short wage that does not help them financially in terms of caring for themselves or their families to the fullest degree. Unlike those regions, United States citizens’ have the constitutional right to fight for these funds to increase, so financial dependencies can no longer be an ongoing problem for the lower class American.

 Knowing we—the people—have that right to protest, the federal minimum wage budget has seen many revisions over many generations in the United States. In 1938 the first-ever minimum wage was implemented at 25¢ an hour, which equates to at least 4 dollars an hour today. Skipping to 1990, the minimum wage was raised from $3.35 to $3.80 an hour. Most recently, increasing to $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage has done nothing but rise over the preceding eighty years.

Although one open-ended question remains unanswered: Should we increase the federal minimum wage? This is quite understandable as prices for goods have increased substantially over the decades. However,  my short answer is — no. Raising the minimum wage salary is detrimental to society because it would cause inflation, increase the poverty rate, unemployment rate, and decrease the economy’s overall stability.

 As of 2016, there were 43.1 million citizens in poverty in the U.S. or roughly 12.7 percent, meaning at least 1.2 million more people have become financially inadequate since the year 2000 according to Kaiser Family Foundation. In July of 2009, the minimum wage was raised to $7.25 an hour, but the wage increase still caused these 1.2 million people to fall into poverty. While intended to help these individuals, increasing the federal minimum wage did not help the poverty levels go down, showing that wage upgrades do not help those impoverished. Instead, it puts more money in the pockets of part-time workers, illustrating that the households that use minimum wage jobs as secondary incomes, or part-time positions, are those who would truly benefit from the raise. 

Since compensations would be raised, poverty would increase because mandatory job requirements and qualifications would increase on applications. Meaning, many of these impoverished individuals without adequate skill levels would struggle to make a living. They would either be laid-off or would no longer be able to live up to the necessities of their job without further training. Therefore, the unemployment rate would undeniably go up. 

Inflation put simply, is when consumers have to pay more for their goods because labor costs have increased. When a raise in wages occurs, so will the cost of consumer goods, commodities, etc.  The resulting, suffering economy will have higher taxes, stricter application processes, and recessions. The lower our economy’s inflation, the better off our country will be due to an increase in available jobs and a higher standard of living. 

 According to Paul Conway, raising the minimum wage mostly affects small businesses, and two out of three jobs in America are created by small businesses.  In doing so, these businesses will be unable to pay their workers the legal rate and will be forced to let go of some of their employees. Although raising the wage seems like it would help, it will negatively affect small businesses and increase the demand for jobs, putting them in a state of economic instability. Further confirming that minimum wage accretion is a nuisance better to be left as a thought.