Dear President,

Imagine working at only minimum wage. How would you pay for your bills? How would your life style change? There are many things that you use money for. What happens when you don’t have as much as you have today. Minimum wage affects the economy of a lot of countries, especially the US. The US economy affects a lot of countries who rely highly on our trade,and by raising it we could improve and develop the economy of potentially the United States and many other countries.

People who work at minimum wage don’t have the life most people have. Most of us can afford shoes, socks, clothing, food, paying your bills and still have a little more for what you want, but not everyone has this life. Some people have to work day and night to pay their bills and get their basic life needs by living check to check, eating the most basic meal they can and wearing the cheapest cloths. It’s not because they want this lifestyle, but because minimum wage is not enough for people to live off of. They work two jobs and are still trying to survive and feed themselves. The Americans with children are the ones who suffer the most, you can barely feed one person with minimum wage; how are you supposed to feed a whole family? Usually, families who do work at minimum wage have another person in the family working as well to get by with their family. Minimum wage is not always going to stay the same because the cost of living is getting higher and higher.

We try to raise minimum wage when inflation increases. The cost of living is higher and, therefore, more money is needed in order to live. When minimum wage increases then prices increase and when prices increase, inflation eventually will end up increasing, it’s a never ending cycle. We all want money to pay for our bills, so we work in order to get money. Working at minimum wage would only get you about $14,000 per year working full time. Working at this rate, you wouldn’t be able to pay all your bills because the average cost to get by in America is almost $16,000. Now this is where welfare plays a role to try and help people pay their bills. If the government would raise minimum wage, then they wouldn’t spend as much on welfare, and they would have more money to spend on different things.

Although some people opposed raising minimum wage because skilled workers wouldn’t get jobs and more companies would take the worker who would work for the minimum wage prices. Also, raising minimum wage would raise prices because demand for things would be higher. The more money people have the more people are going to buy so the demand would raise, which would make prices raise for companies and need more quantity of the product being produced. But making more product would lead to getting more supply, and in order to get more supply, we would need to trade because supply is always limited. With this happening, more jobs would be created because more people are needed to keep up with their demand.

Instead of the government trying to lower government spending, they could raise minimum wage, making more people pay higher taxes which helps us get more public goods and less money would be spent on welfare because the percent of people on the poverty line wouldn’t be as big as it is now. The average American pays about 25-40% of their check towards taxes depending on how much you make. If more people are making more, then, more people are getting taxed a higher percentage which leads into the government having more than enough money. Helping the amount of people at the poverty line decreased. Trying to lower the poverty line is a main goal for most countries in America almost 15% of Americans are below the poverty line. Minimum wage has a big affect on the poverty line, the economy wouldn’t be able to function without minimum wage.

If we take away minimum wage we will be left with all these people that are getting paid low. They get paid low because Americans are greedy and want it their way. If the government doesn’t regulate then companies want to run free and pay people as low as they want. You do have cases in which some countries don’t have minimum wage. They rely heavily on trade, so when that trading stops what happens to their economy it goes down the tank because they can’t get the resources they need in order to keep their jobs and economy steady. Only 9 countries don’t have minimum wage and they rely on trade. The U.S. is the biggest exporter in the world and with it the U.S those nine countries wouldn’t be able to survive.

Minimum wage affects everything such as prices, unemployment, poverty line, trade, the GDP and more. If minimum wage would be raised it would create more jobs and have less unemployment, but we would just end up with inflation again leading us to raise minimum wage again. We could keep it the same because their will never be a one perfect minimum wage, but if we keep it here then it will be harder for people to get by because inflation happens all the time. There are many factors that go into the economy and what happens to it but minimum wage is one of the biggest factors.

Sincerely,

Kelly