Dear Next President:

The economy greatly impacts the lives of American citizens. For every dollar that a male full time worker makes, a female full time worker only makes 80 cents. The minimum wage is only $7.25 and there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor. There are many ways I believe that we could improve our economy.

First, I believe that we should work on closing the gender wage gap. This is important to me because as a female, I feel that it is unfair if a male with the same experience and education is getting paid higher than a women with the same experience and education. Closing the gender wage gap is not only important to me but it should be important to everyone because closing the gap will help improve the lives of many families and help improve economy. According to careersingovernment.com, “Closing the gender wage gap can mean the difference between living above or below the poverty line, between having access to high-quality child care, schools, higher education, or only being able to afford poorer quality alternatives, no pre-kindergarten, or any post-secondary education.” This proves that working to close the gender wage gap will help improve the lives of many families. On the same website it also said “Overall, unequal pay has been stunting economic growth. Gains that women could make through equal pay could contribute to gains in the GDP at a rate equivalent to adding another state the size of Virginia.” This proves that closing the wage gap will contribute to improving the economy.

Not only should we work to close the gender wage gap, we should also work to close the rich-poor gap. This is important to me because I believe it is unfair that the rich are becoming richer and the poor are not becoming any richer. It is important to the world because the rich-poor gap creates an unequal society and unequal societies have high unemployment and are unstable. According to Newsela, the rich-poor gap creates many problems “including poverty, lack of job growth, class division and social disorder.” This proves that the rich-poor gap creates an unstable society because there is a lot of tension between different people.

Lastly, I believe we should raise the minimum wage. Although there are some costs, the gains outweigh the costs when it comes to raising the minimum wage. This is important to me because I will start working soon. This is important to the world because raising the minimum wage will help many people come out of poverty and it will benefit millions of people. According to US News “In particular, a minimum wage hike to $10.10 would raise average family incomes below the poverty line by 2.8 percent and cut the number of people living in poverty by 900,000.” This proves that pushing the minimum wage higher will help populous people pass the poverty line. On US News it also says “Millions could benefit: Raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $12 would lift pay for 35 million workers, or 1 in 4 employees nationwide, according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute.” This proves that raising the minimum wage will benefit millions of people.

Sincerely,Ivy