Dear Mr./Mrs. President

With the upcoming presidential election, one of the big topics is what we should do with the minimum wage. Personally, I think we shouldn’t raise the minimum wage because it will hurt the economy, make it harder to keep businesses and cost a lot of jobs.

Raising the minimum wage will impact the economy in a negative way.  If the average pay rate of the country goes up then so does the cost of living, which leads to inflation which ruins the economy and will make it even harder to maintain a life, family, and a job. When a person loses their job or has a pay cut, they have less money to support their families and live a happy life, which can lead to arguments and divorce when there isn't enough money to support the family. Here is some evidence of how this would cause economic issues “Raising the minimum wage will increase unemployment rates since workers will be seeking jobs that provide a higher wage than the average company. This due to the fact that employers will not be able to supply all workers with a high wage.” says Nicole Spindler. What this means is there will be more unemployment because of the lack of available jobs which leads to people being paid unemployment which in turn the government and taxpayers have to pay for which leads to higher taxes due to more people needing the jobs and fewer people being able to pay these taxes which will eventually just lead to mass job loss and more lower class people.

Raising the minimum wage will make it harder for businesses to continue and stay in business because of the increase to payment per worker. “Now after owning my own company, I understand that not every person I hire is worth 15$ an hour. If I would have to pay them all that wage as a minimum, then the people who really know what they our doing would cost more than 20$ to 25$ an hour. This would cause me to raise my rates to over 50$ an hour. It would make it very hard for a company to get by.” says Brandon Elsing. What he is saying that raising the minimum wage to 15$ wouldn't just make everyone cost 15$, people who were already payed over the minimum wage would have to be payed even more. With this, business owners will have to start cutting jobs to maintain the company, or cut the pay of everyone that already gets paid over the minimum wage.

Raising the minimum wage will also cost a lot of jobs in the U.S. “Over time, minimum wage hikes will discourage future job growth and employers will seek ways to reduce the artificially higher labor costs by cutting back on hours, providing less on-the-job training and switching to more automation.” says the Fraser institute. What this means is that when the minimum wage goes up businesses will have to change, but no good will come from it only negativity towards the working people. Unemployment is already a problem in the U.S., but if we raise the minimum wage there will be even more, this leading to not enough people being able to pay taxes which leads to a weak government or a greater cost on taxes to those people who maintained their jobs or businesses owners causing them to suffer in debt. Also, for the people that think that a business wouldn't just fire a majority of their workers, this idea is wrong.  Companies will replace someone with a machine;  Machines require no training or breaks and they don't have to be paid. “ Economists at Trinity and Miami Universities used Congressional Budget Office methodology to conclude that over 24,000 jobs would be lost in Wisconsin at a $12 minimum wage.” Just by raising the minimum wage to $12 would cost 24,000 jobs imagine if we raised it to $15, the amount of unemployment would destroy the country.

In conclusion, we shouldn’t raise the minimum wage because it would hurt the economy.  It would make it more difficult to own and maintain a company and would cause a lot of unemployment. It’s important that everyone knows these consequences so they know who to vote for and what they should stand for, because this will change and decide the fate of this country.