Minimum Wage: if it Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix it

Specific Purpose Statement: To persuade my audience that altering Minimum wage laws could lead to unintended consequences spanning across our entire economy.

Thesis: Our Minimum wage laws have been in place for quite some time, implementing change to these laws will result in changes that will effect those who are making minimum wage, these changes will come with negative effects that outweigh the skim amount of positive effects that are intended.

[Attention-Getter] Imagine you have a family with two children and you have a minimum wage job trying to support them, and one day a new policy is implemented which raises the minimum wage amount, and you go to work the next morning and find out that due to this increase in pay, you were fired because they cannot afford to keep you.

[Reveal topic and relate to audience]: This is just one example of many, that will come as a result of increasing minimum wage.

Minimum wage jobs although may not be glamorous provide a majority of the jobs throughout the United States, and give students and people who are attempting to start there lives an opportunity to join a work force.

That is what makes this topic so prevalent to all of us, is everyone has to start somewhere and changing this policy could make it extremely difficult for people to find their “start”. As you Guys know I did this topic for my invitational speech and have done some pretty extensive research on this policy.

I feel a connection to this because I have worked a minimum wage job before like most of you, and throughout my research have found out how important this is for people across the United States.

So with my research in the past and the research I did in preparing for this speech I feel that I have enough knowledge on the subject to discuss the policy here with you all today.

Our Minimum wage laws have been in place for quite some time, implementing change to these laws will result in changes that will effect those who are making minimum wage, these changes will come with negative effects that outweigh the skim of positive effects that are intended.

The impacts of changing this policy not only effects those who already have a minimum wage job but those in the future who will need a minimum wage job.

While making more money sound enticing to many the unintended consequences that come with them will have negative effect on the economy.

I will provide instances that demonstrate how altering this policy will result in huge problems in the economy and for those who are a part of it.

Increasing Minimum Wage comes with a magnitude of negative effects and these issues are being made very clear before anything comes to fruition.

According to, The effects of Minimum Wage increase on Employment and family income, “Moreover, the increased earnings for some workers would be accompanied by reductions in real (inflation-adjusted) income for the people who became jobless because of the minimum-wage increase, for business owners, and for consumers facing higher prices.” ( Congress, 6). As you can see from this article from congress that this change in policy although increase earnings for some will get less pay as well more people will lose their jobs because of this change.

In another article It discusses Seattle whom has already increased the minimum wage to 15$ the article is titled, Minimum Wage and Job Loss: One Alarming Seattle Study Is Not the Last Word states, “Seattle was the first city in the United States to raise the minimum wage substantially, so a University of Washington study released last month showing big job losses has received a lot of attention and prompted many an I-told-you-so.” (Dube,1) This shows that increasing the minimum wage has already resulted in loss of jobs.

Later in the article put forth by the congressional budget office it states, “ Employers might respond to an increase in the minimum wage in ways other than boosting prices or substituting other inputs for low-wage workers. For example, they might partly offset a minimum-wage increase by reducing other costs, including workers’ fringe benefits (such as health insurance or pensions) and job perks (such as free meals).” (Congress 11). In a short excerpt from David Henderson short piece titled Most of the benefits of a Minimum Wage Increase would not go to Poor Households, He states, “to the extent they are able, employers will offset the higher minimum wage by reducing non-money components of worker compensation.” (Clark).

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “1.8 million workers with wages at or below the federal minimum made up 2.3 percent of all hourly-paid workers.” (BLS, 1). This was in 2017 and has been projected to be up to about 3 million now and 4 percent.

Although this seems like a small number, that is 1.8 million lives and now an estimated 3 million lives that have the potential to be negatively affected from the policy change of increasing minimum wage.

Avoiding these massive issues and potential issues could be avoided by voting against increasing the minimum wage. I think that if you look at what the change in policy is supposed to help which is giving people more money can backfire rather quickly. This is because raising the minimum wage can cause inflation in products meaning that living will become more expensive which defeats the purpose of giving workers more money. This increase of money could also result in their benefits such as insurance and other things that were listed in the article above being stripped away. These benefits can add up very quickly and if not included with the new increase in minimum wage policy will put an even greater financial burden on these workers. So the so called benefits of raising the minimum wage seem like it is very counterproductive.

On top of the potential of increased financial burdens, there is a decrease in available jobs and an increase in likelihood of being fired. So your job security is gone and it will be more difficult to find another job as business’ will be more reluctant to hire more people as they will have to be more stingy with their pay roll with the increase in the minimum they can pay their employees.

In an article it discusses another main point about this policy that proves its worth the way it is, is in an article titled The Effects of Minimum Wages on employment states, “Moreover, fewer jobs for the least-skilled are most important from a policy perspective, since they are the ones the minimum wage is intended to help.”(Neumark 1). So as you can see altering this policy in the manner that is proposed defeats the very purpose of why it is implemented in the first place.

My plan is relatively simple, as my side is working against changing the pre existing policy.

We as a society need to look at the reason this policy is where it is. In order to figure out why this policy is the way it is, lets look at how Minimum wage is determined in order to do this we will look at The Official Gazette where it says, “Minimum wage rates are determined by factors such as poverty threshold, prevailing wage rates as determined by the Labor Force Survey, and socio-economic indicators (i.e. inflation, employment figures, Gross Regional Domestic Product, among others), which insures better workers protection.” (The Gazette).

Now that we have informed ourselves of what factors in to determining minimum wage rates, it should be clear that it is fair and takes in too account the potential problems that could come to from changing this policy (ie) inflation.

With this knowledge the last step of my plan now that we have the knowledge on the subject to make a decision on this policy we must reject the policy calling for a raise in the minimum wage.

The plan I proposed will ensure that there is no adverse “ side effects” from altering the minimum wage policy.

For example, people will not have to fear that they will lose their job.

Employees do not have to worry about losing the benefits that their job is providing them and their families.

This plan also requires no changes to the current policy which makes my goal of keeping and maintaining the current minimum wage policy easily obtainable and very practical.

The biggest counterargument that goes against my plan is that these low-wage employees cannot live off the current minimum wage, so the policy needs to be changed with an increase in the minimum wage.

While my plan does not offer increased pay it does counter the same problem that increasing minimum wage is attempting to combat as my plan will prevent inflation in prices which will increase the cost of living thus making it even more difficult to live off minimum wage.

My plan also counters this argument as if these employees are receiving benefits and they end up getting those benefits revoked from the increase in minimum wage they will be left with the burden of having to take portions of their new elevated minimum wage to pay for those benefits which will result in even less money being retained from there job.

Minimum Wage is being heavily discussed by policymakers and the issues I brought up with the alteration of the existing policy will come with more negatives then positives.

As the minimum wage is prevalent in today's society especially with voting season here this policy needs to remain the way it is.

This policy needs to stay the way it is because if you alter it, it will essentially disrupt and erase the main cause of why it exists in the first place; which is too provide low-skilled workers with a job. As well as changing the policy will ultimately create more financial burdens on these low wage workers due to loss of benefits and an increase or inflation of cost of living.

I proposed a very simple plan , that of which is just simply voting against the change which will prevent the increase in minimum wage.

This will keep workers there jobs, prevent new financial burdens for them, and continue to give opportunities for people who have low skills to have an income.

In closing, I ask you all to vote against this policy change in order to prevent the negative consequences that come with it. Thank you.

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