http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/06/news/economy/minimum-wage-state-elections/
Democrats are usually the ones are pushing to raise minimum wage this year. But, four Republican-learning states-Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota-will approve ballots to increase their minimum wages in their state. Recent polls have shown that the majority are favoring an increase in minimum wage. And if history is to repeat itself minimum wage will increase. Three of these states' current wages are or are slightly above $7.25 an hour. Arkansas is a dollar below at $6.25 an hour. Alaska has proposed an increase to $9.75 by 2016 and Arkansas want $8.50 by 2017. If these measures past they will join 12 other states and D.C. who have raised their state minimums in the past two years. A couple of West Coast cities including San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles and Seattle are getting in on the act. But, "any success in raising the minimum wage doesn't necessarily mean all types of low-income workers will benefit. A patchwork of rules and exemptions let employers pay some kinds of workers less than the full minimum wage--including those who work for tips, those who are disabled, and those who are teenage trainees.
I think that Utah needs to get on this act of raising minimum wages. It should be a nation wide act. I don't expect people who have no education to be wealthy, but I do expect them to be paid a livable expense. The minimum wage needs to be raised, so that others can be able to live off of it. What do you think? Should minimum wage be raised?
I agree. Minimum wage has become non-livable for a lot of people. I also agree that the country needs to get on it not just the states.
ReplyDeleteI agree. They should create a nation wide minimum wage. If not I am moving to one of the states that are increasing it to $10.50 an hour by 2017!
DeleteAt one point, Utah had talked about raising the minimum wage to something around 8 dollars just a few months ago. I don't know what ended up happening with it, though.
DeleteI agree that a anybody that is willing to work whether educated or not should be able to make enough money to get by. Something I have wondered is if they raised min. wage say 2$, how would that effect employees that had worked their way up to a higher wage before.
ReplyDelete-Alan Kitchen
Being a crew member at Wendy's, I have seen first hand just how much one store earns in a day, which is just around $1,000 on a slower day. If we were to raise minimum wage to an even $9.00 an hour, the company could also afford to give the other employees another dollar raise. (There are about 30 employees at my store. Add about $2 dollars onto everyone's pay rate, and you spend an extra $60 dollars an hour. Quite affordable for an establishment earning $1,000+ a day)
DeleteIt seems that most of us are on the same page about raising the minimum wage, but where does the rest of the Utah population stand on this issue? Maybe we're just biased because most of us are entering the workforce at minimum wage, but it makes a lot of sense, even if it was just increased to account for the affect of inflation.
ReplyDeleteI don't like the way we currently do minimum wage.
ReplyDeleteFor it to work as intended, we need to not set an arbitrary number. The minimum needs to change by region, tied to the cost of living. Just saying $9 an hour doesn't help with the fact that it costs more to live in some places than others.
The minimum wage also needs to be tied to inflation so that it keeps up with the cost of living.
Personally, I'd like to see a system where there's no minimum wage, but if an employee is paid less than a living wage, the company pays the difference to special taxes that funds public assistance.
Given the choice of paying employees or paying taxes, wages would shoot up really fast.