November 2, 2016.

                                                      Keeping the Same Minimum Wage

Dear: president

     Many people are complaining about the minimum wage is to low in the United States. People feel that minimum wage should be able to let you live in America without any assistance from the government. I feel it should not be raised because it will hurt many big businesses and it won't peruse the attended people in poverty, which will hurt the economy more than it will help it. The reasons why it won't be smart to raise the minimum wage is that it will make the price of product increase and more people will be laid off. Also if the government increases the minimum wage it wouldn't help the projected targets.

     First raising the national minimum wage would make a lot of products and goods more expensive. Raising the minimum wage would make products and goods more expensive because the owners of the companies would have to pay their workers more money to work for them. So the company would have to raise their prices on their product to gain more money to pay their workers. Senator Tom Harkin and US Representative George Miller have came to a conclusion that the products would increase in price if the minimum wage was raised. I feel that all of this evidence and these statements make complete sense to the economy. This shows how raising the minimum wage would hurt our nation's economy.

     The second reason that raising the minimum wage isn't good is that it wouldn't target the people it's meant for. Raising the minimum wage is suppose to help poverty by a substantial amount but it would actually only go to 7% of people in poverty, so it's very poorly targeted. Douglas Holtz-Eakin from American Action Forum (AAF) did research on this and figured out that only 7% of poverty people would be affected by it. I agree with what he is saying and I feel that out of all of the people in poverty in America, 7% is a small percent. This exclaims how raising minimum wage wouldn't even affect a large majority of the people in poverty.

     Many people oppose that raising the minimum wage wouldn't help the non-elderly Americans in poverty. Heather Boushey (Executive Director and Chief Economist of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth) argued that raising the minimum wage would largely reduce the poverty rate for non-elderly Americans and it would drop the poverty rate a lot by 2016. I don't think that people in poverty will be helped by increasing minimum wage because sense America hasn't slowly raised minimum wage throughout the decades, a large increase by about two times the current minimum wage is now would barely help the projected people in poverty. Douglas Holtz-Eakin from AAF disagrees with Heather Boushey and he says that there are better ways to approach this problem, he states "There are the Earned Income Tax Credit and other such subsidies." I feel strongly for this topic because I have a brother that is enlisted in the military, he has to go through hell and work his but off to be were he is. It annoys me to see that people working at fast food restaurants get payed more then some people risking their life for this country. Raising the minimum wage would not help because it wouldn't target the people in poverty, that's why we shouldn't raise the minimum wage either.

     In conclusion many Americans rely too much on the government and find the easiest way to live life. To fix this, the government should not raise the minimum wage. It will lead to increase of products and more workers laid off because company's will have to raise their prices to pay their workers and they will lay workers off because they can't afford to pay them anymore. Also raising the minimum wage would barely affect the targeted people in poverty. My position makes the most sense because if you raise the minimum wage it would really help the people you want to help and many companies would lose money also many workers would be laid off. It would continue to make people want to work harder to be more successful, which in return would benefit our economy. I would like for you to not raise the minimum wage and urge the low-income Americans to try to be more successful, strive for a better life, and help give them more opportunity to be great.

Sincerely,

Ethan