303 Ashe Avenue

Raleigh, NC 27606

October 22, 2016

Dear President,

Do you give change to homeless on the street? Some people make less than $1 a day. Amaryah and I have the topic of poverty. Poverty ranges into many different areas, but we are focusing on the specific topic of minimum wage. We think you should raise the minimum wage.

The current minimum wage is $7.25 per hour in North Carolina. We think we should raise the minimum wage to $10. According to raisetheminimumwage.com, some states like California and Massachusetts already have their minimum wage up to or higher than $10 (July,22,2016). In 2018, California, Connecticut, Washington, Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts plan to meet our goal of $10 for our minimum wage! Over the 3 years (2015- 2018) 23 states have stayed at the constant rate of $7.25-$ 7.50 as the minimum wage. We should raise the minimum wage because some people do not have enough money to take care of themselves and end up on the streets. If you do not have a place to live, you can’t get a job. Therefore, you can’t take care of yourself the way you need to.

We have done research on a scenario. The scenario is: You are a single mother with a newborn baby and you are a McDonald’s cashier. You live in Raleigh, North Carolina and you own an apartment. Would you have enough money to take care of yourself and your child? Well an interesting fact, according to Payscale.com is that women at McDonald’s get paid $1 more than men do. At McDonald’s there are 66% females compared to males. The highest you can get paid is $20,747 a year working as a cashier. As it states on Parenting.com, in the first year of raising a child you will spend approximately $12,000. And then in the first two years you will spend at the least $12,500. On Numbeo.com, taking care of yourself monthly adds up to $810.16. If you multiply that by 12, that would be 9,721.92. Which means the total adds up to $21,721.92. That does not include personal reasons such as shopping.Therefore you would not have enough money to take care of yourself and the baby.

The President should raise the minimum wage because if you are going to make the world a better place you have to make sure that everyone has a roof over their head. If we raise the minimum wage that would mean hourly workers would have higher income and that would mean families with higher pay. With the income that we have now, we should come up with a solution to make sure single mothers can take care of their child.

Sincerely,

Amaryah and Tiffany

Wake Young Women's Leadership Academy

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Works Cited

“Average Hourly Rate for McDonald’s Corporation Employees.” PayScale, www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=McDonald%27s_Corporation/Hourly_Rate.

Dimock, Michael. “States With Minimum Wages Higher Than the Federal.” Pew Research center, Mihael Dimock, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/23/5-facts-about-the-minimum-wage/.

Harris, Diane. “The Cost of Raising a Baby.” Parenting, www.parenting.com/article/the-cost-of-raising-a-baby.

“7 Facts about the minimum wage: U.S.A Department.” https://blog.dol.gov/2016/07/22/7-facts-about-the-minimum-wage/, blog.dol.gov/2016/07/22/7-facts-about-the-minimum-wage/.

Shah, Anup. “Causes of Poverty.” Global Issues, www.globalissues.org/issue/2/causes-of-poverty.

“The truth about the minimum wage.” Youtube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=siW0YAAfX6I.

“Whats the Minimum Wage in Your State?” Raise the Minimum Wage, www.raisetheminimumwage.com/pages/minimum-wage-state.