Dear Future President

Minimum wage does not help the economy or the people struggling in poverty. You are supposed to be paid for what your work is worth, and inflating that worth has an extremely negative impact on workers. It forces businesses to fire their employees and cut back on their products. It causes people to lose their jobs and families to struggle. Minimum wage should be repealed, and here is why.

Minimum wage was established in 1938 at 25¢ per hour by president FDR. It has steadily rose ever since, leaving millions struggling to find jobs and stalling the great depression until the economic boost of WWII could push us out. Minimum wage was a bad idea in the first place and has only been pushed into a larger and larger issue over time, from 25¢ an hour to 7.50$ today.

Minimum wage affects everyone by crippling the economy, but in the end it is the people in poverty who are hurt the most. “Employers will either refrain from hiring the potential employees or fire those who don't provide value in excess of the legally mandated minimum wage” says Ari Armstrong in his opposing viewpoint article, ¨raising minimum wage laws won't reduce poverty¨. In the quote he is saying that inflating labor value, minimum wage makes employers hire less people. So competition for entry level jobs is fierce, making it difficult for a low skilled worker to gain an entry level job over a higher skilled worker, whereas without minimum wage both could have been hired. This is how minimum wage hurts people in poverty the most.

Some people believe that minimum wage helps the economy by causing more money to circulate, but that is not true. The amount of money being paid to the employes stays the same, it is just more heavily concentrated on fewer people. As George Risman said in opposing viewpoints ¨How Minimum Wage Laws Increase Poverty, ¨The payment of the monopolists' higher wages will come at the expense of reduced expenditures for labor and capital goods elsewhere in the economic system, which must result in more unemployment.¨ Minimum wage does not cause more money to circulate. It just doesn't go to as many people.

The cause of the issue is not something that can be solved directly, because the issue is that people support minimum wage and want to increase it. The president doesn't have absolute power when it comes to laws, so in order to change this issue you must have public support, so educate people. Dedicate time to telling people about this issue and try and change the public opinion. And for any reader that isn't the president of the united states, this is your job to. It is your responsibility as an american citizen, or even a habitant of our planet, to educate america about the extremely negative effects of an enforced minimum wage.