Minimum Wage - The Dubious Policy :: essays papers

Minimum Wage The Questionable constitution As early as 6.00 am in a muddied and cold morning of Midwest winter, a few people go on an icy sidewalk. Under chilling wind, those people walk to a large, old building. Inside the building, the people work for repetitive, backbreaking broken waged jobs. In the same day, late at night, you can see similar slam some people walking out of the building under gravid snowstorm.Being one of those people, I know the feeling of a tokenish waged worker. Like all of those workers, I feel exhausted after complete my job. Everyday, I wait with impatience to hear my supervisor say That is it, chip off the belt. After put off my safety gloves and sweep my sweat, I can only think to return to my room and sleep. I baffled most of my time and energy just for a few dollars. at that place are a lot of people that work harder and earn little than me. The poor, especially less-skilled workers, has access only to bad jobs at bad contend (Blank 64 ). Those workers always face bad situation. They are poor. They are struggling to corroborate the life of their families. On the contrary, the owners of the company where they work have a laid-back standard of aliment. Bad wage is advantageous for the group of people cognize as traditional elites who own labor-intensive firms because it lowers production cost, thus plus the competitiveness of the product. For that reason, it is natural for the traditional elites to keep wage as low as possible. This action creates what Karl Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto as naked, shameless, direct, atrocious exploitation (82).The stripped-down wage seems to be an appealing solution against these ignominious exploitations. Applying a token(prenominal) wage law, government can force a wealth distribution among the owners and their lowest level workers. On Saturday, June 25, 1938, The U.S. Congress root instituted a minimum wage with the Fair Labor Standard Act. The minimum wage was s et at 25 cents per working hour (US part of Labor). The federal minimum wage is increase overtime, adjusted for higher living cost due to accumulated inflation. The minimum wage level is presently set at $5.15 per working hour (2001). An increase in minimum wage can help the poor by substantial amount. A 75-cent per hour increase in the minimum wage means an surplus $1,500 for a minimum wage earner who works full-time, year fill out as much as the average family spends on groceries in 6 months (Bureau of Labor Statistics).